Rules for Choosing Nonfiction Books
herman.asia
Rules for Choosing Nonfiction Books
1–10 of 205 posts
Re: Rules for Choosing Nonfiction Books
#2Interesting post, but i would say you can easily read more than 3000 books if you retire at 65 and live to be 90+. Also there are great non-fiction books by journalists that are not about journalism, a few that come to mind are Bad Blood, The Chickenshit Club, Angler, All The President's Men, books by Matt Taibbi, etc.
Re: Rules for Choosing Nonfiction Books
#3[EDIT: the post says "Prefer books by experts in the field" and says these are people who have spent their lives researching that field. It gives GEB as an example of such a book. That claim is factually incorrect and calls into question the idea of requiring books to meet that criteria. Does anyone of the many people who've downvoted my comment care to explain why you find it objectionable?]
> The best nonfiction books I have read have invariably been by folks who spent their lives researching that particular issue. A couple of books in this category immediately come to mind: Why We Sleep, The Language Instinct, Gödel Escher Bach.
Hofstadter was only 34 when GEB was published
Re: Rules for Choosing Nonfiction Books
#4[EDIT: the post says "Prefer books by experts in the field" and says these are people who have spent their lives researching that field. It gives GEB as an example of such a book. That claim is factually incorrect and calls into question the idea of requiring books to meet that criteria. Does anyone of the many people who've downvoted my comment care to explain why you find it objectionable?] > The best nonfiction bo…
That doesn't refute the fact that he spent his life researching the content in GEB.
Re: Rules for Choosing Nonfiction Books
#5The idea that only 4+ star rating books are worth reading is laughable. Reading only very popular books is a recipe to read only books that fit into your own preconceived worldview.
Re: Rules for Choosing Nonfiction Books
#6Here's a rule: read stuff that you think is interesting.
Re: Rules for Choosing Nonfiction Books
#7Like the article's #3, I have my own silly rule, but it's a good one.
No books with the author's name written in a larger font than the title.
This eliminates books who's main merit is the author's fame. It's especially good at filtering out crappy New York Times best sellers and it works for fiction too.
Re: Rules for Choosing Nonfiction Books
#8The idea that only 4+ star rating books are worth reading is laughable. Reading only very popular books is a recipe to read only books that fit into your own preconceived worldview.
Quality assessment is not necessarily the same as popularity, surely.
Re: Rules for Choosing Nonfiction Books
#9I would add #4: books that are at least 10 years old. I feel like knowledge has to pass the test of time. This rule would rule out "Why We Sleep" for instance, but you'll be able to read it in 10 years if the science behind it still stands.
Re: Rules for Choosing Nonfiction Books
#10My rule: no index, no sale.
If the author didn't care enough to generate an index, what else did they not care enough about?
A surprising number of books, especially "pop sci" books, don't include an index.