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.
> 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.
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.