Comments on Notes from a Small Mind: Reading lists are for losers

Agree lots Dom. As a tech PR person, I have read ...

2008-08-07T06:05:00.000+01:00

Agree lots Dom. As a tech PR person, I have read (twice!) Glynn Moody's Rebel Code and (once, because its not as good) Linus Torvalds' Just For Fun. Bit of programming literature aint half interesting!

That said, I don't need my team all to read it because I have read it so as a PR team *we* have the geek knowledge required to do a good job for Open Source clients.

Personally I would usually rather chew off my arm than read PR/marketing books. Does that make me a bad PR person?

@ben: I totally agree that books are an invaluable...

2008-08-06T08:49:00.000+01:00

@ben: I totally agree that books are an invaluable resource, I'm not debating that my point was purely that this assumption that there are five or six key books which everyone should definitely read is cr@p. My contention was more in relation to the fact that it doesn't matter what you read or experience, more the point that you are pushing the experiential boundaries.

Oh, and if you're going to push the whole Eng Lit banter, learn to spell!

@Alex: Once again totally agree - I was just trying to say that instead of working with twenty people who'd all read Cluetrain, I'd rather work on a team with people who'd all read entirely different books, because then your combined experience is that much greater. Does that make sense?

Like it- and agree, albeit with the caveat that th...

2008-08-06T08:24:00.000+01:00

Like it- and agree, albeit with the caveat that there are certain books in life which do help pretty much anything you do.

I've found the most useful books I've ever read for PR aren't useful because of their subject matter, but because of their style. Reading Macaulay's History of England can teach anyone how to write well. And Beatrix Potter to teach you how to be a pleasant human being :-)