Friday, June 24, 2011

Surviving your Serengeti by Stefan Swanepoel Book review




7 skills to master business and life. What the author does in this book is take the7 skills and in a fable/story concept explains them by using animals found in the Serengeti.

I think he had to stretch the concept a bit on a couple of the animals, but by and large the connections between animal and skill taught were sound.

In his introduction he points out 3 things he hopes the book will reaffirm. One, everyone can survive their own Serengeti. Second, no journey is ever too long, and three ,nothing is impossible. Pretty lofty and he doesn’t really get there, and I don’t think this was the point of the book. First off, the first point only works if you see the Serengeti as hard, and it is obvious that he loves it there and see it so positively that the connection point misses that mark. Second, their trip was 3 days so the point about the journey of living out these traits etc fails short. Third, I think the book does give some encouragement with these practical traits that would help either a business person or other reader to keep striving, so it does well on that point. In my opinion it would be better to simply look at the book’s subtitle of “7 skills to master for business and life” and that fits what it does much better.

There are no God references in the book, I point that out simply to say it, as the publisher puts out Christian books. There is nothing in the book anti biblical, but it certainly is much more of a self help type book.

Big marks for the format he used, and for easy reading style. No ground breaking revelations, and he provides as the end of the book a website to take a short quiz to explore which animal/skill you are. I enjoy those type quizzes and self discovery aspects, but knew the animal I would be from the reading of the book. Despite my critical stance on his introduction goals, on a whole, it was a quick enjoyable read.

This book was provided as a complimentary copy by the publisher in exchange for my review, positive or negative of its contents. Thanks Booksneeze!