I read a lot of books, and let me tell you: there's quite a few that should've had an editor telling the author exactly that. On the other hand there are books

I read a lot of books, and let me tell you: there's quite a few that should've had an editor telling the author exactly that. On the other hand there are books that just have a lot to tell. That's fine. Take the words you need, but no more. Internet longreads tend to just have been made longer to be long. Their favourite strategy seems to be to just not talk about the subject, but about their journey of discovery and the journey of all the people they've encountered along the way, and about how they look, and how special they are. And then, finally, after they've explained the entire history since the fucking Big Bang, they'll talk about the subject for a few sentences. It always turns out to be unsatisfyingly banal and not worth the journey. Low information density is annoying.