5 ms·
I find that most nonfiction books follow a common structure: * 1st third of the book: Lays out the basic ideas, gives several examples * 2nd third of the book
by cvwright 3y ago
I find that most nonfiction books follow a common structure:
* 1st third of the book: Lays out the basic ideas, gives several examples
* 2nd third of the book: More examples that repeat the themes from the 1st part
* 3rd third of the book: ??? I usually give up at this point
I sometimes wish that more books were like "The Mom Test" - just long enough to say what they need, even if that makes for a short book.
- voisin 3y agoBecause most nonfiction books are one, relatively small set of ideas (profound or not, novel or not) that could be concisely written as a few blog posts or a single long form article, but in order to monetize and build the author’s brand, get exaggerated into a full book. It is really painful and something I hope GPT will help the rest of us cut through in the future (“summarize the points. Dig into that point. What evidence is given? Etc etc etc” as a conversation rather than wasting 30 hours reading noise for a book)
- owisd 3y agoYou can just leverage the “second brain” crowd — for every vaguely well-known non-fiction book someone has written up a summary for themselves and posted it on their blog.
- smcin 3y agoSure, but be sure to check they're vaguely objective, not just shills, compensated reviewers or affiliates.
- ratg13 3y agoMost people don’t absorb concepts immediately with only a simple explanation. Unless you are reading a topic you are already familiar with, reinforcement of an idea helps you to examine a concept from different angles and to solidify what is being discussed. If everyone fully absorbed and understood everything they read, schooling could be completed years in advance.
- 1letterunixname 3y agoApart from CYOA, I think a hypertext "book" would be the most effective way to dynamically scale detail preferences without resorting to skimming or skipping. Some people want more or less evidence based on their level of skepticism or critical thinking, while others want more evidence to reinforce the soundness of their inferred position on a topic, especially if it's a topic unfamiliar to them. Other people are under time constraints and just want the key points and a brief presentation.
- olvy0 3y agoThat's exacerbating the original environmental problem, in addition to thick paper books, filled with filler material just to promote the author's brand, you now want to waste electricity on running an LLM that will give you a the short version? That's.... short sighted. This should be dealt with by pressuring the publishing industry not to inflate books and fill them with fluff. This could be done by not buying these kind of books, and publicly shaming publishers who engage in this behavior. It's easier in non fiction books since the amount of fluff in fiction books is a more subjective matter.
- CuriouslyC 3y agoExcept that a lot of people read these books for the entertainment value of the anecdotes, and a lot of people enjoy feeling self-important for having read long books.
- smcin 3y agoNot just self-important, but the anecdotes are designed to be bite-sized to be easily retellable, like the 2016 NYT Abraham Wald/ beware survivorship bias on graphing bulletholes on WWII airplanes viz which locations were more damaging. So you get a decade of "business nonfiction" bookstand fodder which is claims with high shock quality but often not relicable, mixed with anecdotes, to signal the reader's self-declared learnedness. Combine this with the long-tailed nature of the statistic "the average American only reads one book a year" and it's frightening. I think Scott Galloway said sales of his e-book are >10x more than his paper book. And during Covid lots of people got exposed for having fake bookshelf backdrops.
- mikhailfranco 3y agoThere was one Covid Zoom podcast (about economics?) with a middle-aged man sitting in front of a large set of bookshelves, housing row-upon-row of gnarly old books. The only recently-used book was lying flat on top of the other books. Can you read the title? https://pasteboard.co/imwZw8fcSpLy.png https://pasteboard.co/imwZw8fcSpLy.png
- 3y ago
- geodel 3y agoWell, life of most people on the earth is just same boring repetitions with few novel events. So I wonder what would people do with their ample amount of saved time thanks to ChatGPT. Perhaps writing another Javascript framework, launch new food delivery apps besides raging on social media.
- paulpauper 3y agoI sometimes wish that more books were like "The Mom Test" - just long enough to say what they need, even if that makes for a short book. most non fiction could be well-summarized as a lengthy blog post
- arrowsmith 3y agoI'd go further: many non-fiction books could be losslessly compressed into a tweet. (Looking at you, The Checklist Manifesto)
- yboris 3y agoReading a book, say 10 hours, is like a meditation on an idea: you get numerous examples of it and a variety ways of thinking about it. Our brains learn best when they encounter something often across time (spaced repetition). Reading a single tweet may summarize the book, but the chances of you recalling the idea in an appropriate situation is much lower than if you had spent hours on it.
- arrowsmith 3y agoI agree, and there are many books which are well worth the time it takes to read them. All I'm saying is that there are many other books which aren't.
- 1letterunixname 3y agoHAHAHA. :@D Challenge accepted. The right checklist organizes uniformity, success, and safety in almost every human endeavor. - @SomeGuyOnTheInterwebs
- arrowsmith 3y agoI'd go further: "Use checklists." - @AtulGawande There, now you don't need to read the book.
- Yodel0914 3y ago
- prionassembly 3y agoCounterexample: Gilles Deleuze's "Empiricism and Subjectivity".
- vundercind 3y agoMainly a business and self-help “airport book” problem. Sometimes pop-science.
- 1letterunixname 3y agoPerhaps nonfiction works could be ordered neatly such that the thesis and support material isn't buried, but arranged in a tiered detailed manner conducive to a "Choose Your Own Adventure"-like skipping of material. Short-form and long-form must find a way to coexist and be useful without critical compromise. It's not like everyone has or should need Cliff Notes or getAbstract.
- dionidium 3y agoI always think of this from Aaron Swartz: > But let’s say you can narrow it down to one good one, and you can find the time to read it. You plunk down an absurd $30 (of which, I’m told, less than $3 goes to the author) for a bulky hardcover and you quickly discover that the author doesn’t have all that much to say. But a book is a big thing, and they had to fill it all up, so the author padded it. There are several common techniques. > One is to repeat your point over and over, each time slightly differently. This is surprisingly popular. Writing a book on how code is law, an idea so simple it can fit in the book’s title? Just give example after example after example. > Another is to just fill the book with unnecessary detail. Arguing that the Bush administration is incompetent? Fill your book up with citation after citation. (Readers must love being hit over the head with evidence for a claim they’re already willing to believe.) > I have nothing against completeness, accuracy, or preciseness, but if you really want a broad audience to hear what you have to say, you’ve got to be short. Put the details, for the ten people who care about them, on your website. Then take the three pages you have left, and put them on your website too. Source: http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/001229 http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/001229
- stef25 3y agoSounds like the man was arguing against spending a wonderful afternoon sitting in the sun reading anecdotes about something you're interested in.
- BeFlatXIII 3y ago> 3rd third of the book: ??? I usually give up at this point History of science books thankfully stave off that final third until at least 80%. However, their final chapter or two universally manages to be a letdown. It's either wild optimistic speculation, hype for a theory that's debunked 5 years after publication, or a focus that accidentally happened to predict the course of science post-publication. The story is told in a tonally jarring manner compared to the tight narrative in the rest of the book. My #1 suspect for this disease is a desire to connect the content of the book to real life. Such attempts miss more often than they drive the point home, even if they're factually correct.
- geokon 3y agoCounter example: The selfish gene The last 20% shifts in tone and goes into speculating on a general framework for genetic selection outside of biological systems. Very speculative, interesting, and birthed the term meme
- BeFlatXIII 3y agoI haven't read that one, but your description makes it sound to be the exception that proves the rule.
- musiciangames 3y agoAs a sample of 1, it seems to me that this is particularly an issue with American non-fiction.
- lelanthran 3y agoWell there's a reason for that - consider it a form of spaced-repetition learning. The author's goal is to convey an idea to the reader. He breaks it up into small overlapping chunks and gradually doles out these small overlapping chunks over the course of the book, sometimes backtracking and repeating an idea with a different example, all accompanied by a compelling narrative. If he does his job well then the reader doesn't notice that spaced-repetition learning is happening because the supporting examples are entertaining enough to continue reading. In the worst case, the author gets the exact criticism that you are leveling. Honestly, if you had Mathematics books written like Thinking, Fast and Slow or Freakonomics you'd have a lot more students passing calculus.[1] So, here's a challenge for you - in your area of expertise (whatever that is), write down the chapters of a hypothetical book you would write to explain one or two foundational principles to an outsider (to that area). It's pretty hard to do. Then compare with best-selling non-fiction aimed at outsiders like Freakonomics, etc. I did this (chapter overview thing) and realised pretty quickly that I had planned a really boring book. [1] I read Thinking, Fast and Slow around 2011, and I read The Mom Test last year. Almost all of the sub-themes of the former is still in my memory. The only thing I remember of The Mom Test is that people will lie to you to protect your feelings.
- ngc248 3y agoYes, most nonfiction books should be pamphlets instead of books.
- robfitz 3y agoIt's all about that value-per-word ;)