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Comment by azemetre | Hacker News Reader

Somewhat related but I find many nonfiction books could easily be condensed down an immense amount (talking 20 to 50% here). I don't know if it's me getting older or simply not wanting to put up with filler content anymore.

A book that does this terribly is the "The Checklist Manifesto." ~250 pages of filler when the original article was 20 pages, the exact same information but distilled down to its essence:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/12/10/the-checklist

I haven't read Atomic Habits, but I did get the audio book but after reading this summary (which is very good, and much appreciated) I probably won't give it a listen.

I'm curious if people feel the same way about other books?

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I actually feel the same, but I didn’t feel like that with Atomic Habits. The way the author introduces the concepts step by step is pretty interesting and the personal story was kind of motivating for me. I actually went through the audio book first and then bought a physical copy. But I guess that is totally up to personal taste, you definitely won’t miss any crucial information by relying on summaries.

For many non fiction titles Blinkst (or similar services) offer a perfectly good summary of the important content. I get that some people have moral issues since the author is not compensated for his work, but I think buying copies of books where you found the summary helpful is a gold compromise.

The "filler" may be just that, but I think it helps give a reader time to connect the material to their own experiences. I find that as I read a book, my mind drifts away from the material and to my own memories or goals and then back again. It also may be that authors have to say the same thing in several ways, many of which may not resonate with you, but would for another.

Let's consider an axis across books that are terse (maybe not even a book but an article, summary or list) and books that are more verbose (stories, examples, exercises).

Allow a second axis for quality, and only consider the best. If you think a book is padded or leaves out important details, then ignore it for our comparison.

Shorter and longer books are no better or worse (in this comparison, we removed that component above). So what are they?

The right length for a book is between the reader and the topic. It's not inherent to the topic or about the author and the topic. It's between the reader and the topic.

Longer books have a lower density of insights, and take up more time, but there's more to latch onto. This is essential if you need it and a waste if you don't.

Imagine a 50 year old football coach looking to learn from a new perspective. He could read incredibly dense coaching advice and it would land well. He has a whole career to relate to the book. He can come up with examples proving or disproving claims. He's well served by the short book.

Imagine a 20 year old who wants to become a football coach. He has a little experience, having assisted another coach one summer. Advice that is too dense may slip past him. There's not as much experience to latch onto*. He'd be better served by a longer book. More stories, examples and exercises.

You can expand or contract a book on your own to match your needs. If you were going add some exercises to the end of this chapter, what would they be? Do them if it seems valuable. What's a story that would illustrate this example? Skim the book to make it shorter. Start a reading group to make it longer.

The best authors help you with this. How To Solve It has a two-page summary of the whole book. That summary can be reduced down to just four steps. You get three levels to match.

* On the other hand, younger people seem better at learning things without reference. Older people have more experience, but seem to need that experience. I think this is why learning entirely new things generally gets harder as people get older.

I had come across a book where the author had divided chapters into two categories, i) Regular chapters and ii) Sidebar chapters. This book was about building something with a particular framework.

Regular chapters were about the topic itself. And sidebar chapters explained what's going on with the framework behind the scene.

The first time when I read the book I skipped the sidebar chapters and later once I had some experience with that framework I went through the sidebar chapters.

So, yeah I also believe that "The right length for a book is between the reader and the topic." And wish to see more topics/technologies covered in that manner.

I find this very insightful, thanks for sharing!

> Shorter and longer books are no better or worse (in this comparison, we removed that component above).

This is kind of begging the question because between the original setup and this statement, we're assuming the two axes are orthogonal whereas I'd wager they're not.

I get what you mean, but I think there’s a slight difference. I kinda skipped ahead here, but you can phrase it as more of a question.

If we create an axis, and then say “let’s just only focus on the really good ones” is there still any spread on the axis? If not, that axis is a subset of “good ones”. If there is, then we have some other axis to think about.

Extreme example, but if we’re talking about creatine (a nutritional supplement) and we considered the axis of purity and then only the good ones, there wouldn’t be a large range. At least to me, I don’t think there’s any creatine that’s both super high quality and less than 99% purity.

Not the case for books. I can think of great short ones and long ones. And the point of me constraining things this way is to avoid the “a book isn’t good if it’s too long” or “I once read a book that was long and bad” which just isn’t super useful.

Don’t need to keep things isolated though! I’d certainly rather have the average book be half as long versus twice as long. So there’s a trend there, at least for me.

>A book that does this terribly is the "The Checklist Manifesto." ~250 pages of filler when the original article was 20 pages

I read this book earlier this year and quite enjoyed it. The main idea could undoubtedly be written in even less than the 20 pages (referring to the original article).

What made this book super interesting were all the deep-dives into how complexity is managed in aviation (his visit to Seattle/SEATAC airport), construction (the myriad complexities in managing construction of a high rise), and the author's main field (healthcare). I found the various stories fascinating on reducing malpractice rates/preventing overworked professionals from carrying out the wrong procedure on a patient.

What I appreciated about this book is, it's not so much as the author saying, "Hey... here's a silver bullet for managing complexity". Instead, it's these semi or psuedo case studies of how problems in the real world have been solved using checklists. One of my key take aways (which I also happened to learn at my job) was that "Simple solutions scale."

> I'm curious if people feel the same way about other books?

Yes, most business book fit this pattern. There are services like https://www.summary.com/ that provide similar summaries for business books.

A book I generally like and agree with, David Graeber's Bullshit Jobs, I find reads better as his original essay. I suspect many books get made this way where content originally starts as a good essay or blog post, but then to fit the requirements of book media, need to be blown up, at costs in time for both the author and audience (& resources for dead trees+transport+storage, if in print).

It's ironic that the very need to bulk books out with filler material is a good example of just such a job!

I chime with this sentiment. The biggest issue in non-fiction books that I have is this - lack of a progress indicator. If it's a biography or an autobiography for example - I intuitively know the progress and this builds some sort of a curiosity to complete the book. In fiction, this is simulated by the story telling. You are almost always eager to find out what next.

In non fiction however, the lack of progress indicator combined with fillers totally takes away the what next phenomenon. On top of this, most non-fiction books try to convey the core of the meaning in repetitive language. Probably there is some science to this. The more you find repeated words sprinkled across, the more they tend to stick in your head. Apparently something that advertisers and marketers use all the time. So may be that's what drives this repetition and filler materials. I've seen this pattern in quite a few non-fiction books. Hooked, Deep Work, Grit etc.

Which is why I think, it's incredibly hard to pick a reading habit if you start with non fiction books. Also I don't think developing a reading habit with fiction will lead to a non fiction reading habit. Personal anecdote, I used to devour fiction as a teenager and in my early 20s. I remember reading Partner by John Grisham in one sitting, without even getting up to eat. Now I can hardly muster the energy to finish a book. I mean, I can but it's no longer that easy.

Yes absolutely, I find even the best non fiction books tend to be about 10% core ideas and insights and 90% allegory and metaphor reinforcing those ideas. Bad non fiction is more of a 1/99 split aha.

With good nonfiction books, it isn’t filler but detail, but you rarely find these on best seller lists. There is a spectrum between pop bs and academic treatise and the sales numbers trend towards the former.

I think I’ve observed the problem getting worse over the years where there is more popular garbage which gets far more attention. People have sort of learned how to optimize and market this kind of book for a broad audience.

It would be nice if there were a marker for pamphlets or books the length of chapters, which is what many things really should be.

It highly depends on the book! A lot of these types of books are simple lessons with a LOT of fillers. IMO they are bad books. Most often, an author has a lot of things to say in their first book, but much fewer things to say in subsequent books, so first books are always a good bet.

For example, “the subtle art of not giving a fuck” is mostly fillers, but books from robert greene or malcolm gladwell are always filled with interesting stories that don’t feel like fillers.

The marketing folks think (probably correctly, they tend to be quite data-driven) that consumers don't want to pay $10 for a pamphlet, no matter how good is the information therein.

"The subtle art..." is one of the first books I think of re: filler, too, but I do think the filler can have value as a way to spend more time with a valuable idea. Many of these books contain some valuable idea that could have been completely explained in a couple of paragraphs, but then you wouldn't have a built-in way to spend a couple of hours with the topic to give it time to get a little deeper into your psyche.

In a way it's equivalent to packaging a small item in a larger box to make it easier to keep track of. Wasteful on the surface, but there's an undeniable value to it that would be hard to achieve more efficiently.

That's a great way of putting things with your explanations.

> For example, “the subtle art of not giving a fuck” is mostly fillers

A meta-lesson from the author perhaps, demonstrating his art.

Depends on the nonfiction but lately I’ve been gearing towards audio format for these kinds of books rather than reading a physical copy. Since a lot of the material follows a repetitive format with lots of examples, getting the main idea across doesn’t require hard focus studying mode. Of course it depends heavily on the book. I wouldn’t listen to Kant’s Critique on an audiobook personally.

I think most self-development and business process books break down as roughly 10% actual content, 30% description to make sure you understand, and 60% descriptions of implementation to show how it works in different circumstances and help you internalize the main points.

Fiction books could likely be compressed the same way, but what's the fun in that? Non-fiction books shouldn't necassarily aim for being as concise as possible, there's value in a more enduring lecture even if the core content is the same, imo.

For books like Atomic Habits in particular, I enjoyed the length, as it allowed me to read that book for a longer period of time, and practice what it was teaching (which lead to habit development). Had been a 50 word tweet, I would've never bothered - but it being interspersed with motivational tales and other filler, I found it far more effective in actually getting me practicing what it taught.

Fiction books are something to savor. Nonfiction books are a necessary evil needed to get to an understanding.

I don’t need 30 made up fake sounding anecdotes to understand a principle. I can tell when someone is making shit up to prove a preconceived conclusion and to sound more convincing. Also I’m a slow reader and get annoyed easily.

I find interviews with writers pitching their book a good example of acceptable information density.

I totally agree. I think that business and self help books are the worst offenders for this: lots of potentially embellished, or plain made up “stories” to wade through, when just getting to the point would work better for me.

Different people learn differently, maybe? The great truths in life boil down to a few sentences (ex: "just do it"). If someone writes a book about that truth, are they wasting your time? Maybe. But there are other people who need to hear the story to learn from that grain of truth.

I've definitely read books that were way too long and full of filler content. But I've also scrolled through tweet-sized brilliant insights that I forgot the next minute.

In my opinion, Atomic Habits was not a filler book (I also listened to it on audiobook), but as always, YMMV.

If you've scrolled through tweet-sized brilliant insights and forgot them the next minute then maybe they weren't that brilliant to begin with? Or maybe you have a habit of mindlessly scrolling which you need to get out of. In any case, I find it hard to believe that people would prefer to read 200 pages which could be condensed down to a single sentence.

I think it comes down to individual learning style. Here [1] is James Clear tweeting a 3-sentence summary of his book. These ideas totally impacted the way I operate and helped me achieve a lot more than I would have on my own. But I needed to read the book to implement these tactics. If I only read the tweet, I don't think it would have had any long-term impact on me.

I agree that being wordy can be a waste of time! And I agree that many business books blow up small ideas into large books. I also think that sometimes expanding on an impactful insight can help you teach it better.

[1] https://twitter.com/JamesClear/status/1477686252333903877

There are wiki summaries of most self-help books that have basically the same amount of information. The only issue is a moral one - you're not compensating the author for their advice.

I'd rather not promote a business model of bloating 10-20 pages of information into 200-300 pages to justify selling a book.

It's a rough problem, though.

Let's consider that writing a book, in terms of typing, doesn't take that long. However, the perception of value is proportional to the size of the book: are you going to pay for 10-20 pages of information?

Now, let's consider the cost of researching that information. In some cases, it can be the output of years of doctoral research. In others, it's "only" six months of dedicated research. That's six months to research an idea, find evidence, challenge it with alternative explanations, test its efficacy, and determine the best way to present that information. (We won't even talk of the issues of marketing and the other parts of a book that don't involve writing it.)

That is, you need to put together 600 pages of research. You can then distill it into 200 pages or 20 pages. If you distill it into 20 pages, people will think it is less valuable. That is, you spend more time and get less out of it.

(It's something I struggle with. I am part way into research that could increase the productivity of non-great (that is, average or worse) developers 5-25%. The core idea can be explained in 5 pages. The extended idea takes 20. However, it's currently a hypothesis and doing the work to prove it out is estimated at 3-4 months of solid work.

How would I present that information? I can say it wouldn't be a 20 page article or blog post because it's not monetizable. So, how do you change that business model?

> So, how do you change that business model?

Short books for solving a problem that readers have, long books for entertainment.

People will absolutely pay good money (thousands) for a 20 page pdf that solves a painful problem. But they’ll fidget and squirm at the prospect of $20 for 300 pages of edutainment.

I feel exactly the way you described. And considering that I'm on a self-improvement track and have a few books like this to read, adding the day to day life (job, family, other skills, etc) to the mix makes me wonder what's the best way to ingurgitate 250 pages or 11 hours-long audio. Especially when you quickly notice the (almost) same thing is being repeated over and over.

Summaries like this one are a godsend, I'll look for the same for other similar books.

There's a service I tried once called blinkist.com where they have a large library of books that they condense by summarizing them into a smaller package. As well, most books also come as audiobooks. I used it but found it was hard to come away feeling you had absorbed much from the books when they had been shortened the way they were. But yes, definitely other people feel the same way you do.

Popular books are probably having a lot of fillers (like a good deal of Anime).

My experience with not so popular book is very different. "The democracy in America", "India After Gandhi", "Spin and other turns", "A corner of a foreign field", "The idea of natural inequality and other essays", "Scaling" are a few books that I really wish were longer.

I think that only matters if you read the book in a day. I read books like this over a month, so filler helps remeber what I read.

Not just “getting older” but I’m sure you read a lot of other books of similar topics or genre. I find most books to share very similar ideas and topics narrated in different ways.

Reading more and more books will keep you prepared for the deja vu that happens when reading future books.

Now, I, either read faster till I hit something different or skip ahead.

Fwiw there are apps like 12min and Blinkist which provide condensed audio summaries of various books.

My favourite example of this is "Essentialism", which has so much filler that really (if fully following its own philosophy) could easily have been less than 5 pages in total.

All self-help books can be condensed to a few pages. 5 pages is probably on the high end.

I am an avid notetaker and most books I have read, I can summarize in less than a page, sometimes half a page. I do try to condense though, so 3 pages is probably realistic.

Agree 100%, I found the Steve jobs biography too unnecessarily long to listen to on Audible.

I think it’s because if it’s a larger or longer book the author can charge more, but I hate that.

I highly recommend listening to the whole book. The stories themselves are quite motivational (IMHO).

Many nonfiction books could be shorter.

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