One down, two to go

Last night I finished Professional Practices in Association Management. All 30 chapters and 362 pages of it. Funny thing, I have worked for two of the chapter authors. What a small world. I had no idea they were published writers.

Overall, I thought the book served its purpose relatively well. Taking a line from the preface, indeed, "there is no broader compilation of working knowledge in this [the association management] profession." This book covers a lot of ground, and I must say, I have come away much more practical and theoretical knowledge than I had anticipated. Plus, I've learned things I can put to use right away, including some chapter relations and affinity partnership tips.

On the downside, having a total of 28 authors for the 30 chapters, it lacked a consistency one normally expects from a textbook (e.g. some chapters had sidebars, others did not). Also, having been last revised in 1997, this text is in desperate need of an update. For example, it touts fax-on-demand as an emerging technology, explains to its readers that the World Wide Web can be abbreviated as "WWW" and reveals that to download means to copy a file onto your system. Thanks for clearing up that last one for me. ;-) Also, there's no index, which would be helpful when pulling it off the shelf for reference at some future date.

Today I began reading Association Law Handbook by Jerald A. Jacobs. As intimidating as this tome appears (it's over 500 pages and hardbound in green leather with gold foil printing -- and hey, it IS a law text after all), in truth, it's really a simple read. Each chapter is about 4-6 pages long beginning with a narrative introduction and followed by a bulleted issue summary. I've got to say that the first 80 pages I read today were really good! WAY better than I expected. Like Professional Practices, this book offers a solid theoretical foundation on which to build your understanding and practice of managing an association.

Like I wrote earlier, I'm on vacation this week to finish at least two books. The Association Law Handbook is so much more pleasant to read than I expected, heck, I might even be able to finish Principles of Assocation Management this week too!

In other news, I was not affected as profoundly by the devastation of tropical depression Gaston as those in the Shockoe neighborhood in Richmond, however I did lose a tree in my back yard. I have so many trees back there, I didn't even notice that it had fallen until Wednesday night (the storm was Monday).

Also, I have added the "e-mail this" feature to my blog. Just click the little envelope at the end of a post to send it to a friend.