No, they shouldn't choose more specific books, they should just friggin get to work. Startups are all about hard work, not about sipping coffee and reading.
Yes, because no good knowledge could possibly come from reading a business book. Startups are not just about work, they're about work, learning, and growing a business. All of which can be improved by insights from some of the fantastic business books out there.
Not to say that learning is bad, just saying of the thousands of people reading Hacker News every day, I'd guess the majority of readers need to stop reading and start doing.
I think the key lesson (and this is independent of the above article) is to start emphasizing doing over reading.
Ie your day you should be a constant stream of action after which you force yourself to read for a bit.
My dad was like this when he was working. He hardly ever read during the day. He'd work like crazy through the day and then would catchup on reading in the evening for about 1 hour. He was an officer in the navy and went from plowing the fields as a kid to pay for college to a very high ranking officer.
The only "meta" principle that I observed, about him, is that he is fearless in a very strange way. It always seems to me that he doesnt even think about starting to do something. He just does it ...
I read a lot of books. The biggest benefit I get from them is that my thoughts on current projects will get tweaked a bit, and a few gems come to me that I wouldn't have thought of otherwise if I was too focused on my specific project(s) and books that relate directly to them.
I read for enjoyment, relaxation, and learning, in that order. A lot of times, the benefit I get is similar to when you have an idea in your head then actually talk to someone about it. It's amazing the sort of ideas that pop into your head when you just start TALKING about what you're doing instead of just thinking about it. Books, however high-level or fluff-filled, often have the same effect for me.
"For entrepreneurs, reading business books is the new television"
Could not agree more with the author. Most of these books are just waste of time. There are few good business books, though, the ones that look at things though skeptic's eye, the ones that disillusion you. But even those books are probably not worth reading.
Moreover, most of these books were written by authors who have never done any significant business in their life.
Good article. I think it would be better if he used a counter-example or two, to make sure readers knew what he meant by "Business Books". For example, according to Amazon, "Getting Things Done" is a business book (two of the three categories it's in are subcategories of "Business"), but has specific actions that could help many startup founders.
Just because there are a lot of over-simplified, tabloid-headline creating blogs that are trying to get to the front page of Reddit or Hacker News, it doesn't mean I am going to tell people to stop reading all blogs. In the same vein, there are a ton of amazing business books that entrepreneurs should be reading in spite of the others. The Map of Inovation for example. The key to to pick the right ones and read faster.
A better bet is to read the distilled wisdom of all the best business books of all time - The Success Manual - something I helped edit - is one of them. Check it out at http://thesuccessmanual.bighow.com
Another option is to read The Success Manual - which contains summaries from 100+ best business and self help books. http://thesuccessmanual.bighow.com
Along those lines, I had a site called Squeezed Books that does free summaries: http://www.squeezedbooks.com - I sold it though, and it remains to be seen how it'll end up.
Leadership is an Art and The Abilene Paradox are great business books - if you've ever made mistakes managing people like I have both of these books are very instructive on the people aspect of running a startup.
Very ironic that she emphasises that the business books are general and not applicable and what you need is tailored advise, yet goes on to give very general, and absolute advice, and also make very general comments such as "we" are "addicted" to... blogs?
I don't even read any blogs! And I am not addicted to anything on the internet! And my ability to process information is hardly "plummeting" and basically you should stop just giving out opinions as a wise old man in the age of 80 telling the great youth of what life is really like.
