Book Notes
I am in Pennsylvania for the next couple of days (as I was last week). One of the downsides of traveling this much is that sometimes you have to leave before your lovely wife gets all of your stuff washed from the last trip. Ergo, a trip to Wal-Mart was in order tonight. We are now fully packed.
I got into Erie about 6:30, checked in and then went to Wal-Mart. Afterward, I went to the local Barnes and Noble. I love bookstores (especially Barnes and Noble). I love the smell of the books and going through all of the racks of books. I rarely buy from Barnes and Noble (much cheaper to get books from Amazon with free 2-day shipping) but I love to spend time in the bookstore. True story- I was in Barnes and Noble in Columbus the other day and saw a book that interested me. I ordered it from Amazon (via my BlackBerry) while I was standing in Barnes and Noble and had it at my doorstep today via UPS (at 33% off the list price). Good times.
There are a ton of Business books out there. Most of them are junk. I remember going through Boarders in Pittsburgh a couple of weeks ago and thumbing through a few of the titles. Long on platitudes, short on specifics. A number of these books are written by academics which makes me extra skeptical. A book on managing in the business workplace by an academic is about as credible as me writing a tome on church growth. In short, you can’t teach what you don’t know. I do a lot of writing on leadership because I have help management and leadership positions in both the corporate and church environments. I am much more inclined to read business profiles (like the books featured in the “what I’m reading” tab) than “how to” books. I like to see what happened and then draw my own conclusions. On that note, I’m going to close up my laptop and do a little reading.
I will be heading to Pittsburgh tomorrow afternoon and have a number of thoughts I’d like to blog on. Maybe I’ll get to them then.
