Godin is a blogger, which means that everything he writes is packaged in short, easy-to-digest morsels. This volume is no exception to that rule, but where this book differs from most of his marketing tomes is that he has made little effort to stick to a central theme and instead has packaged a number of blogs in alphabetical order. Thus, you're never sure what you're about to read until you're about half way through it.

Aside from that negative, in my opinion, is the general challenge of reading blogs in a book format. While blogs online have a certain cache based on their immediacy, blogs in a book can seem or be seriously out of date by the time you read them. This was a significant challenge to my enjoyment of Small is the New Big.

It wasn't until I was about half way through the book, however, that I realized my mistake. If you expect to get anything out of Godin's book, you need to acknowledge up front that the specifics of the blog may be out of date but that the overarching theme or topic is just as relevant today.

For example, in places where he may have used Enron as an example of bad customer and employee management, simply insert AIG or one of the other mega-finance houses to bring the story up to date. The principle is the same: people who lie to everyone to maintain a facade of greatness, only to eventually collapse from the rot within.

Once I got that, I enjoyed the book a whole lot more. That being said, of the various volumes of Godin that I have read (Purple Cow, Free Prize Inside, Permission Marketing, Unleash the Ideavirus, Survival is not Enough), this was the least favourite to date. I guess I'm just old-fashioned and still need a central theme for my business books.