An Ode To Dense Books

The first dense book I ever read was Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. It probably took me 4 years to finish. During that time I read a lot of other books but I just couldn’t sustain Thinking, Fast and Slow for long and I’d always put it down in favor of something easier to read.

The reason I never gave up on it though was because it was gifted to me by a close colleague and mentor. And even though he’d never know if I finished it, I wanted to prove to him through way of the universe that I valued him and his recommendation. It turned out to be one of the most life changing books I’ve ever read.

While the majority of the book went over my simple minded and mildly intelligent brain, the main concept stuck, and still influences my life every day. That concept is that everyone has two systems. System 1 and System 2. System 1 is your innate gut reaction to a stimuli, the response to an action that you give without thinking about the consequences, most times regret, and is emotional. System 2 is your calculated response. It’s the more logical response you form after taking a breath, and counting to 3.

Working on emboldening my System 2 and bypassing my System 1 has changed my life.

But aside from that great lesson came the great accomplishment of reading such an influential book. I feel such pride whenever I hear intellects and scholars I look up to reference Daniel Kahneman’s book. I don’t know anyone in my personal life that has ever read it and it remains one of the most important works of psychology ever published.

Reading dense books are important. Because while they are difficult to get through, there are so many lessons they offer. I recently finished The Language Instinct, by Steven Pinker. It took me 18 months to get through. It was far denser than I anticipated it would be.

The reason I picked up The Language Instinct was to see if it could help me learn a second language. Ever since middle school I’ve been trying to become fluent in Spanish. But aside from a couple of long stints in South America where I was able to practice, fluency has eluded me, and always regressed back to my rudimentary understanding of the language after returning home.

A few months before learning about The Language Instinct I started to think that maybe I needed to take a different approach. That perhaps there was something to language in general that I was missing, and if I knew it it would allow me to unlock my brains ability to become fluent or at least improve.

Sadly my Spanish is no better after reading it, however in the same way that Thinking, Fast and Slow changed how I choose to respond, The Language Instinct changed my approach to reading, writing, and communicating in ways that I never anticipated. In the end my understanding of English got an unexpected boost.

Here’s one such example from the book that changed the way I think about writing. 

“If a speaker is interrupted at a random point in a sentence, there are on average about ten different words that could be inserted at that point to continue the sentence in a grammatical and meaningful way.”

This was significant to me because so often when writing I’d hit a brick wall mid-sentence believing that there could only be one word that could continue the sentence, and more times than not I couldn’t think of it. But learning that there were in fact 10 different possibilities gave me permission to think outside of the box. Just knowing that more than one option existed was enough to make me rack my brain until I found the word that made sense.

The Language Instinct also improved my understanding of sentence structure and it’s importance. As Steven Pinker describes it, “Only a few items… can be held in the mind at once, and the items are immediately subject to fading or being overwritten.” He then provides a few examples to drive home the point. As the reader you can feel the sentence slipping away as you read.

“He gave the girl that he met in New York while visiting his parents for ten days around Christmas and New Year’s the candy,” and,

“She saw the matter that had caused her so much anxiety in former years when she was employed as an efficiency expert by the company through.”

He also provides the correct way to structure these sentences.

“He gave the candy to the girl that he met in New York while visiting his parents for ten days around Christmas and New Year’s,” and,

“She saw the matter through that had caused her so much anxiety in former years when she was employed as an efficiency expert by the company.”

An easier to follow example is as follows,

“Reverse the clamp that the stainless steel hex-head bolt extending upward from the seat post yoke holds in place,” which becomes,

“Reverse the clamp that is held in place by the stainless hex-head bolt extending upward from the seat post yoke.”

At times the book is also playful, like when he makes fun of so called “language mavens,” self described experts of language who have made a career of calling out “bad writing.” In this example he is speaking about a film and theater critic who has made a career of outlandish reviews such as this:

“The English language is being treated nowadays exactly as slave trader once handled the merchandise in their slave ships, or as the inmates of concentration camps were dealt with by their Nazi jailers.”

But my favorite were the examples of the contradictory nature of the English language that are at once entertaining and informative. They take the seriousness out of composing the perfect sentence, choosing the right words, and making it all grammatically correct. Such as: “How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites?”

The Language Instinct is the type of dense book that I used to shy away from and never finish. I’ve often heard the advice “read what you like until you like to read.” While it’s hard to disagree with that advice, I think there’s also tremendous value to reading outside of your comfort zone.

Reading is like any skill. The more challenging the input, the better you’re going to become. In weight training we call this progress overload. In this case a dense book is like adding weights or reps to your sets. Rather than strengthening your muscles you’ll become a better read. Being a better reader will expand what you read, how often you read, and grow your knowledge as a result.

That’s what dense books have done for me. They’ve made me a better reader, thinker, writer, and communicator. They’ve also improved my ability to stay focused and complete a tough task. It’s an easy, effective, cheap, and accessible way to improve your mind.

The Language Instinct is another Thinking, Fast and Slow for me. While there were a lot of concepts I missed, and connections I couldn’t make, when things were clicking I was amazed at what I was learning. Merchants of Doubt is the latest tough read I’m working through. I suspect it’ll be another 12 - 18 months before I’m able to close it for good.

Dense books offer big rewards for those that choose to read and finish them.