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John_Maxwell_IV comments on Good books for incoming college students? - Less Wrong Discussion
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Comments (18)
Don't Shoot the Dog is one of those few popular nonfiction books I've read that seemed to pack a decent amount of novel info on to most of its pages. There's more to training people and animals than just what Lukeprog summarizes.
Scott Adams' self-help book received a glowing review on LW. I'm enjoying the book so far; it is also pretty info-dense, but a lot of the ideas were ones I had heard previously or come up with on my own (likely not true for most people).
Overall though, I think books are overrated. Many of them have about as much quality info as a good <20 minute TED talk or a solid 15-page blog post. I assume that's because authors are pressured to inflate whatever they're trying to say until it reaches at least "book length" (~100 pages).
This statement needs some qualification. A book like Thinking fast and slow is a dense exploration of new concept and worth every single page in it. Thinner books suffer from your criticism though, they are barely worth more than a couple of good blog posts.
Personally I am inclined to read and buy books with more than 300 pages, as the books longer than that are surprisingly information dense and shorter ones surprisingly empty.
I wonder how much insight can be pressed in ever less words until it becomes a tweet.