A few years ago I was at the San Ysidro Ranch in Santa Barbara, CA. I had just finished brunch on the patio, accompanied by close friends. On the way out I stopped by an orange tree with probably 50-60 oranges. The oranges looked round, plump, and the bright in color. I am a sucker for good oranges.

The 5-star hotel is meticulous about their landscaping. It brings the design of the entire hotel together. I don’t think guests are meant to be meddling with trees or hedges. Without thinking, I left the concrete walking path and stepped over a few bushes to grab some oranges for me and my friends.

Despite how many oranges were on the tree, I could not reach a single one. They were just out of reach. I pulled at the branches and shook the trees for a minute or two. Finally, I got my hand on one, ripped it open, and enjoyed every bite (saving none for my friends). My hands were covered with orange juice.

The orange was electric. Sweet, citrusy, fragrant, peel-able. Everything you could want in a fruit. The other oranges were probably just as good but out of reach. I had half a mind to ask for a ladder.

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I had been in the middle of a Nassim Taleb phase and had just read his critique of best-sellers (set of books marketed and consumed by the masses). They suck, because they repeat one idea across hundreds of pages. You can get 90% of the ideas from 10% of the book. These books should be ignored.

Great books, Taleb insists, offer hundreds of ideas to the reader. The ideas twist and morph and mutate into different forms as you read—they are not static. The book is not totally efficient, nor totally accessible. One reads a page, stops, reflects upon what he has read, comes to his own understanding, then flips to the next page. Good books do not go by quickly and are not totally understood. Not everything is easily accessible. This practice of understanding some small share of a large array of ideas is preferred to understanding the totality of one small idea. One must concede that not all ideas are within reach.

For how hypocritical Taleb is¹, this is one area where he practices what he preaches. His books are so dense and rich with ideas, many of which are pretty hard to understand. Look at the titles of chapters and the subtitles. There is a glaring lack of structure and numerous irrelevant tangents. You can get lost in his books and emerging without a single coherent narrative. But the few ideas that stick, really stick. This philosophy makes reading an adventure and an exploration. It is like exploring the unknown. The essence of the book is not totally captured in the title/subtitle.

It is exactly like grasping at a tall orange tree with incredible oranges. The oranges you do get are delicious and makes you excited about the others. Bad writing is like a short orange tree with bitter fruit.

Footnotes

1. Taleb despises charlatans and pseudo-academics, and that is exactly what he is. For how smart he is, he communicates no awareness of this fact. It is hilarious. ↩