21 May 2007

Two-Thirds

I've just finished reading The Tipping Point, Blink and Freakonomics, books that form such a tight PopSci triad that an amazon search for the title of either of the first two returns all three in the top three results, and I also finally got around to watching Bowling for Columbine. While I didn't really spend much time on these (they're all pretty light, and can be consumed in a week), I feel that like Guns, Germs and Steel and The Corporation before them, they all should've finished about two-thirds of the way in.

These otherwise-highly-recommended books and films all reach a climax (that is, they get to the fricking point) about halfway through and then peter out with ever-more-boring examples and views of the data that are so detailed that you are left feeling dirty after having just been exposed to the blinding light of the authors' raw "but I spent so long working on this bit that I just *have* to include it" cries and screams.

This problem is exacerbated in the first three books, which finish about two-thirds of the way through the printed pages to make way for lengthy authors' afterwords (stupid second-editions!), so you're reading along thinking that you're just in a lull and about to get good in the remaining giant wedge of paper, and all of a sudden you realize that you're ten pages into supplementary material and that the fun got up and left hours ago.

It's all rather like watching The Matrix Trilogy.

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