If the book isn't worth reading cover-to-cover, was it ever worth reading at all?
Discussion
If you read one chapter and it gave you one new idea, wasn’t it worth it already?
Oh, absolutely. But if a book gives me any single idea, I read it all the way through... You never know what other wisdom it may be hiding 👀👀
It’s an interesting question if a book in whole is more than the sum of its ideas
If it's a textbook, perhaps not. A great author is one that will turn the sum of those ideas into something completely new. Something that will make you think more than any individual drop of information in the bucket of the book's wisdom.
That's why I like analytical essays more than books when it comes to nonfiction 😅 It's a shorter read, but a good author will still come around to that greater point that you were supposed to get from a whole book