Pro-active Book Reports

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Over the past two months I have written a number of pro-active book reports.  Pro-active reports are different than book reviews or just plain book reports in that while they do provide an overview, summary and synthesis, the heart of the report is focused on the questions you want to ask the book. 

So after reading the table of contents as well as the preface and introduction, you go into the book with specific questions that you want answered.  Questions that would be of help in your particular vocation. 

The beauty of doing pro-active book reports is first, you tend to be able to draw more out of the book.  Second, the reports provide you with a handy bibliographic reference about the book for future purposes.  And finally the reports are great to read in the future as a way to review the important parts or concepts that you would like to have as a part of your long-term memory. With that being said, here are four pro-active reports that I have done recently. 

Life on the Vine by Philip Kenneson
If you want to learn how to cultivate the fruit of the spirit in the context of the United States, then you should check out this book, for Kenneson helps us to recognize the grammar of the dominant culture and the grammar of God so that we can better embody the good news from New York to Los Angeles.

Learning to Listen, Learning to Teach by Jane Vella
If you happen to be a teacher of adults, then this is a must read for you. Vella in what has become a classic in this field explains and illustrates twelve transcendent principles when it comes to educating adults.  In this short report you will find a summary of each of the principles.

Cultivating Communities of Practice by Wenger, McDermott and Synder
This is a book from the Harvard Business School Press which helps us to learn how to manage knowledge for the common good.  Living in the age of information, I found that this book is an apt guide in finding the best ways to steward knowledge so that people can move beyond simply gathering data to being able to become embodied experts in a particular field of learning.

Spiritual Leadership by J. Oswald Sanders
In this book Sanders weaves together a tapestry of rich quotes and real life stories of people who are modeling the character qualities of spiritual leadership.  This book has become a classic in its field, and yet as you read this book report, you will also discover that the book was somewhat shaped by its own cultural context, as it was written in 1967.