Reading books has to be one of the most overvalued activities known to man. The problem is that book authors are not incentivized to deliver "the gist". If all

Reading books has to be one of the most overvalued activities known to man. The problem is that book authors are not incentivized to deliver "the gist". If all the insights of a book, properly condensed, amount to no more than a pamphlet, people will give it a bad review. If instead a book has hundreds of pages, there mere act of giving it a "proper" critique becomes costly. Judging a book that you haven't read is frowned upon. Those who could be bothered to work their way through it, on the other hand, are less likely to be critical.