Reading remains an unsurpassed vehicle for the transmission of interesting new ideas and perspectives.
Steven Johnson,  Where Good Ideas Come From:  The Natural History of Innovation

As business leaders, we’re voracious seekers of business improvement ideas in the form of conferences, books, blogs, and training.  We want our performance to be better, and we know it should be better. 
Gary Harpst, Six Disciplines Execution Revolution:  Solving the One Business Problem that Makes Solving All Other Problems Easier

Of course I cannot do without a single one of these possessions, including more or less every book I have owned since I was seven, starting with Huckleberry Finn.  Other books I can’t throw away because–well, they’re books, and you can’t throw away a book, can you?
Roger Ebert (see this blog post)

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3,000!

That is something of a magic number.  There is a 3,000 hits club in baseball, with only 27 players in all of MLB history to reach that milestone.  (Here’s an amazing fact – not one New York Yankees player is on the list.  Hard to believe!  Derek Jeter has over 2800 hits, and still active).

And now, 3,000 is the number for this blog.  This morning, I am posting this, article/post #3,000, on the Frist Friday Book Synopsis blog.  Not bad considering how long we have been at this.

Though Karl Krayer and I posted a few entries (literally, a few—not more than two in any one month for the first 15 months of this blog), in April, 2009, everything changed.

First, I decided I really liked blogging.  So I started posting far more often than at first.

But then, the real change came when we expanded our “blogging team.”  We asked some others to join our efforts.  Karl and I continued to write; Cheryl wrote a few posts.  But the writer with the most at-bats (to continue the analogy) is Bob Morris.

As I stated in our most recent e-mail to our First Friday Book Synopsis e-mail list:

Bob Morris posts multiple posts every day.  Interviews with authors; book reviews; nuggets from a wide array of business sources.  This is truly a place to keep learning.   It is worth reading, every day, with valuable, useful content.

And so, as the months progressed, the blog took on its current personality.  Bob is the king of content.  He provides, quite literally, a business ideas, business trends, business questions education.  In case you can’t tell, I genuinely admire him, and learn much from him and his writing.

I think I provide something like business devotional reading – kind of business sermons.  (I spent 2 decades in full time ministry/preaching).

But we are all deeply committed to lifelong learning. It’s not that we love books (though we do) – it is that we believe in the value of, and the energizing power of, learning – true lifelong learning.

So, yes, this is a blog about business books, and many business subjects/issues.  But it is not quite a blog about business books.  It is much more a blog about learning; a blog providing a place to help you learn; a blog devoted to lifelong learning.  And our commitment to learning flows from our experience with books — we read, therefore we learn.

And, a very special thank you to you, our readers.  Yes, your numbers have grown, and continue to grow.  How big is our readership?  I have not figured out how we compare to others.  But we have grown from less than a handful of readers to nearly 600 page views every day – and that number increases month after month.

Bookmark us; spread the word about this blog.  Use those buttons at the end of each of these articles: tweet our articles, put them on your Facebook page – help us tell others.

We simply want to help each other learn – it’s that simple.

This blog is a part of the overall First Friday Book Synopsis community.  It all starts with our monthly learning event, at which Karl Krayer and I each present a synopsis of a useful, valuable business book.  We have met every month since April, 1998.  Take a look (thanks to Anastasia Lankford for the photos):