These are excerpts from the author’s book “Deep,” which contains eight of his small books published in the form of Wisdom Literature covering different aspects of life: Facing troublemakers, dealing with pain, personal financial issues, gastronomy, reading, criticizing, inspiring, and feeling always good to go.

Series 5: Reading.

Fat Books versus Slim Books

• Just as you should not judge a book by its cover, you cannot judge a book by its number of pages.

• You will miss out on a lot of pleasure and many benefits when you enter the experience of reading a slim book with the same preparation and way you read a fat book, and vice versa.

• Do not let the book’s length mislead you. Neither the benefits gained in general nor even specifically the number of new pieces of information you could learn depend on a book’s page count in any way; let alone the pleasure which cannot be measured by any such material factor.

• Never be ashamed to declare that you prefer slim books to fat books, as long as the former inspire you deeply and satisfy you absolutely.

• An excellent reader of fat books is probably not an excellent reader of slim books, and vice versa. This shouldn’t be a problem for either of them as long as both enjoy what they read.

• Slim books are not synonymous with light-content books, and fat books are not synonymous with heavy-content books.

• If you are a lover of slim books, don’t freak out about a fat book. You can read it as a collection of slim books, or even pick out what you like within the fat book and just deal with the selection as if you were reading one slim book.

• If you are a lover of fat books, do not let your preconceived ideas about slim books keep you away from reading them on the pretext that they will not satisfy your craving for reading. You can read several slim books together as if reading one fat book. You can even read one slim book as if reading a single interesting chapter of a fat book.

• If you find yourself taking much longer than the average estimate to read a slim book based on its page count, don’t panic. If there are no external factors affecting the reading process, then pay attention. This is probably evidence that the content of the book is greater than what its volume indicates.

• If you feel the urge to change the direction of your reading from fat books to slim books, or vice versa, never hesitate. Do not succumb to remorse for a type of books that you have long been familiar with. What matters in the end is your love and loyalty to reading itself, regardless of the book length.