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Does anyone here actually look at the NYT Best Sellers List to pick their reading material? I have always treated it more as a Never-Read-This List. Frankly an

Does anyone here actually look at the NYT Best Sellers List to pick their reading material? I have always treated it more as a Never-Read-This List. Frankly anything that sells that well is probably some empty self-help drivel or the equivalent to a blockbuster movie, neither of which will ever change your life or say anything insightful. Of course, I'm also the guy that is waiting until the Harry Potter fad is dead and gone before I even start reading those books. Mainly because I hate fanboys, and especially pop culture fanboys.

mangodrunk 19y ago
Then you should enjoy the NYT Best Sellers List because they take out that crap, as mentioned by the article. I think the article raises some good points, that it is sort of arbitrary in how they draw the line between what is accepted and what isn't. If they didn't, we would see only popular culture crap like Harry Potter.
jamiequint 19y ago
Really?! So you would not have read The Tipping Point, The World is Flat, How to Win Friends and Influence People, and other seminal business works. You would have missed some great memoirs, books about current leaders that might be useful in making valuable decisions on who to elect to lead our country, and a hell of a lot of well written history; all for the sake of being different.
- davidw 19y ago
  <plug plug plug> Maybe he would have got the gist of some of them from Squeezed Books. Big Idea books are often padded a lot to turn a 10 page idea into a book. </plug plug plug>
  - jamiequint 19y ago
    I believe in reading the whole books because when you read an entire book you remember the gist of it even weeks or months later, but if you read a summary (unless you really memorize it) you hardly remember much of anything after a few weeks.
    - davidw 19y ago
      That's an interesting observation, and not something I'd thought of. My hope with the site is to balance out the 'lesser involvement' that comes with not buying and reading a book, with discussions of books so that people can discuss the application and nuances of the Big Idea, especially as it applies to their own lives. I'm not getting much traction with that though, so far.
      - jamiequint 19y ago
        I can see how that would be valuable in some cases.
- Xichekolas 19y ago
  I have in fact never read any of these, and have honestly only heard of The World is Flat (by way of the entire shelf at Border's once dedicated to it). I'm not saying I would never read them however. In fact, I just added How to Win Friends and Influence People to my list, after several recommendations I saw for it here as well as from a friend. What I am saying is that roughly all books start at zero in my mind, and get positive points whenever they are recommended to me by people I know or respect. A listing on the NYT list is like getting -5 points. (FWIW, Oprah's Book Club is more like -10.) I'm not saying everyone should choose their books like I do, but that is what works for me. I would like to say that any book that deals with current politics or current leaders is nothing more than thinly veiled marketing, and no one is missing out by not reading those. Real history has to be written after the fact, and I'm sure that when it is, I will enjoy it, but no book about a current candidate will be anything more than another campaign outlet. Edit: Oh and I almost forgot... everything I just said aside, I often do resist reading a book that I know I will enjoy just to be different (like Harry Potter, which I'm avoiding for another decade). It's not a crime to avoid the herd, and I'm sure everyone does it in their own way. It's hard to think for yourself, if you do not question authority (of the masses)... to paraphrase one of my favorite quotes.

mangodrunk 19y ago

Then you should enjoy the NYT Best Sellers List because they take out that crap, as mentioned by the article. I think the article raises some good points, that it is sort of arbitrary in how they draw the line between what is accepted and what isn't. If they didn't, we would see only popular culture crap like Harry Potter.

jamiequint 19y ago

Really?! So you would not have read The Tipping Point, The World is Flat, How to Win Friends and Influence People, and other seminal business works. You would have missed some great memoirs, books about current leaders that might be useful in making valuable decisions on who to elect to lead our country, and a hell of a lot of well written history; all for the sake of being different.

davidw 19y ago
<plug plug plug> Maybe he would have got the gist of some of them from Squeezed Books. Big Idea books are often padded a lot to turn a 10 page idea into a book. </plug plug plug>
- jamiequint 19y ago
  I believe in reading the whole books because when you read an entire book you remember the gist of it even weeks or months later, but if you read a summary (unless you really memorize it) you hardly remember much of anything after a few weeks.
  - davidw 19y ago
    That's an interesting observation, and not something I'd thought of. My hope with the site is to balance out the 'lesser involvement' that comes with not buying and reading a book, with discussions of books so that people can discuss the application and nuances of the Big Idea, especially as it applies to their own lives. I'm not getting much traction with that though, so far.
    - jamiequint 19y ago
      I can see how that would be valuable in some cases.
Xichekolas 19y ago
I have in fact never read any of these, and have honestly only heard of The World is Flat (by way of the entire shelf at Border's once dedicated to it). I'm not saying I would never read them however. In fact, I just added How to Win Friends and Influence People to my list, after several recommendations I saw for it here as well as from a friend. What I am saying is that roughly all books start at zero in my mind, and get positive points whenever they are recommended to me by people I know or respect. A listing on the NYT list is like getting -5 points. (FWIW, Oprah's Book Club is more like -10.) I'm not saying everyone should choose their books like I do, but that is what works for me. I would like to say that any book that deals with current politics or current leaders is nothing more than thinly veiled marketing, and no one is missing out by not reading those. Real history has to be written after the fact, and I'm sure that when it is, I will enjoy it, but no book about a current candidate will be anything more than another campaign outlet. Edit: Oh and I almost forgot... everything I just said aside, I often do resist reading a book that I know I will enjoy just to be different (like Harry Potter, which I'm avoiding for another decade). It's not a crime to avoid the herd, and I'm sure everyone does it in their own way. It's hard to think for yourself, if you do not question authority (of the masses)... to paraphrase one of my favorite quotes.