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Comment by OvidNaso | Hacker News Reader

Take my opinion with a grain of salt because I put this books down after only 100 pages or so, but it seemed to exemplify my main gripe with many/most popular science/non-fiction publications these days...padding. Many authors seem to have a great ~150 page thesis, but publishers push hard that best sellers are 400-600 pages.

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I recall someone commenting that most non-fiction books have only 15 minutes of true comment. The rest is commentary and persuasion.

I used to feel awful if I did t finish a book because the author created it with a certain vision. As I get older I've realized how limited my time is, and I am more content with a quick skim for many.

I would say this is true of a lot of non-technical, popular non-fiction. I would consider "The Art of Electronics" [1] one of the greatest pieces of non-fiction in the English language, but that sucker's dense.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Art-Electronics-Paul-Horowitz/dp/0521...

Yes. I think Gladwell was the target of the comment. :-)

that was my main problem with "The Lean Startup" too. it was really really hard to finish it when only 10% of the content was actionable (the rest anecdotal)

I often find myself reading about 30% of books like "The Lean Startup," and moving on. Not necessarily the first 30%, but overall. Understand the thesis, and move on.

I have yet to find a business book where this doesn't apply. I only finish the ones where I particularly like the writing style or the anecdotes.

Have you read "The hard thing about hard things"? I found it had very little padding and was loaded to the rim with valuable information.

It was worse in audiobook form.

I was stuck in a jury duty situation without any other materials (I had a library play away, my phone was dead, and reading materials were taken), and I still couldn't listen to that thing!

It's probably even worse than that. Ages ago [1] Philip Greenspun wrote about the gap between "the five-page magazine article, serving as filler among the ads [and] the book, with a minimum of 200 pages." For the most part surprisingly little has changed although that comment was made in 2009. There are some shorter form books these days, e.g. from O'Reilly. But if you want the gravitas that a book often conveys there are still a lot of forces pushing you toward 300+ pages.

[1] http://philip.greenspun.com/writing/changed-by-web-and-weblo...

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