Books

This is a good opportunity to practice managing upward. Engage with your boss about the book. Bring up a talking point from the book without judgement, and ask the boss what he thought about it. Ask what other talking points the boss found valuable, and why. Ask if there are any strategies from the book he woule like to try, and how he would test the success.

Your boss recomended the book, so in his eyes there is probably value there. Even if you found none, you can use this as an opportunity to understand your boss, and to clarify and shape expectations.

You already kinda said it—this is a problem with the relationship with your boss, not with the book.

With my boss, I can just say, "Honestly, this one was a miss for me. I appreciate the recommendation, and I wanted to give it a chance, but I didn't find much actionable substance in it. What did you get out of it?"

If you don't feel like you can do that, have a conversation with him about how he likes to receive feedback. If the answer is "he doesn't," it might be time to go boss shopping. But I doubt that will be the case.

1. Don't talk about it unless asked.

2. If asked, find ONE and only ONE good thing to say about it. Surely there's something in there that's appealling... "I really liked how confident he is!" He's confidently WRONG, but don't get into that part. "He's really enthusiastic!"

My favorite? "It was amazing!" (how stupid and inane this book was) Spot the unsaid part. :)

The first question to ask yourself is: “why do I need to say anything at all?”. If you don’t like the book or think it’s garbage, you don’t need to say anything. It’s not your job to educate your boss on what’s good or bad. So keep your yap shut.

The second issue is how to feign interest or how to steer the conversation. I would treat something like this the same way I treat a conversation about religion, race, or gender, that might disagree with amongst colleagues or people I don’t know.

As others have said, you can turn questions around and ask them. “It’s not my type of book but did you enjoy it? What part did you like?”

The key to it is to leave your ego behind. If a child comes up to me and says they liked some trite novel, I wouldn’t disparage them. I’d feign interest and ask them to talk about it.

The fact that you talk about “redline the shit out of it” makes me think it’s your ego that’s the problem. You think it’s your job to correct your boss and tell them why they don’t understand good writing. That’s an ego thing.

Just use your social skills. Compliment their book to have an interesting starting point, then pivot the conversation to the books you find more impactful. Compliment the person on having the good graces to find and launching point. And then move on to what you find more effective.

It's the same thing as a friend tries to get you to try mustard ice cream. You don't have to be mean. You can say oh ice cream is amazing I love chocolate ice cream, mustard's interesting.

Real talk, are you getting paid to read this book? Like, on company time, or you're expected to read it after work?

This entire concept of reading a book for work sounds awful to me. Ive only ever had one boss buy me books, and it was just because they were friends with the authors and got us signed copies. There was no expectation that we would actually read them, and they were not all that relevant to our work.

I would suggest finding a book on a similar topic that is better, and just mention the other book to your boss, saying you think this other treatment of the material was better organized or something innocuous. You might get your boss to read the better book which could improve things at work. 🙂

How did he pick it? Did he personally think it was good or did he relay somebody else's suggestion? Should be easier in the latter case to say something like "it doesn't seem relevant to my work" in the latter case without hurting his ego

I'd just be honest and savage the book. If you just cushion his ego he's going to either do this again or actually follow whatever nonsense is in the book.

If your boss gave you this book with the honest intention to hear you opinion and share ideas, just be sincere and say what you said here: "It presents no arguments, is severely lacking in any sort of citations..." and the rest. You say that it's garbage without explicitly saying it. It may even give birth to a real interchange of ideas. Mentioning the books you liked instead may even prove positive for everybody involved.

If, on the contrary, it's the usual material from crappy bosses that only want to reaffirm themselves in their bossy bullshit, just tell them that it was "very remarkable and with very enlightening ideas" and move on.

There must have been something in the book that resonated for him. Something he feels is missing from your company or could be implemented in your company. Try to find that thing and use the discussion to ask him how you think your company could operationalize that concept/idea. Also have your own ideas ready for this.

This will change the conversation and pump his ego.

My go-to is "It didn't quite hit for me, but that's the beauty of the reader's perspective. What stood out to you?"

As someone who has read a lot of absolutely shit-teir books (think the zombie obsession circa mid 2000s), I'm ok saying if something didn't resonate with me.

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.

Tell your boss he's a genius.

Seriously, it's a job and you shouldn't have to worry about anything after five pm.

OP why would you give a shit about honest feedback if honest feedback will influence your job in a negative manner? Say mindless nice bullshit so you boss leaves you alone and move on.
If there was worth in honesty in your working environment you wouldn't need to make this post.

Do you have any reason to believe that your boss really read the book and actually liked it?