3 ms·

I don't agree. I've not read the new one yet, but So Good They Can't Ignore You was brilliant. The 'fluff' was all the examples, and unlike many other writers

by ck425 7y ago

I don't agree. I've not read the new one yet, but So Good They Can't Ignore You was brilliant. The 'fluff' was all the examples, and unlike many other writers (Ryan Holiday and Robert Greene are particularly bad for this) he goes in-depth in his examples and references them going forward too. They're well thought out examples and not throw away anecdotes. Sure you could get the basic content from his blog but I genuinely think the books are better as they highlight the theory through good use cases. I also enjoy his deliberately provocative style, it's like a toned down MMM. That might not be for everyone but I find it entertaining.

rchaud 7y ago
Actually, I'd say you could get the content from a good book summary, and not the blogs, which also suffer from the same issue...50% content, 50% links to older blog posts on related topics. It's messy to consume content like that. The thing w/ these types of books are that because they're not focused on storytelling or character development, the word count doesn't have the kind of slack that a different genre like fiction would offer. These types of books would be better off as 100 page guides, but booksellers can't sell something that's not at least 300 pages. Pretty sure it wasn't Cal Newport's idea to fill the book with cruft to hit that minimum page count.