I agree. Interestingly every once in awhile you find a book (Desmond Morris' The Human Zoo, or anything Temple Grandin's ever written) that violates your 90/10 rule there. They just buzz from idea to idea, building as fast as they can. Whereas others are like the writer is packing a lot of filler in, like they're trying to say it slowly and redundantly for a class of slow people.

That's what Dawkins is doing in all his religion books- he's impatiently explaining atheism to the Slow Kids in the class who seem to compose the majority of the human race. If you want to see him in his element, check out The Ancestor's Tale. You couldn't skip 90% of that, and it's big.

I don't usually care too much about not being well-read, but I did have the same problem big time with GEB. I only really managed to find the dialogue parts in the book interesting; the rest of it is either reasonably basic computer science or things that have become hacker culture staples over time (due, of course, to the book itself). It was a shame to not really be able to enjoy the feeling of discovery in such a remarkable book, but what can you do? It *is* from 1979 after all...

Well if you're not as godlike as yourself, it might seem interesting. :P

Sounds like I have a book to read over summer.

Oh, if you haven't read it, don't wait until summer. It is that remarkable.

If I had the time, trust me, I would.

*adds his voice to Ari's in support of Moose reading GEB*

And see, I was kind of the opposite way- I got really bogged down when he wrote an entire chapter in logic statements. Never really picked it back up again.

I have that problem with religion discussions.. "Well I've read the bible so you can't debate me cause you haven't even though you know exactly what I'm going to argue you with you." It's very frustrating...

I have to do a presentation on Dawkins for my Organic Evolution course later this semester... Not that that has anything to do with your question...

I do think that some of the primary texts are worth reading if only for the fact that your getting the original ideas instead of the translated or interpreted states of the works. However, many times, the era in which these books were written make them difficult to endure. So yeah... again, not much help. o_O

I think you've just described theoretical linguistics. In the US they just taught us about academic discoveries and then had us do exercises to show our understanding. In the UK, we read the articles and they tested us on it. The latter was terribly boring, even for the theories that I didn't know about previously.

Incidentally, there is a form of writing in linguistics called a squibs, which is meant to be a short focused paper that makes a point. There is sort of a feeling amongst people in the field that these are generally more effective, especially since it's these papers that lead to large research projects.

And yeah, I worry about not being well-read too. I know a rather good amount of linguistic theory for an undergraduate, but I can't cite my sources in a more detailed manner that "I heard it in class..."

I highly recommend The Selfish Gene. It says very interesting things about evolution and genetics.

I wish I saw more people applying memetics. I am yet to see a systematic analysis of something from a memetic standpoint.

Is there a formal, mathematical model of memetics? Because all the memetics I've seen is too wishy-washy and "wouldn't it be cool if..." to do systematic analyses of stuff.

I dunno - I read some Kant, but even after it still didn't feel as though I could properly "explain" his thoughts.

Dear Scott,

What you describe is the exact argument of How To Talk About Books You Haven't Read
(http://www.amazon.com/Talk-About-Books-Havent-Read/dp/1596914696/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1202420860&sr=8-1)

The argument of the book is that, as you say here, if you are "culturally literate" you pretty much know what's in these books anyway, and what you need to do is not waste time actually reading them but get over the feeling of guilt you have for not reading them. We should be perfectly happy to talk about books we haven't read, more or less as if we had in fact read them. He adds a point that you don't make in your post: how much of the books you actually have read can you remember anyway? Not much, probably. So then the question becomes: what really is the difference between "having read" and "not having read" a book? Is there a difference? It's not cut and dried.

Now, of course, you don't need to read that book either. Although I found that in reading the book (it's only about 180 pages) I kind of gave my mind the time to adjust to the idea of guilt-free non-reading which it wouldn't have had just from hearing the book's point. So ironically, it might actually be an idea to read it. Anyway, I now feel little guilt in deciding not to read "classic" works like those you suggest. The key thing for me is that the classic texts are stuck in their time, but I want to know what's going on *now* in my field (which is, again perhaps ironically, history) - so it's much better for me to read newer books which will summarise the old ones and bring their own additions. That's got to be a better use of time.

Regards,
Tom Cutterham

I have that book, but have not read it yet.
:/

Thanks. That's exactly the sort of thing I was looking to hear. And your comment about "Now, of course, you don't need to read that book either." cracked me up.