Some notes on the state of non-fiction
I feel like most of the non-fiction I've been reading is a couple of key, useful points surrounded by a mix of personal anecdote and quotes from "experts". Learning to skim-read these books seems like the only useful way to get through them. Although, I do wonder if I should even bother with that or simply read a review. What bothers me more than all these monograph size ideas being packaged in a book is that review sources that I have relied on have recommended these books--New York Review of Books (although perhaps not so much--I need to go back and take a look), New York Times Book Review, NPR (in some ways, this source has been the worst. The last three non-fiction books I've ordered-excitedly I might add--have been duds: Dreamland, Gulp and Pound Foolish). I actually bought the last two because I foolishly thought I'd want to own them. (Maybe monograph isn't the right word. . . short non-fiction?).
(An aside, as I was doing the research I discuss below, I came across a review that talked about how different Talib's Black Swan and Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow are from the usual popular science book, which he described as story, study lesson. I am going to do a separate post on this because I'm very interested in this concept)
So what is happening (or has this always been the case?)? Is the genre of "pop culture non-fiction" taking off with the advent of the world wide web? Is there no market for monographs (I need to search the net about this because it seems like such a great idea)? Are the reviewers reading so many books that those that skim readable are actually chosen because you can get through them so quickly?
Where does one go to get good, reliable information for books (besides The New York Review of Books?)? I did get the London Review for a while. Maybe I need to do that again. Ironically, I did a search on google for "thoughtful, in depth book reviews" and got "shelfari" and "good reads" as recommendations. Talk about wading through a mire of crap to find a nugget of gold. There has to be better sources.
I did find this gem (American Scientist July/Aug, 2012)--now where is the similar article for non-fiction in general:
(An aside, as I was doing the research I discuss below, I came across a review that talked about how different Talib's Black Swan and Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow are from the usual popular science book, which he described as story, study lesson. I am going to do a separate post on this because I'm very interested in this concept)
So what is happening (or has this always been the case?)? Is the genre of "pop culture non-fiction" taking off with the advent of the world wide web? Is there no market for monographs (I need to search the net about this because it seems like such a great idea)? Are the reviewers reading so many books that those that skim readable are actually chosen because you can get through them so quickly?
Where does one go to get good, reliable information for books (besides The New York Review of Books?)? I did get the London Review for a while. Maybe I need to do that again. Ironically, I did a search on google for "thoughtful, in depth book reviews" and got "shelfari" and "good reads" as recommendations. Talk about wading through a mire of crap to find a nugget of gold. There has to be better sources.
I did find this gem (American Scientist July/Aug, 2012)--now where is the similar article for non-fiction in general:
Book Reviewing in the Sciences: A Conversation
The best book reviews are like well-written letters: clear, witty and thoughtful. And, like letters written by hand, they appear to be in some jeopardy, especially where scientific subjects are concerned. Is it possible to reconceive the uncertain state of science book reviewing as an opportunity for creative change—without abandoning time-tested strategies for writing well-crafted reviews?
To explore this question, American Scientist senior editor Anna Lena Phillips began an email conversation with science writers Carl Zimmer and Phillip Manning, an edited version of which appears below. We welcome readers’ comments, via letter or email or our website.
ALP: In his book about the card catalog, Paper Machines, Markus Krajewski notes that numbering systems for organizing printed materials were “the librarian’s answer to the flood of books” that resulted from the invention of the printing press. The book flood continues unabated, even as writing published in other media increases as well. To navigate these concurrent floods, it seems clear that we need not only ordering tools, such as the Library of Congress’s classification system and the DOI, but continuous sources of meaningful critical writing to inform and guide us in our reading.
continued at http://www.americanscientist.org/bookshelf/pub/book-reviewing-in-the-sciences-a-conversation
From this essay, I found the following recommendations for book sources: Nation magazine, Nature magazine, American Scientist (although they ceased their book review coverage in mar/apr 2013 because of budget cuts), and youtube videos from Carolyn Manaster. I did go to youtube to look her up and she does a variety of reviews of science books that are about 4 minutes long. They show the actual book and pages but are not particularly critical.
Ironically, though, even in this review, the emphasis was on "did the book offer new ideas?". Which is important, obviously, but don't we need to also say whether those particular new ideas warrant a whole book?
Some other resources I found while searching the internet on this issue:
From American Scientist
Readers may also wish to see the recently updated list of science book review resources at http://amsci.org/book-review-links. These include the e-newsletter Science Book News (http://scibooks.org); the science e-book review Download the Universe (http://downloadtheuniverse.com); and the Krell Institute’s website, http://krellinst.org. Krell will begin publishing book reviews under the name Scientists’ Bookshelf this spring. The section will be entirely unaffiliated with American Scientist.
The first of these sources: amsci.org/book-review-links was great and took me to women's review of books that I didn't even know existed (sponsored by Wellesley Center for Women). Ironically, when you click on the subscribe it takes you to Old City Publishing and says "The search did not match any of our holdings"! This is the actual link from the journal itself. So, you have to hunt a bit to find subscription info, which makes no sense. Get some marketing people in there!
They also recommend Phyics today, which, at first, I wasn't even going to bother to look at because I suspected that the books would be way above my head. But I did actually go to the website and found lots of great book recommendations even for the lay reader (and lots of titles that I couldn't even understand the title).
Wouldn't it be cool if there were some place that all these reviews were collected? Or not? Would that just be amazon? Reviewing run amok . . .In any case, searching for good reviews has led to some really great websites I didn't even know existed so maybe I'll do more searching and less complaining.
Some interesting thoughts on this topic and the difficulty of generating good data on human beings, which might go far to explaining why some of these books just don't do the job.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2013/04/29/179853272/elegance-trumps-ethics-in-a-scientific-scandal
Some interesting thoughts on this topic and the difficulty of generating good data on human beings, which might go far to explaining why some of these books just don't do the job.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2013/04/29/179853272/elegance-trumps-ethics-in-a-scientific-scandal
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