Hello Alexander, Thank you so much for your comment. You are right, I don’t think I sufficiently made the case for reading non-fiction books specifically and that my post blurred between the two genres a bit too readily. However, I think a lot of the arguments for fiction are true for non-fiction as well, namely, quality of prose, deep focus, and close reading. I think reading a whole non-fiction work rather than a summary helps the content go from disparate facts to being situated within a web of context. In this respect, I think we better retain the major points. I don’t know if this is universal, but when I read a summary it isn’t nearly as impactful. This seems to suggest that impact comes from more than just a summation and instead from the other elements that an author is able to establish within a longer framework.
Hello Alexander,
Thank you so much for your comment. You are right, I don’t think I sufficiently made the case for reading non-fiction books specifically and that my post blurred between the two genres a bit too readily. However, I think a lot of the arguments for fiction are true for non-fiction as well, namely, quality of prose, deep focus, and close reading. I think reading a whole non-fiction work rather than a summary helps the content go from disparate facts to being situated within a web of context. In this respect, I think we better retain the major points. I don’t know if this is universal, but when I read a summary it isn’t nearly as impactful. This seems to suggest that impact comes from more than just a summation and instead from the other elements that an author is able to establish within a longer framework.