[robax]

This comment hits the nail on the head for me. I’m mostly a non-fiction reader and so many authors dance around their point or reiterate it over and over. Robert Greene is the first offender to come to mind for me but I’m also reading Sapiens and feel the same there. If anyone has any low-fluff book recommendations I’d love to hear them!

[FabHK]

Counterpoint:

You only really grasp a point when you hear it many times, and see it applied (or even better apply it yourself).

There is this online service selling summarised versions of popular books. I’ve read many of those summaries, and undoubtedly the key points are all contained in there. But: you read it, and then you forget.

The complete book takes time to lay out the key points and arguments, puts them in context, explains various aspects, gives many examples, challenges you to apply them, and, yes, repeats them. And that’s what you need to actually take them on board. It’s a whole web of beliefs.

As an extreme example: you could give the basic definitions and axioms of, say, group theory on one page, and say “the rest follows”. No fluff. But somebody that’s only read that page has no idea about group theory. For that you need the book, with fluff.

[nine_k]

Reiterating and showing from different angles and in various contexts = good.

Not getting to the point, or giving relevant context and precursor ideas, while dwelling on unrelated subjects = fluff.

I like my non-fiction the way I like science articles: starting with a summary, and diving into all necessary details later.

[readcarefully]

Technical writing must be this way.

However using poetic language in writing that's trying to communicate scientific understanding to everyone, I find, is useful and appropriate. Look at Carl Sagan's popular writings, or some of Asimov's more science related works for good examples.

[gymshoes]

> There is this online service selling summarised versions of popular books.

It's blinkist

[FabHK]

The one I had in mind was getAbstract.

[Tycho]

NN Taleb’s books. He has said that books should surprise the reader every single page or else it’s not real writing.

[telltale123]

I read parts of a couple of Taleb’s books, Black Swan and Antifragile. There are a few original ideas in each and then they are reapplied again and again in different domains.

I often get how the applications go after reading the section titles, thus I think it can still be more concise. That said, the two books have much better signal-to-noise ratio than some high-brow journalistic pieces.

[DenisM]

I found the black swan to be 80% fluff. Still a worthwhile reading, though.

[nottorp]

Black Swan could have been a pretty good book at 15% of it's current size. I got tired of being told the same thing in at least 5-6 different ways every time and never finished it.

[jl2718]

Could not tolerate. I read hundreds of nonfiction books, and this is one of the few I could not get through.

[DenisM]

I found it worth the struggle in the end. One of the most influential books in my life, I’d probably put it as #3.

[77pt77]

> NN Taleb’s books

Quite the opposite. He expands one single argument ad nauseum into each of his books.

It's exasperating.

[Tycho]

which single argument?

[77pt77]

Each book has a different one.

[giardini]

And they are?

[pas]

> Black Swan

Fat tailed probability distributions are fat tailed...! Assuming normal distribution underestimates risky events.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat-tailed_distribution

> and Antifragile

Simple complex systems are too complex to be simple enough ...!

Okay, so this is a bit more technical, but the important thing is that unintelligent systems (= they are simple) that are complex (= have complex dynamics) are bad at adapting to different circumstances.

Also, these systems are products of design trade offs. (We want things to be cheap and get done fast, and also politically okay, and so on.) And thus they are not robust enough, nor resilient enough. They are fragile. (Taleb laments a lot about how antifragiltiy is different from robustness and resilience. And sure, they are because he uses a model in which they are.)

And the book talks about what is needed for anti-fragility, and it turns out that some kind of feedback loop that optimizes for certain problems. Or of course intelligence.

[canhascodez]

Taleb has often been accused of lacking rigor in his arguments. He does write well, though.

[josephjrobison]

Repetition of the core concepts from multiple different angles is a great way to reiterate the lessons over and over.

I also don’t like when they beat around the bush, but repetition increases retention.

[mirimir]

The classic form is 1) summarize what you're going to say; 2) say it; and 3) summarize and discuss what you've said. But this piece repeats the same arguments, in different words, just a few paragraphs apart. And that annoys me. But maybe it's written for people who just skim.

Also, when reading nonfiction, I typically read the beginning and the end, and then skim the rest. If it seems worth the time, then I read the whole thing.

[goostavos]

>I typically read the beginning and the end, and then skim the rest. If it seems worth the time, then I read the whole thing.

I saw this advice for reading papers, and it has been extremely useful to me for deciding if something is worth reading. For whatever reason though, I have some kind of aversion to doing it with books. Some form of childhood engrained "eat your vegetables" kind of conditioning about finishing books cover to cover.

I should really try it though. I've slogged through many non-fiction books with little beside annoyance to show for it.

[bathMarm0t]

Is the counter-swing of low-fluff incomprehensible density?

I think if you want to avoid fluff, read something that was written more than 20 years ago. Time has a means of eroding away the pop-sci books (Will anyone read Gladwell in 20 years?). I personally like reading the pivotal pieces of a field / founding texts. Jung and Nietzsche come to mind.

Maybe another question you could ask (a fluff test if you will): Could you see a college course using the text as a primary source?

[whatshisface]

>I think if you want to avoid fluff, read something that was written more than 20 years ago. Time has a means of eroding away the pop-sci books (Will anyone read Gladwell in 20 years?). I personally like reading the pivotal pieces of a field / founding texts. Jung and Nietzsche come to mind.

Historical philosophers are not even remotely comparable to present-day popular authors, a more fair comparison would be to present-day philosophers. Present-day popular authors are best compared to old popular authors, like the ones who wrote books on manners for 1800s Americans who wanted to use their affluence to become more like old-world elites, or the 1950s authors that wrote manuals on how to "be a man."

[emodendroket]

Even if we stick to fluffier stuff, if it's been around for a while it's probably got some merits (for instance, Agatha Christie or Raymond Chandler are not exactly challenging authors, but they're really good at what they do).

[FabHK]

FWIW, I’d consider both authors you cite peddlers of mistaken (and potentially dangerous) ideas. Read early psychoanalysis and German idealism out of historical interest, by all means (certainly very influential), but please don’t appropriate that way of thinking.

[Swizec]

If you want low fluff non fiction, go for business books. They're often short and to the point because they're written for busy people and aim to convey real information.

A lot of for-the-masses nonfiction books suffer from the incentives problem. They're not selling information, they're selling the feeling of being smart, intellectual, and well informed. They don't aim to teach you anything, they aim to give you ammunition to impress your friends with at a dinner party.

As such they have to be large and voluminous so you can feel good about yourself just by buying them. Then they have to convey the core point in the first 30 pages because you're not going to read more than that probably. The rest is there to give you cool anecdotes and supporting arguments so you can impress your friends further should they probe (and you actually read that far).

[majos]

What? This is the opposite of my experience, every business book I've read has mostly consisted of bullet-point platitudes. Short doesn't mean informative.

Do you have recommendations that might be different?

[barry-cotter]

The Personal MBA, Josh Kauffman

The Hard Thing About Hard Things, Ben Horowitz