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?
I think you have to ask yourself why he picked out this book. You can even try asking him how he heard about it, if you can do it in a curious non-judgmental way.
If you think he chose it because he wanted the team to improve or grow in this area and the title sounded like a good fit, you can probably be more honest with your criticism, especially if you can offer other theories or strategies and recommended the sources you learned them from. In this case, I think he'd care more that his book triggered these discussions than whether it was strictly any good.
But if you think he has read and enjoyed this book himself, or that he saw it advertised on LinkedIn and thought it would be a nice manager thing to get it for everyone, I think you should keep your comments more positive. Tell him about any parts that you did think were good, point out the topics that you're most interested in researching further, tell him about any ideas for the team that were triggered while reading, etc.