Business books are entertainment, not strategic tools

Having read hundreds of books over 25 years, here’s what I think about business books:

- To understand some domain you need knowledge + insights + discernment. Books give you knowledge. Only when you apply you will get discernment. When you apply you will get specific questions which then triggers seeking more knowledge.

- Every book is a map. It leaves out a lot so readers can understand the domain. If your interest align with that map, you'll find the book useful. Otherwise it turns out to be a fluff

- Most books could be a tweet (directive). Once you understand something, it could be expressed as a directive. Until then, you need stories, explanations, and nuance.

- Jesus' command: love God and love others is a short directive of Ten commandments, which in themselves are condensed directives of the Bible. When we hear only the directive, we lose the context and we misunderstand. That's where stories come into play. Tim Ferriss' "4 hour week" makes sense when you read all the stories (playbooks, delegations etc). You leave all of that out, "4 hour week" is a (misunderstood) crap.

- Don't read recently published books. wait at least until 5 years. Let it be looked at it from all angles. Then read it.

- If you want to learn emerging topic (like GenAI), don't read books. Join communities and learn from them. Like Perplexity community for GenAI.

- Read practicing philosophers. When you want to learn swimming, learn from swimmers turned coach, not someone who stood by poolside and watched 10000 swimmers (like Jim Collins did)

- Read annual letters to shareholders (by Warren Buffett, Jeff Bezos, Biglari ...). They have more signal than noise.

I started writing a reply and it became lot bigger than I intended. So I blogged here: https://www.jjude.com/read-biz-books/

Yep I think people just want the fast track to being rich and are not interested into putting the hours and the grind for it. There are amazing books out there but they are textbooks. 1000 pages long on a single subject, and people don't want that. But for the most part, that's where the real knowledge is.

They would rather read 10-15 books on marketing rather than study and master a single textbook about marketing. Even when they don't have to master all of it and that would still give them more value and professional knowledge than reading all of these other books.

I read my far share of business books and at some points I was seeing the edutainment behind it and the lack of value that from now on every time I search for a book I start by searching in the textbook section on Amazon not the book section.