<story><title>Intellectual Loneliness</title><url>https://perell.com/note/intellectual-loneliness/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bloodyplonker22</author><text>The problem with books is that, while there are a lot of good books with good content, 5% of it is good content while 95% is filler material to get the book to a certain amount of pages in order to sell it.</text></item><item><author>WalterBright</author><text>Reading the &lt;i&gt;right&lt;/i&gt; books is great. 95% of published books are garbage (much like 95% of TV). I&amp;#x27;ve read an awful lot of books, and finally realized that very few books are worth the time to read.</text></item><item><author>tibbar</author><text>I took a ten year break from reading books. Instead I programmed, read blog posts, followed the news, and had a few good talks with friends here and there.&lt;p&gt;When I started reading again my world caught on fire. A good book is vastly, unimaginably better than doom scrolling, and the wealth of ideas and history and inspiration that starts to accumulate as you read more is life changing. For example, I learned how to properly build habits, how my childhood in a cult came about and what other people who left have done to come to terms with it, and endless interesting facts about lifelong hobbies and interests. Reading is great.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>marcusbuffett</author><text>I read a ton and this is my #1 complaint about nonfiction (and sometimes fiction too). I’ve read two books recently that broke this pattern (replacing guilt by Nate Soared, and hell yeah or no by Derek Sivers). It was a huge breath of fresh air, to not find myself skimming over the 32nd time the author feels the need to restate the premise of the book in only slightly different terms. Most authors just don’t have 200 pages of insight into whatever they’re writing about; I’m not sure why exactly they all feel the need to write 200-300 pages anyway.&lt;p&gt;I’m not sure where the disconnect lies, between the people that view this as a huge problem with nonfiction and the rest. I don’t think it’s book selection, because I’ll often read a book where I felt the last half was 90% rehashing, and in the reviews no one else will mention that the author ran out of interesting things to say halfway through.</text></comment>
<story><title>Intellectual Loneliness</title><url>https://perell.com/note/intellectual-loneliness/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bloodyplonker22</author><text>The problem with books is that, while there are a lot of good books with good content, 5% of it is good content while 95% is filler material to get the book to a certain amount of pages in order to sell it.</text></item><item><author>WalterBright</author><text>Reading the &lt;i&gt;right&lt;/i&gt; books is great. 95% of published books are garbage (much like 95% of TV). I&amp;#x27;ve read an awful lot of books, and finally realized that very few books are worth the time to read.</text></item><item><author>tibbar</author><text>I took a ten year break from reading books. Instead I programmed, read blog posts, followed the news, and had a few good talks with friends here and there.&lt;p&gt;When I started reading again my world caught on fire. A good book is vastly, unimaginably better than doom scrolling, and the wealth of ideas and history and inspiration that starts to accumulate as you read more is life changing. For example, I learned how to properly build habits, how my childhood in a cult came about and what other people who left have done to come to terms with it, and endless interesting facts about lifelong hobbies and interests. Reading is great.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>sjtindell</author><text>I find this true for some of the recent horde of nonfiction books with names like “numb: the astounding new science of how your leg falls asleep”. Their topic is usually fascinating, but the content is full of random stories, speculation, and drawn out conclusions.</text></comment>