My boss recently bought a couple of books that he expected my team to read.
In the past when previous bosses have done this, I've generally gained a lot out of reading the books, even if I disliked some aspects of their arguments I've been able to get a lot of insight from the arguments and evidence presented.
But this book is complete garbage. Truly first rate trash. It barely qualifies as a book. Conquer Your Rebrand, is ostensibly meant to be a business strategy guide to branding. But it is more like a long winded LinkedIn post. It's clearly an attempt by the author to fill his sales pipeline that's barely disguised as him passing on 'expertise.' It presents no compelling arguments, no evidence, is severely lacking in any sort of citations and is written like someone desperately trying to flog a timeshare at a weekend convention. I have redlined the shit out of it but I got so infuriated reading it that I can't imagine how to have a decent discussion with my boss about this book without seeming like my low opinion of this book reflects back on him (which in reality it really does.)
I think it's so much worse because I just finished two brilliant books on my own time —Jack Welsh: The Man Who Broke Capitalism and When McKinsey Comes To Town: The Hidden Influence of The World's Biggest Consulting Firm — that both present compelling arguments, detailed referencing and excellent writing.
How would you handle this?
Looking for backhanded corpoflattery?
The last one basically means "its absolutely worthless".
The trick is to take a statement which should be true for any book. Usually these statements are followed by a more detailed description of what you found to be commendable. Lack of such a description speaks loudly but the other party does not need to engage it.
If you actually said "its worthless", then the other party would have to engage your statement. This leaves the opportunity to just gracefully accept your opinion and to just never speak of it again.
So when someone says this about me they're actually calling me worthless? This is why I hate talking to people. Everything means the opposite of what it's supposed to.
It depends on the context. If you're asked to evaluate something and all you have to say about someone's work is that it took effort there is a lot unsaid. As in "at least they tried".
If you're saying "wow that looks like it took a lot of work" it means that you're acknowledging that someone spent a lot of energy on something. Like if its a really elaborate piece of art and you're just marveling at it.
If someone's saying this to you about your work they most likely mean the latter since the former is pointlessly cruel. Unless they're trying to bully or harass there is no need to tell someone their work is worthless.
Based on the OP's description, I'm not sure these are enough to hide the towering contempt - they are thinly veiled snide remarks. I empathize, just, y'know, it is what it is. If the boss has issues taking criticism or OP doesn't deliver the line perfectly, it's not far off from "it was shit and the author's a dumbfuck" and is very likely to get (fairly correctly) interpreted that way.
Brilliant for emails if you need to return passive-aggressive fire, though, of course. They're good jibes.
Oh its a very thin line to tread sometimes in office politics. Do not merely drop that line and leave it hanging, there has to be some padding around it.
The larger point is what OP wants to say. If they do not want any sort of confrontation, lie. Its OK to lie to your boss if its not directly related to work.
If you want to be honest but not engage in any further discussion these statements convey that I think. Sometimes you actually want to say "I think that person is not qualified and will never learn" but leave the option for the other party to gloss over that statement.
Don't try to be clever by saying one thing and meaning another. Be clear about what you want to communicate and then how to communicate it.