Books are no exception.

I particularly dislike the common belief that nonfiction is inherently superior as a form of media. Most nonfiction reads like an NYT article that ran a little too long. Even worse are pop-nonfiction books that read like a VOX article that ran too long. A lot of fiction captures ideas around antropology, sociology, politics and philosophy better than non-fiction books explicitly abput them.

Even books with good content tend to be either too fictionalized to facilitate readability or drab to the point of becoming a text book. Infact, I'd say that on the balance a random well reviewed fiction novel can be expected to be a lot more intellectually rewarding.

That being said, every once in a while I run into a book like 'why the west rules for now' and it somehow manages to be all of informative, entertaining, relevant and academically rigorous. I wish goodreads had a filter that allowed me exclusively find such books. Talk about pipe dreams.