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Most non-fiction has a recursive introduction, body, conclusion structure. The nature of the structure varies a little from author to author, but can be identif
by aahortwwy 6y ago
Most non-fiction has a recursive introduction, body, conclusion structure. The nature of the structure varies a little from author to author, but can be identified pretty quickly. In pop non-fiction (and especially in business/management/productivity non-fiction) at a certain depth in the tree the body will be entirely filler and can be skipped wholesale. This is how I "read" most non-fiction now: first and last paragraph of each chapter (or section), first sentence of each paragraph in between, if something strikes me as particularly interesting or unintuitive I'll backtrack and read the full paragraphs before and after. Once I've done a first pass like this I'll decide whether I want to go back and read the full thing word-for-word. Typically the answer is "no."
- cstejerean 6y agoI need a service to summarize pop non-fiction books in some similar way, cut out all the bullshit and leave the perhaps blog length substance and list of references. I can’t stand where a good 1/3 to 1/2 of the book is spent on trying to convince me to read the book, extolling the benefits I’ll get from reading it. I don’t need to be sold on it, I already wasted the money for the book, now all I want to do is avoid also wasting time on filler.
- andrewingram 6y agoThat’s what Blinkist is, isn’t it?
- Axsuul 6y agoDerek Sivers has good summaries on some of these: https://sive.rs/book https://sive.rs/book
- chubot 6y agoI've never actually used this, but I remember the story from a few days ago from a guy who's doing exactly that? https://durmonski.com/ https://durmonski.com/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24469292 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24469292 If you use it, tell us how it is :)
- jfim 6y agoI used getabstract[0] in the past, where they give you a five page summary of the entire book. After reading a lot of them though, you start realizing a lot of business books are rather full of fluff. [0] https://www.getabstract.com/en/ https://www.getabstract.com/en/
- turtleturtle 6y agoI agree, there's a lot of fluff in business/productivity/self-improvement books. They're repetitive and often refer to the same decade old studies. I've also found that I need to be in the proper state of mind for a message to sink in. Maybe the regurgitation helps but I should reread a good book instead.