So I'm at home doing some bookshelf gardening, and I come across this bunch of books, not many at all really, sent by publishers when I used to push Knowledge Management - the crack cocaine of wisdom - and stare at a lurid cover wondering why it pavlovianly pisses me off, when I can remember that I've never actually read the bloody thing.

Then it hits me, like a drunken city worker on the central line on a friday night.

The book is called: knowledge assets, securing competitive advantage in the information economy (Oxford, 1998). The preface carries the saddest sentence(x2) dedicated to the art of reading, ever encountered:

"The decision to read a book, any book, is an exercise in cost-benefit analysis, usually conducted under conditions of uncertainty. The prospective reader must try and assess at the outset what kind of return on his or her efforts are likely to be on offer".

This is a seed of the plant that sheds poverty on the concept and experience of our times.

What else can I say? then spit and turn away.