You wanted to read the book, you were excited to crack it open, you came into it with good faith and anticipation… but you ended up dnf-ing it. Which book and why?
Mine was The Maid by Nita Prose. It was for my book club and looked like a fun murder mystery. Instead I got instant manic-pixie-dream-neurodivergent-girl vibes, and I noped out before the crime scene was even found.
I can’t remember the exact title, but it was a non-fiction book titled something like “Why America is Mad About the Wrong Things”
I stopped early in chapter 2 when I realized it was going to essentially be the same chapter over and over.
While I was taking business classes for a short while, I learned that business books are almost all based around a really cool idea that can be explained in one chapter, that is then stretched into 20 so that it can be sold as a whole book.
And most of those ideas just build off of ideas from Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Not all, but most.
The podcast If Books Could Kill talks about this a lot
I finished The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs. The first 1/3rd of the book was good. The rest was just repeating that. It was fine, but clearly had a page count they were trying to hit.
Yup. The Black Swan could be summed up in a short essay but the book is 95% padding. All idea based nonfiction books make me feel like I sat through a brainwashing session by the end. I suppose it’s probably because most readers are unwilling to pay for an essay so instead we pay for 390 pages of waffle wrapped around 10 pages of the good bit.
I teach at a business school. You’ve described this really well.
The Black Swan by Nassim Taleb made me feel like that
Just like meetings that manage to squeeze five minutes of information into the hour you sit there.
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I know whereof I speak.