Dear publishers of the world, please bring back short books
It happens all the time. Someone gives an interesting TED talk or TEDx talk or SXSW speech, there’s ‘buzz’ about it, and the next thing you know, book deal.
Which is fine. They’re interesting ideas and people deserve to profit from their ideas, but, BUT, they could do that without stre…eee…t…ching what is essentially a simple idea to fiction length by padding it out with increasingly repetitive examples. (What happened to the long-form article behind a paywall that everyone can link to without anyone actually reading it?)
Most of the culprits are catchy, buzzword-worthy ideas sure to furnish motivational speakers and L&D departments with material for a while to come.
Like these books I read in their entirety, because I’m very honest with my Goodreads goals
The Best Interface is No Interface clocks in at 256 pages (according to Goodreads). Admittedly, many of those are pictures and interesting examples, but if you want to know what it’s about, it’s enough to watch the author’s SXSW talk on YouTube.
The Checklist Manifesto, at around 200 pages, is a little better, but still repetitive. We get it two chapters in: checklists good. (I honestly loved this one and recommended it to a bunch of people.)
Mindset: The New Psychology of Success — also known as 276 pages of attributing every possible human achievement to a growth mindset. (It’s interesting, it’s useful, it helps you think about how you praise your kids and deal with failure yourself, and five chapters could have covered it.)
Simplicity by Edward de Bono. 320 pages. 320.
Wittgenstein’s Poker: The Story of a Ten-Minute Argument Between Two Great Philosophers 368 pages of what seem like factoids masquerading as background to the argument. (Lots of people on Goodreads seem to like it. What do I know?)
Please, dear publishers, in this, the supposed age of the e-book and the short attention span and the Tik Tok video, can we just keep these books short?