SarahC comments on Rational Reading: Thoughts On Prioritizing Books - Less Wrong

27 Post author: patrissimo 27 March 2011 07:54PM

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Comment author: [deleted] 29 March 2011 03:18:57AM 0 points [-]

Some books deserve "Cliffs notes" treatment, being a relatively simple thesis padded out into a book. This especially true of a lot of the self-help and business literature. I won't hesitate to look for summaries of books which I think contain valuable ideas but which I suspect are mostly padding.

Another heuristic in that form: in my experience, books written by journalists often have about as much substance as one long-form article. There are exceptions. Stanley Karnow's Vietnam was the most informative history book I've ever read; but then again, he was an old-school reporter.