3 ms·
> Many non-fiction books are effectively a 'very good essay' in the first couple chapters, followed by N*100 pages of lower-quality expansion I wonder if an es
by twic 6y ago
> Many non-fiction books are effectively a 'very good essay' in the first couple chapters, followed by N*100 pages of lower-quality expansion
I wonder if an essay club, rather than a book club, would work. You pick something short enough that it's easy to read, but still with enough ideas in to talk about. You then have time to either dig into the text really deeply, or use it as a prompt for a largely unrelated but still interesting conversation, HN comments style.
- OkayPhysicist 6y agoI had a theology course at university like that. We got a list of 2-3 "suggested readings", of which any given student read 0-2. Then there was loosely structured time to discuss in small groups, then a more structured class discussion.
- sdenton4 6y agoYeah, maaaaaybe. My guess is you'd end up reading a lot of book chapters for the essay club. The problem I think is that the economics of writing books is much more author-friendly than writing longform articles. So by the time you put a shitpile of research into writing something /good/, you really should be writing a book. Even if the 'cream' of the content is about three chapters. And the rest of the deep dive is still worth it for many readers (and those who aren't reading the whole book for book club can still go back for the rest later, if they want to).