Most book reviews happen too soon.
We finish the last chapter, close the book, and immediately decide what we thought. That is useful for evaluating the reading experience. It is less useful for measuring what the book actually contributed to us.
Richard Foster distinguishes understanding from reflection. Wayne Cordeiro makes a related observation about experience: experience alone does not necessarily make us wiser; reflection is what can turn experience into insight. Those ideas make me wonder whether books need a similar second look.
What if I returned six weeks later and asked:
What can I remember without reopening the book?
What idea resurfaced on its own?
Did anything affect a decision, conversation, or practice?
What seemed profound at the time but has already faded?
Did something I almost overlooked become more important?
This creates a different kind of review. A book may have been enjoyable without becoming formative. Another may have felt slow or difficult while planting something that continues to grow.
That is one reason I want BBT to include revisits. “Worth carrying” should be allowed to mature. Recommendations should become stronger—or weaker—after experience answers back.
Maybe the question at the end of a book is not merely, Was it good?
Maybe the better question later is, What survived?
Source trail: Richard Foster, Celebration of Discipline; Wayne Cordeiro, Leading on Empty.