... all these "books" are "tomes" and tried to include too much in one "volume". The books these guys wrote are physically too heavy, with too tiny a font used, with bindings not amendable to easy physical handling other than on a table as if referring to an encyclopedia. I blame the publishers. The hard covers don't tranfer to paperback too easily and make for an impossible reading experience.
Like the SUVs and Pickup trucks on todays city streets that are impossibly big and supersized, making driving dangerous and normal for an average car, the books/tomes above make impossible reading experiences even for experienced readers. Form factors count. Standards for size and information content would be handled by publishers so I blame the publishers in these cases. Many of these books including those above are actually ridiculously unweildy in form factor IN ADDITION TO being unmanageable as THOUGHT FORMS that ought to be included in ONE BOOK.
There is a nice little multi volume series I have by CSLewis, the Tales of Narnia, in 6 nice paperback volumes sold as a set that come in a box that can be sat on a shelf. THAT was a great publishing format because each book had a separate idea but could be kept in one form factor mini-bookcase. Another tome that is the opposite of that is Ayn Rand's Capitalism book. And of course, the Holy Bible although the most published book in history, is a really good example of a really bad form factor for publishing. That book has got to be a priamary example for bad publishing despite its apparent success, just based on form factor alone, many being published on that thin tissue type paper, surprisingly strong, but typeset so tiny that it has made it impossible to "read" comfortable. The sheer weight of the Holy Bible, in terms of pounds, is in itself, a perennial problem.
One more book I've been looking at lately again, is Marvin Minsky's Society of Mind. This is not so much a tome as a coffee table book without pictures. It's a stunning failure in formatting by a publisher. Horrible design.
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