I typically link that review when I want to explain my position in online arguments about college, but it really does such a good job that reading the entire book is unnecessary. With this in mind I think it could be very useful to find good reviewers who can digest books and provide compelling and brief summaries. Unfortunately it seems like most people review only a handful of books ad-hoc and then stop for long periods.
This seems like pretty good advice. One book that really changed my worldview completely was Bryan Kaplan's The Case Against Education, and while the book was fairly good you can get almost as good of an understanding by reading this review: https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/7t59x1/review_bryan_caplans_the_case_against_education/
I typically link that review when I want to explain my position in online arguments about college, but it really does such a good job that reading the entire book is unnecessary. With this in mind I think it could be very useful to find good reviewers who can digest books and provide compelling and brief summaries. Unfortunately it seems like most people review only a handful of books ad-hoc and then stop for long periods.
I wrote a response to this today on my blog, "In Defense of Reading Whole Books": https://papyrusrampant.substack.com/p/in-defense-of-reading-whole-books
Thought you were a deontologist