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A Review of Leader’s Book Summaries (Guest Post)

A Review of Leader’s Book Summaries (Guest Post)

Last updated on: February 10, 2019 at 10:16 am by Frank Viola

A Review of Leader’s Book Summaries (Guest Post) 2019-02-10T10:16:17-04:00 Frank Viola

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Quick update: Very soon I will be posting an interview I did with the foremost expert on the subject of angels — yea, those mysterious creatures that Scripture speaks about. The interview is FASCINATING and you don’t want to miss it. So keep an eye out.

That said, here’s an article written by Nathan Ovitt that will help you consume more books.

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If I put a bumper sticker on my car, it would probably read “So many books, so little time.” I love reading, and the learning that comes with it, so I am always looking for ways to read more and get more out of what I read.

Enter Leaders Book Summaries. This is a service that provides summaries of “the best books for Christian leaders to read.” I have been enjoying it tremendously—it scratches all my itches.

In short, the service provides 12-15 page summaries of books they believe are good ones for leaders to read. Additionally, they give a 2-3 page summary of the summary (they call it “The Nutshell”). Between the two, I know immediately if it’s a book I want to read, and if I do, I get all the good stuff in a short version. They do 30 titles per year, so roughly one every 12 days. They also have a library of past titles with about 250 books in it.

There are a lot of positives to the service, and two (possible) negatives, which I’ll summarize (no pun intended) here—

Positives

The range of books is really good. They don’t just provide books on the topic of leadership; their focus is books that would be “good for leaders to read.” The most recent title was a book on the importance of sleep; there are lots of others on topics that aren’t just on leadership. And of course, there are a lot of titles on leadership—leadership, management, personal growth, church growth, etc. But it’s a good balance.

They include secular authors as well as Christian ones. Some might think that is a negative, but the summaries I’ve read that were written by secular authors were really good, so I consider it a positive.

The writing is good. I was afraid it would just be an outline or list of bullet points, but the summaries are written like a really short book. That makes them easy to read and digest.

The summaries are sent as emails, and you can go to their website (www.studyleadership.com)and access all their titles. I like not having to save them on my computer but still having full access. And the summaries are easily readable on my phone, which is another plus.

It saves me a lot of time and money. The time savings are obvious—reading 15 pages instead of 200-300 is going to take a lot less time. I’m also saving money—their Premium subscription is $119/year; for that you get 30 titles per year, plus the 250+ in their library. That comes to about $.40/title if you combine them.

I also found the customer service to be good. I had a couple questions, and I got quick responses to my emails. And I spoke with Dave Frederick once (the company President). He called me to answer one of my questions directly.

Negatives

There were two possible negatives I saw. I say possible because I suspect they wouldn’t be negatives for a lot of people, but could be for some.

The summaries are emailed, and are readable on a computer, tablet, phone, etc. But they aren’t a real book, with paper pages, binding, etc. For people who only want to read a book, that could be a negative. For those who just love to read it’s probably not an issue.

The other possible negative is that in order to get the main points of the book into the summaries, a lot of the stories are left out. That could be a negative for some. It’s not for me—if I like what I’ve read, I’ll just go buy the book—but it could be for some. I like getting the bottom line with no fluff.

Conclusion

Leaders Book Summaries is a great service, and I think it’s worth checking out. It’s helped me read a lot more, and doing that has helped me learn more. I’ve already applied some of the things I’ve learned! The price is low for the value received. Any way you look at it, if you like reading and learning, this service can really benefit you.

~ Nathan Ovitt

Leaders Book Summaries is offering our readers a free sample issue. Click here to get it.

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