Syntopic reading can be really rewarding. For example, once you read Thinking Fast and Slow, and a few of Taleb’s books, suddenly you notice implicit and explicit references in virtually every business book published later than those.
A similar effect can be found with Grit, Fogg’s Behavior Model, Superforecasting, and most Gladwel books.
On the coding side, I’ve only noticed this with Pragmatic Programmer, Clean Code, and maybe Phoenix/Unicorn project. Could I don’t read enough of those or they’re too focused on specific technologies instead of broad ideas … or I get too much of my technical reading from blogs and twitter. Those do get repetitive and you quickly find common patterns, but no titles to refer to.
Syntopic reading can also bring disillusionment: once you have read “the” book on a subject you’ll notice that other books on the subject or touching upon it are a bleak extract of it at best, and mostly bullshit at worst.
And then you start to question all the knowledge you thought you’d gained from the books you read that weren’t “the” books.
It’s similar to being an expert in a field and shaking your head when a newspaper article completely butchers that subject. Do you then still trust that newspaper’s articles on anything else?
That is not how Mortimer J. Adler defines syntopic reading in "How to Read a Book".
For him, Syntopic Reading is about finding a new understanding that didn't exist in any of the books you are reading, but that you, as a reader, create.
My take of Adler's method is that, if you can't find a new message in the books you are reading either:
1) you aren't putting enough effort in your reading
2) the books are not good enough (hence not worth your time to read)
I would say that once you read “the” book on some topic (or a series of such books) and then encounter snippets of the material here and there, you (I) begin to notice how much information is recycled and repackaged for different audiences, or like you say becomes “bleak extract at best, and mostly bullshit at worst.”
In the case of the Phoenix project, you may be misattributing what were references to Goldratt’s The Goal (almost certainly if the book is outside the technology space). Really the reference is to the underlying model, Theory of Constraints in that case. Could be happening for other examples where the book/author isn’t the primary reference.
You are right of course, it’s just theory of constraints applied to software. I did read The Goal first before those two :)
My observation has been that theory of constraints is a hidden secret in engineering and most people instead refer to the devops/phoenix version of it.
I don’t understand how synoptic reading is different from traditional research.
You just read in depth different approaches to the same / similar problem. At some point you build experience and you can classify fast a new publication as good or bs.
The in depth studying of a critical volume of literature is a prerequisite for one to build an understanding of what is worthy and what is trash.
A similar effect can be found with Grit, Fogg’s Behavior Model, Superforecasting, and most Gladwel books.
On the coding side, I’ve only noticed this with Pragmatic Programmer, Clean Code, and maybe Phoenix/Unicorn project. Could I don’t read enough of those or they’re too focused on specific technologies instead of broad ideas … or I get too much of my technical reading from blogs and twitter. Those do get repetitive and you quickly find common patterns, but no titles to refer to.