BizBook Nuggets

Dallas Book Club Reaches New Readers Virtually

At the ICF Conference in San Jose last week, Karen Rawson, of www.PDPerspectives.com extended an invitation to BizBook Nugget Readers to join the Friday Virtual Book Club.

This Friday they will review two important books:

Crucial Conversations by Kerry Patterson, et al, and Encouraging the Heart by James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner, as featured in a special report,  “The Essential 15 – If you haven’t read these 15 books, you’re behind the curve!” available at www.15MinuteBusinessBooks.com.

At www.15MinuteBusinessBooks.com, they help you quickly grasp the key concepts of important business books so that you can hone in on the ones that are most important to you for your in-depth reading.

Hear Randy Mayeux and Karl Krayer deliver live synopses two great books. You’ll receive a 6-page outline for each book including key quotes, and you’ll get to participate in a discussion on applying the concepts, led by Professional Coach Karen Rawson.

Randy Mayeux and Karl Krayer are in their 8th year of delivering live synopses of business books to Dallas audiences. Their events are open to the public on the first Friday of every month for a networking breakfast and the synopses, and they give their presentations to major corporations in Dallas and Fort Worth as well. While the monthly live events focus on current best sellers, the
Virtual Book Club is a chance to dig into detail on both current books and those that have remained
popular over a long period.

To sign up, go here.

Book Summaries - Keeping Up with Biz Book Reading

Dave Taylor, Internet expert, asks his readers an interesting question: Do you use book summary services to keep up with all your reading?

Here's an excerpt from his post:

I'm trying an experiment for the next few months, rather than feeling powerless as more and more books arrive on my doorstep, just to languish in my "to read" pile as I find more and more of my time consumed by clients and family. I've signed on for Soundview's popular Executive Book Summaries program and I'll be able to download 20 minute summaries of two or three top business books each month.

This month, the selections are The Enthusiastic Employee, The Growth Gamble and Management Wisdom from the New York Yankee's Dynasty. This is a great selection for me because I wouldn't ordinarily pick up any of these three choices, so the summaries are expanding my horizons in a quite painless manner. Next month, the selections are The Next Global Stage and Winning With People, both of which sound terrific.

Previous selections have included Winners Never Cheat, Bridging the Culture Gap, Brand Hijack, The Art of the Start and The Wisdom of Crowds.

As a writer, though, I'm wrestling with the whole idea of third party summaries of longer works. How would I feel, I ask myself, if someone had a 15-page summary of my latest book, Growing Your Business With Google?

I've been using these services for years, although I must admit, nothing beats ordering the book, sinking into the arm chair, and the total immersion experience of a full read.

What do you think about these book summary services? Worth it? Hit the comment link below and tell us.

Best Marketing Books for 2005

Another good book review from Jack Covert over on the MarketingProfs.com site. He highlights three great marketing books in such a way to make me surf on over to Amazon and order. His picks are:

Brand Hijack: Marketing without Marketing by Alex Wipperfurth (Portfolio, 288 Pages, $24.95, hardcover, February 2005)

All Marketers Are Liars: The Power of Telling Authentic Stories in a Low-Trust World by Seth Godin (Portfolio Publishers, 175 pages, $23.95, hardcover, May 2005)

The Big Moo: Stop Trying to Be Perfect and Start Being Remarkable by The Group of 33, edited by Seth Godin (Portfolio Books, 180 Pages, $19.95, hardcover, October 2005)

Bag the Elephant: How to Win & Keep BIG Customers by Steve Kaplan (Bard Press, 190 pages, $19.95, hardcover, August 2005)

Read why here.

Best Biz Books for Fall

No, I haven't come out of my summer slumber yet. No good book reviews out of me for at least another 2 weeks.

I'm still just sending you over to 800-CEO-Read Blog for a good list of biz books coming your way this Fall. Jump over there and read this list of good books.

Biz Book Bashing - Easy Pickin's

You might have noticed a lull in my blog posting lately. I'm feeling the lazy days of summer here in Del Mar CA. About the only time I'm moving is when I've got a tennis racquet in my hand and a ball is coming straight at me.

But I digress. Here's an easy way for me to post about a book review: Go read it over on 800-CEO-Read blog! It's a good one! According to this astute reader/writer, when all else fails, it's easier to bash simplicity than it is to analyze complexity...

Hope you're having a great summer too.

How to Keep Up with Amazon Biz Books

If you're like me, you don't have a lot of time to just "surf" the Internet looking for stuff you need to know for your business, your clients, your newsletters and blogs. But you need to stay alert for trends and know which biz books to read.

Enter BizReading.com. This service, which you can subscribe to, gives you daily updates in 45 categories of sales trends of business books at Amazon.com.

BizReading.com monitors and evaluates the trends of 97756 books in 45 business categories every day. They record sales ranking over time.

According to their position in the ranking and considering the category to which the book belongs, the site prepares the BestSellers Rank and the Best Movers Rank.

That may be more info than you need, but it's a great way you can evaluate which books to buy.

Are You Behind Your Peers?

If you haven't read these 15 business books, then you are behind the learning curve!

Hey, don't say I didn't warn you. It's not my list, although I have to say I agree with them.

Here's what three enterprising and well-read professionals are saying about what you should be reading: The Essential 15 Download Page, comes to you from 15 Minute Business Books.

Ken Wilbur's A Theory of Everything

I always get a little afraid of books with titles like A Theory of Everything...how can they possibly know about everything? But Ken Wilbur has a reputation for cutting edge ideas. And I have a curiosity about anybody who tries to bring everything together in an attempt to integrate. I encourage you to read this book.

Furthermore, I have such great respect for the book review services being provided by Coen de Groot and Anthony Warren over at Mentor Coaches International that I will ask you to go read their excellent review of Wilbur's book A Theory of Everything over on that site.

While you're there, you might want to subscribe to their book review service, it's excellent.

Great Review of The Fifth Discipline

Coen de Groot of Mentor Coaches offers a terrific review service called Books for Coaches, and in particular offers this thorough review of Peter Senge's The Fifth Discipline.

To read the entire review go here. Here's a couple of paragraphs that Coen reports on the book:

Originally published in 1990, the Fifth Discipline is much honoured in management discussion and yet often ignored in management practice. Ironically it is because it's about big business that it is both known yet under-utilised. Running a big business is different to running a small business. A major difference is that of the difficulty of maintaining vision and disseminating learning of solutions throughout the organisation.

Instead what happens is that each part of the organisation creates a reactive solution to a problem and moves on. Consequently new problems are created and there is no learning going on to speed up progress. Since many CEOs are judged on quarterly results, there is a pressure to be constantly reactive. Organisations which evolve into Learning Organisations will have a better future.

The Fifth Discipline is a book that divides readers into for and against. Our view is that it stands the test of time and still has some important things to say. It may not be the first choice for personal coaches but executive coaches with corporate clients should view it as required reading. Why? Because it identifies areas that need attention in large organisations and many of the clients will have read the book or use concepts from it.

Coen is from the UK, which accounts for spelling organizations with an 's'... I probably needn't have clarified, but I know some readers are sticklers for spelling! I offer thanks to Coen and to his associate Anthony Warren. Evidently Coen reads, and Anthony writes the reviews based on Coen's input. Nice review service! I recommend BizBook Nuggets readers to sign up and subscribe to their book review service for coaches by sending an email to BooksForCoaches-request@forcoaches.com, and put 'subscribe' in the subject line. You know the drill by now, of course.

So Many Books, So Little Time...

I'll admit I sometimes have eyes bigger than my brain and buy more books than I have time to read. Right now I have 8 books that arrived at my doorstep this week.

It's Amazon's fault of course. They introduced a yearly shipping fee for all the books you want, delivered in 2 days. What's $79 when you can get your books in 2 days? When I was living in Mexico last year I had to wait 6-8 weeks for deliveries.

Want to see the latest BizBooks over at Amazon?

BizBooks

I am in hog heaven. Here are a few titles that are lined up: Confronting Reality by Bossidy & Charan, Business, the Ultimate Resource by Goleman, The First 90 Days by Watkins, and A Bias for Action by Bruch and Ghoshal.

Now, I'll buy any book by Daniel Goleman of Emotional Intelligence fame. So I bought Business, his latest book without even reading what it was. Big surprise. This is not his usual stuff. This is a 20 pound encyclopedia! I am not kidding. It really is an encyclopedia with about everything in business you can imagine. The global statistics on business, telecommunications, and internet usage in every country are fascinating. Every thought leader in business has contributed to this tome. This is going to be a great resource for writing articles.

Not enough time to read? Use one of the summary services, like Get Abstract, Soundview Executive Summaries, or ExecBooks. They are a great way to gather up the most recent concepts and helps me to decide which books I need to buy and read in depth.

Also, there are a number of web sites that offer biz book reviews. Today my Google Alert led me to this site, where I found some great book blurbs:
http://humanresources.about.com/

Gotta go now, lots to read!

Patsi, your BizBook Worm