What does a good nonfiction book do?

I’m thinking about this while considering Andy Matuschak’s essay, Why Books Don’t Work, the book Write Useful Books, and my own experiences reading nonfiction.

My dad used to often say that many nonfiction books “could have been a pamphlet,” meaning that the core ideas could have been summarized in five or fewer pages. (Indeed, it would seem that this is a large part of the premise of Shortform, although I haven’t used this service.)

Matuschak writes,

Picture some serious non-fiction tomes. The Selfish Gene; Thinking, Fast and Slow; Guns, Germs, and Steel; etc. Have you ever had a book like this—one you’d read—come up in conversation, only to discover that you’d absorbed what amounts to a few sentences? I’ll be honest: it happens to me regularly. Often things go well at first. I’ll feel I can sketch the basic claims, paint the surface; but when someone asks a basic probing question, the edifice instantly collapses. Sometimes it’s a memory issue: I simply can’t recall the relevant details. But just as often, as I grasp about, I’ll realize I had never really understood the idea in question, though I’d certainly thought I understood when I read the book. Indeed, I’ll realize that I had barely noticed how little I’d absorbed until that very moment.

Matuschak positions this as a significant concern, particularly because of the amount of time people invest in reading books. Although he points out that some may derive other benefits from reading such books, he quickly dismisses these as the primary reason someone would read this form of explanatory nonfiction:

I’m not suggesting that all those hours were wasted. Many readers enjoyed reading those books. That’s wonderful! Certainly most readers absorbed something, however ineffable: points of view, ways of thinking, norms, inspiration, and so on. Indeed, for many books (and in particular most fiction), these effects are the point.

This essay is not about that kind of book. It’s about explanatory non-fiction like the books I mentioned above, which aim to convey detailed knowledge. Some people may have read Thinking, Fast and Slow for entertainment value, but in exchange for their tens of millions of collective hours, I suspect many readers—or maybe even most readers—expected to walk away with more.

Do I expect to walk away with more when I read a book like the one he mentioned?

Personally, I’m not sure I do. If I walk away with one idea that I can apply to great benefit in my choices, actions, or understanding of the world, isn’t that more than enough?

A few of the nonfiction books that I recommend most often can be summarized in one to three sentences, but those sentences permanently altered my perspective or my choices. They helped me to think about things differently. They made things feel possible that didn’t feel possible before. I retained the details or underlying principles I needed to support the changes that felt relevant to me, and forgot the rest.

So, why a book and not a pamphlet?

In some cases, it does seem clear that a book ought to have been a pamphlet, and the thin idea at the core has been stretched to its breaking point with extraneous writing to create something marketable as a book.

But in some cases, I wonder if what the book actually does is introduce a brief concept that has the potential to radically alter your thinking and approach, then makes you sit with and examine that concept for the remainder of the time reading the book, giving you time to mull it over and make the necessary connections between the concept and your particular situation. In the guise of informing and explaining, the book may provide additional context or history, anecdotes or data, case studies, or even reflection questions and exercises—but what if the point is not to understand all of this material but just to keep you engaged with the overall concept for a longer period of time as you intersperse reading and going about your life, enabling connections that you would not have been able to make if you had read a shorter essay and then headed off to do something else?

To be fair, it seems as though you could get a similar level of understanding from an essay if you devised ways to keep yourself engaged with the core material for a longer period of time, such as by writing notes about it, blogging about it, talking to friends about it, posing your questions about the premise and trying to find out the answers, and perhaps engaging in spaced repetition over time.

Some people do this. Most don’t—most have never been taught how to learn—and perhaps a book that “could have been a pamphlet” offers a less effective surrogate experience to help people stay engaged with the material and create more possibilities for them to make connections or generate new ideas related to the material, even if they are not proactively engaged in practices to help them do so.

Reading through some of the strategies people use to improve their ability to learn, which include making analogies and visuals and identifying knowledge gaps prior to beginning to read, I was struck by the similarities to the strategies proposed in Chip and Dan Heath’s book, Made to Stick, about how to share your ideas in ways that “stick” better for your readers or listeners.

Perhaps the explicit use of personal learning strategies is simply a way to “even the playing field” between those ideas that are expressed in a more digestible format and those that are not.

Shouldn’t what “sticks” with us be the ideas that are most important and relevant to our lives, not those whose presenters chose to make the best use of learning strategies in how the ideas were presented? Shouldn’t we be proactive in our use of learning strategies to ensure that this is the case?

As I mentioned, I’ve also been thinking about Write Useful Books, by Rob Fitzpatrick. He says a useful book must convincingly solve a painful problem for a specific type of reader. It is not a book for everyone, but it needs to be the best book for a certain type of person in a specific situation, because no one recommends the second-best solution.

Fitzpatrick also calls attention to the fact that many nonfiction books don’t deliver on their premise:

The can opener would be a product with a desirable promise (“I want to open a can”), but which failed to follow through with an effective solution (“But I still can’t”). And while this is thankfully rare in the realm of kitchen appliances, it’s dishearteningly common in nonfiction.

I suppose it’s important to be clear on the type of “can” readers would like to open.

Fitzpatrick notes that many different types of book can be useful books, not just explanatory nonfiction and how-to guides. He holds up an example of a memoir that people found useful because of its clear takeaways and lessons that stuck with them for their own lives, as well as the classic creativity book, The Artist’s Way. Any book that a reader approaches with a particular problem, that the book can effectively solve, can be a useful book.

I’m thinking about this in the context of my forthcoming essay collection. It’s literary personal essays, and I believe that they offer the reader a window into a different experience and into a different way of thinking about their own experiences. But how to convey this? I am concerned that people will come to the book expecting something else, perhaps expecting to be “educated” about a life experience other than their own, and to leave with particular takeaways about cultural competence or systems reforms, and will leave disappointed.

I’ve wondered if building out discussion and reflection questions would enhance the usefulness of this book, but I feel that, if not done carefully, these might detract from the broader transformation I hope the book might create for someone’s perspective. (As a trans person, I am particularly cautious about this, since it feels that so often there has been an emphasis on terminology and concepts, rather than empathy and interpersonal understanding.)

What do I truly want people to take away from this book? It’s easy to wave my arms and say that it’s art and might impact each reader differently—but is that the way I want to think about it?

Are there specific transformations in thinking or experiencing that I hope someone might have after reading my book of personal essays? If so, what might I do to help make these more likely to occur?

Getting back to Matuschak—I’ve been engaging with what he had to say by reading his essay, Quantum Computing for the Very Curious, which is explicitly designed to help the reader remember what they are learning, by interspersing interactive questions throughout the text and offering the opportunity for spaced repetition of these questions to ensure that you’ve retained what you learned.

I wouldn’t say that I’m “very curious” about quantum computing, but I was willing to give it a try. I found that the questions were extremely helpful in allowing me to pinpoint what I had retained from the reading and what I needed to further review. Because I found the material quite challenging, the questions also helped me to know whether I was “on the right track.” While I could theoretically have generated questions and tested myself after each section of reading, I know that I would have found that too taxing and overwhelming in addition to trying to absorb the material. I’m continuing to work with this essay—it’s been a long time since I tried to understand anything involving mathematics—and continuing to observe how I think and learn.

Is there an equivalent for less technical fields, or for less clearly defined types of understanding and transformation? I’ve certainly seen my share of textbook “reflection questions” that feel forced and don’t generate much personal insight. (Perhaps I ought to look for reflection questions that have generated useful personal insights, and reflect on why they did so!)

I don’t have an answer today, but I feel I’m leaving this with a more clearly defined question.