Good Guidelines for Selecting Popular Science Books
I have a few rules for choosing popular science books: I will not read a book that promises to reveal the “insider secrets” of an organization or area. (The author only knows 1% of the secrets, and they will overestimate them.) If I find a book too extensive or difficult, I sink to the reading level – or even find a version of the comic with a reliable co-author. And I don’t get attached to fiction – sometimes I only need to read one chapter.
Programmer Herman Schaaf has his own quality filters when he selects non-fiction books : Look for an author who is an expert on a particular topic, with a Goodreads rating above 4 and a title that doesn’t have the word “amazing.” While I disagree with the specifics it sets for all three rules (journalists can be experts! Goodreads ratings are a sign of marketing, not a good book!), I’m basically with him. There are a lot of bullshit books out there, and they don’t have a big caption on the cover that says, “This is bullshit, please ignore,” so you need to form some rubric to figure out what your time is worth.
“The quickest way I exclude health / medicine books is to see if the author is a physician in a completely different specialty than the subject of the book,” says Beth Skorecki, editor of Lifehacker Health Magazine. “You’d be surprised how many books Your Thyroid Causes All Your Problems has been written by such and such a medical doctor, a specialist in a field that has nothing to do with your thyroid gland. They think because they are doctors and they are smart that they understand everything, so they have one idea about the human body and have no information to check it. “
Because she studies the rhythm of health so deeply, Beth gets to know the authors of their other works, including articles and research papers, so this is her second rule of thumb. For the rest of us, this may mean looking for books by authors of our favorite articles, or finding authors who have signatures in highly respected publications such as the New Yorker.
Lifehacker social media editor Tim Mulkerin has a very specific version of Beth’s rule: “My rule of thumb is to pick Mary Roach’s books. She writes the way I would like. “
Book rules can be very personal – I have discarded all “business books” and overly specific but broad books such as “Spoon History” – and they must always obey the great rule: “Read the books you like. … “But now we are ready to hear yours, and also to find out if you have learned your rule the hard way.