4 ms·

My experience is that books come in two forms: ones that can be summarized by a blog post (e.g. any Malcolm Gladwell book) and those that contain content of irr

by pontus 6y ago

My experience is that books come in two forms: ones that can be summarized by a blog post (e.g. any Malcolm Gladwell book) and those that contain content of irreducible complexity (e.g. history books or textbooks). I usually get bored with the first type of book because it just rehashes the same thing over and over again. So, when you choose book vs article, I think this distinction should be part of the thought process. Basically, if you do give up a blog post or article in favor of a book, make sure you're getting the right bang for you buck and are not just re-reading the same idea over and over again.

doc_gunthrop 6y ago
It's not uncommon for those types of books (as you mentioned, for example, Malcolm Gladwell) to come into being as a result of a series of blog posts. A couple examples are Cal Newport and Mark Manson. Their books aren't bad, but they could be reduced to probably 1/3 of their actual length without much loss of insight.
- mathnmusic 6y ago
  Blinkist and similar tools are a good enough solution for this. But those are locked up behind a paywall. I've been importing links to book summaries (along with authors' TED talks, podcasts etc) in LearnAwesome.org (my open-source project) so that when looking up a book, user can easily discover summaries,interviews,talks covering the same ideas in a more preferable format.
gumby 6y ago
Business books — even the insightful ones — are typically only 2-3 pages long (there a few, very few, exceptions). But that can’t sell at the airport so they are padded out like washing powder.
- ghaff 6y ago
  In all fairness, examples and context usually would push them out past magazine length. (It's also true that, based on the complaints here about things like recipe embellishments, I'm probably more tolerant than some.) That said, many/most are padded out. In general, you can't publish a book unless it's 250 pages or so. The economics for publishers apparently just don't work out. Fairly or not, a lot of people at least subconsciously buy by the pound. They're not going to pay $20 for a 50 page book in general.
- _huayra_ 6y ago
  Some of these can be worth the squeeze / time (e.g. stuff from Mark Manson imo), but the litmus test I use is whether the author trying to do any one (or more of the following): * "inspire" me with useless stories from other people, i.e. stuff that isn't anything beyond "wow amazing feat!" with no practical utility. These are most of the trash pop-biz or pop-psych books that talk about the marshmallow experiment for the Nth time... * use their book to get speaking engagements (e.g. by checking their website) * does the book contain a goofy diagram to abstractly illustrate their point in a bass-ackwards way? (The Conjoined Triangles of Six-Sigma Success!)
gregmac 6y ago
I've read too many of the first that lately it has killed most of my motivation to read any non-fiction books (the last couple I started, I just never finished because essentially I got bored). I enjoy reading (and still read fiction), and I want to have that motivation, but I just can't seem to muster it. This includes books that have good reviews, because apparently a lot of people don't seem to mind. It just seems like there's a lot of people writing books because it's "the thing to do" and probably makes more money than the couple blog posts or long article that would have been a better format. Anyone else experience this, and how did you get past it?
- benjaminogles 6y ago
  I experienced the same thing. Waiting for recommendations from similarly minded people helped me get past it. I didn't read any non-fiction for a long time before I was given a book as a gift [0] that was really good. Since then, I have received a few other recommendations that I enjoyed [1-2]. [0] Artificial Intelligence by Melanie Mitchell [1] Algorithms to Live By by Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths [2] The Theoretical Minimum Series by Leonard Susskind
- infinityplus1 6y ago
  You are overthinking this. Some people just like reading those books and you don't. It's personal preference. Just try reading new genres you haven't given a chance before and maybe you will find something interesting.
- edjrage 6y ago
  Honestly, you've already identified the problem (reading books of the "first kind"), so you know what to do. Stop picking up books just because they're best sellers. That would be a great start.
  - bordercases 6y ago
    You could take it a step further and read academic reviews, which are about the size of a book chapter but are otherwise meant to be self-contained pieces of writing on a topic.
pontus 6y ago
I'd like it if the trend became to write business books as a collection of essays rather than around a single topic. I'm sort of imagining Paul Graham's essays bound into a book or something similar. That way it's not unnecessarily verbose, but still long enough to warrant putting into a book.
- grenoire 6y ago
  I love essay compilations, the latest one I read was Umberto Eco's Chronicles of a Liquid Society. A compilation of his columns in l’Espresso magazine. Such a good format, doesn't waste any space in his writing whatsoever (that's Eco and the format). I would really appreciate more of this kind, any commenters here have suggestions?
omosubi 6y ago
I'm a big fan of the adage to not read anything younger than 10/20/30 years old. by definition most books are mediocre, especially new ones, and only reading stuff older than a certain age helps filter out the crap. same goes with blog posts to a certain extent - there are a number of shorter works that are constantly posted on HN (http://jsomers.net/hn/ http://jsomers.net/hn/) and many of them are worth reading. though tbh I read a lot of articles all over the internet from any time. blame it on lack of discipline
- PartiallyTyped 6y ago
  Hah, this is exploiting the old, 'back in my day music was good, unlike whatever you are listening to now'. In other words, you let everyone else filter for you.
  - bordercases 6y ago
    Or: Lindy Effect, survivorship bias, some kind of incentive that selects for quality over time, etc. Music is almost purely for entertainment and not for information so tastes can afford to be variable. And books are published on all sorts of topics so even despite this, among old books you can find weird things that disagree with each other.
    - PartiallyTyped 6y ago
      > And books are published on all sorts of topics so even despite this, among old books you can find weird things that disagree with each other. This is recursive and implies a decrease in diversity over time, starting from enormously high and reaching abysmally small. But I am fairly certain that it doesn't hold. > among old books you can find weird things that disagree with each other. I fail to see what makes old books capable of disagreeing with each other and recent releases incapable. At some point new releases become old and therefore they suddenly attain the ability to disagree with each other? I fail to see the difference between music and books tbh. Whatever remains popular has, as you said, some property or quality that helps preserve it in memory.
vizer20 6y ago
I listen to audiobooks, it helps to filter boring books. And after listening to the audiobook If I feel that I missed a lot I can read a regular book. There is a great book "how to read a book" by Mortimer J. Adler. It teaches to filter books and understand if it worth reading
- kostarelo 6y ago
  Hehe I read that and once I got the gist from the first two chapters, I filtered it and stopped reading it.

by pontus 6y ago

doc_gunthrop 6y ago

It's not uncommon for those types of books (as you mentioned, for example, Malcolm Gladwell) to come into being as a result of a series of blog posts. A couple examples are Cal Newport and Mark Manson. Their books aren't bad, but they could be reduced to probably 1/3 of their actual length without much loss of insight.

mathnmusic 6y ago
Blinkist and similar tools are a good enough solution for this. But those are locked up behind a paywall. I've been importing links to book summaries (along with authors' TED talks, podcasts etc) in LearnAwesome.org (my open-source project) so that when looking up a book, user can easily discover summaries,interviews,talks covering the same ideas in a more preferable format.

gumby 6y ago

Business books — even the insightful ones — are typically only 2-3 pages long (there a few, very few, exceptions). But that can’t sell at the airport so they are padded out like washing powder.

ghaff 6y ago
In all fairness, examples and context usually would push them out past magazine length. (It's also true that, based on the complaints here about things like recipe embellishments, I'm probably more tolerant than some.) That said, many/most are padded out. In general, you can't publish a book unless it's 250 pages or so. The economics for publishers apparently just don't work out. Fairly or not, a lot of people at least subconsciously buy by the pound. They're not going to pay $20 for a 50 page book in general.
_huayra_ 6y ago
Some of these can be worth the squeeze / time (e.g. stuff from Mark Manson imo), but the litmus test I use is whether the author trying to do any one (or more of the following): * "inspire" me with useless stories from other people, i.e. stuff that isn't anything beyond "wow amazing feat!" with no practical utility. These are most of the trash pop-biz or pop-psych books that talk about the marshmallow experiment for the Nth time... * use their book to get speaking engagements (e.g. by checking their website) * does the book contain a goofy diagram to abstractly illustrate their point in a bass-ackwards way? (The Conjoined Triangles of Six-Sigma Success!)

gregmac 6y ago

I've read too many of the first that lately it has killed most of my motivation to read any non-fiction books (the last couple I started, I just never finished because essentially I got bored). I enjoy reading (and still read fiction), and I want to have that motivation, but I just can't seem to muster it. This includes books that have good reviews, because apparently a lot of people don't seem to mind. It just seems like there's a lot of people writing books because it's "the thing to do" and probably makes more money than the couple blog posts or long article that would have been a better format. Anyone else experience this, and how did you get past it?

benjaminogles 6y ago
I experienced the same thing. Waiting for recommendations from similarly minded people helped me get past it. I didn't read any non-fiction for a long time before I was given a book as a gift [0] that was really good. Since then, I have received a few other recommendations that I enjoyed [1-2]. [0] Artificial Intelligence by Melanie Mitchell [1] Algorithms to Live By by Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths [2] The Theoretical Minimum Series by Leonard Susskind
infinityplus1 6y ago
You are overthinking this. Some people just like reading those books and you don't. It's personal preference. Just try reading new genres you haven't given a chance before and maybe you will find something interesting.
edjrage 6y ago
Honestly, you've already identified the problem (reading books of the "first kind"), so you know what to do. Stop picking up books just because they're best sellers. That would be a great start.
- bordercases 6y ago
  You could take it a step further and read academic reviews, which are about the size of a book chapter but are otherwise meant to be self-contained pieces of writing on a topic.

pontus 6y ago

I'd like it if the trend became to write business books as a collection of essays rather than around a single topic. I'm sort of imagining Paul Graham's essays bound into a book or something similar. That way it's not unnecessarily verbose, but still long enough to warrant putting into a book.

grenoire 6y ago
I love essay compilations, the latest one I read was Umberto Eco's Chronicles of a Liquid Society. A compilation of his columns in l’Espresso magazine. Such a good format, doesn't waste any space in his writing whatsoever (that's Eco and the format). I would really appreciate more of this kind, any commenters here have suggestions?

omosubi 6y ago

I'm a big fan of the adage to not read anything younger than 10/20/30 years old. by definition most books are mediocre, especially new ones, and only reading stuff older than a certain age helps filter out the crap. same goes with blog posts to a certain extent - there are a number of shorter works that are constantly posted on HN (http://jsomers.net/hn/ http://jsomers.net/hn/) and many of them are worth reading. though tbh I read a lot of articles all over the internet from any time. blame it on lack of discipline

PartiallyTyped 6y ago
Hah, this is exploiting the old, 'back in my day music was good, unlike whatever you are listening to now'. In other words, you let everyone else filter for you.
- bordercases 6y ago
  Or: Lindy Effect, survivorship bias, some kind of incentive that selects for quality over time, etc. Music is almost purely for entertainment and not for information so tastes can afford to be variable. And books are published on all sorts of topics so even despite this, among old books you can find weird things that disagree with each other.
  - PartiallyTyped 6y ago
    > And books are published on all sorts of topics so even despite this, among old books you can find weird things that disagree with each other. This is recursive and implies a decrease in diversity over time, starting from enormously high and reaching abysmally small. But I am fairly certain that it doesn't hold. > among old books you can find weird things that disagree with each other. I fail to see what makes old books capable of disagreeing with each other and recent releases incapable. At some point new releases become old and therefore they suddenly attain the ability to disagree with each other? I fail to see the difference between music and books tbh. Whatever remains popular has, as you said, some property or quality that helps preserve it in memory.

vizer20 6y ago

I listen to audiobooks, it helps to filter boring books. And after listening to the audiobook If I feel that I missed a lot I can read a regular book. There is a great book "how to read a book" by Mortimer J. Adler. It teaches to filter books and understand if it worth reading

kostarelo 6y ago
Hehe I read that and once I got the gist from the first two chapters, I filtered it and stopped reading it.