I just finished reading William Gibson’s Neuromancer.  I was in a scifi mood while looking to add a new novel to my Kindle for iPhone.  Since it’s such a classic, I thought I’d give Neuromancer a try.

I was not that entertained.  In fact, I was bored for most of it and it was a chore to get to the end.

I think if I read it in 1984 when it was first published, it would have been awesome.  But reading it after his revolutionary ideas have become so commonplace (eg., The Matrix), it wasn’t that exciting.

This criticism of Neuromancer is unfair, I know.  It was so ahead of its time that I can only imagine the thrill the reader would have felt reading it in the 80’s.  But reading it for the first time 25 years after it was published, and expecting it to entertain me as a scifi/cyberpunk story, it didn’t live up to my (unrealistic) expectations.

I’m not saying that Gibson isn’t a talented storyteller.  About a year ago, I read Pattern Recognition.  It was my first Gibson book. I picked it up on a whim at an airport bookstore. It’s a novel about advertising/marketing with a scifi/action/adventure twist published this decade.  That was a very entertaining read that I finished in two sittings.

I think I’ll give his latest, Spook Country, a read so my William Gibson experience doesn’t end on a down note. (BTW, the hardcover version of Spook Country is only $2.72 right now on Amazon.)

I’m rereading Seth Godin’s The Bootstrapper’s Bible via DailyLit. I read the book 3 years ago from cover to cover before we launched Killer Aces.

I’m not sure how much I absorbed back then, reading the book before having started a company.  Rereading it now, I see that some of the Bootstrapper’s Manifesto has stuck with us.  Some of the lessons we had to learn the hard way for ourselves.

Anyway I have three thoughts to share.

1. If you’re an entrepreneur building a new business, do yourself a favor by reading Seth’s book. Even if you have VC funding, this book is applicable. It could just as accurately be called The Underdog Company’s Bible.

There’s no excuse. You can get the book for free as a PDF download or an email series from DailyLit.

2. Rereading the book after I’ve had a couple of years experience is eye opening. I’m absorbing more of the lessons because I can immediately think of actual business issues we’re dealing with now or have dealt with in the past.

Being able to apply the concepts to actual, real world problems makes them so much more meaningful versus trying to learn the lessons in abstract.

So go reread those old business books. There are probably new lessons you can pick up now that you have more real world experience.

3. DailyLit is a great way to read books for time strapped executives. Actually DailyLit is great for anyone that (a) has no time to read and (b) lives in their email inbox anyway.

It’s hard to find an extra hour everyday to read, but it’s easy to spend 5 minutes reading just another email.  It’s also good for people like me who can’t put a book down at the end of a chapter. The end of the email is the signal to move on and work on something.