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by rossant
98 days ago
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Ironically, I read this article from start to finish, something that rarely happens with blog posts, which I usually abandon halfway through. More seriously, I agree that writing short books or articles is an important skill. Writing long is easy; conveying the same amount of information concisely is much harder. It is also a sign of respect for busy readers. I constantly find myself asking LLMs to be shorter, more direct, and more to the point, without fluff. They seem to have a tendency to generate endless streams of words. |
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To me, books aren't meant simply to be read, they're to be used, and I often treat them like references. Many would benefit from concept indexes, or at least being broken into more discrete parts beyond the chapter.
Search helps with digital, but it's not the same as being able to get a high-level physical impression from thumbing around. I'm a fan of longer-form content indices found in some volumes of poetry, or the way a cookbook might list "Beef" and then include every recipe that contains it.
If we can characterize how or what is happening, then depending on the format of the book, it could make sense to include information like summaries, timelines, maps and diagrams, etc, but I rarely see that in modern works.