I know from just about everywhere that people just aren’t that in to reading anymore. Even when people are consuming books, audio books are a growing segment. From recent data that I looked up, the median number of books consumed per year is just 5. Half the people in America consumed less than five books last year. I typically average around a book a week. Are they all code-related? No. They aren’t even all non-fiction. I read quite a bit of fiction as an outlet for my imagination, as I watch less and less TV every year. I know that I’m not typical, so I want to try to be a little pragmatic here.
I came across a site called Actionable Books. This site has a section called “Summaries” where you can read people’s “Actionable Summaries” of books. At the time that I’m writing this, there are summaries for “1005 Top Business Books”. The way that the site works is that people read the books and they summarize the gist of the book, called “The Golden Egg”. Then, they also find two “Gems” from the book (accompanied by quotes). Here is a link to the summary of Good to Great by Jim Collins, so you can check out what I mean.
For the vast majority of business books, this site is amazing. I’ve long been a critic of these “single shot” business books. Typically, the author will have an idea that is good for 2-3 chapters, tops. After that, he’s beating a dead horse to try to hit some word count. For those kinds of books, Actionable Books is perfect. They’ll distill it down for you and you can get the idea without reading 200 pages of fluff.
For books that actually are full of value, you can read the summary and then – seeing the value – buy the whole thing. It is like a Book Review++++. So, if you are like me and like to read business books to build up your soft skills and business acumen, but don’t want to risk wasting your time with “low fat” books, check out Actionable Books.
