Closing the Chasm

摘要

In most big bookstores, the books you see first don't last. They're out on the front tables for you to sample. If they sell well, there's no guarantee they'll stay on the shelves for months, much less years. Even the biggest bookstores don't have enough room to store a fraction of the new books that wash in and out, like foam on a tide. Those that stay are part of the culture. You expect to find them at a bookstore because their appeal endures. With fiction, the appeal may last years, decades or centuries. Nonfiction books, however, bear the burden of relevance. Among the nonfiction categories, business books don't age as rapidly as sports and travel titles, unless they're about technology. Books about technology trends and companies tend to age as well as last week's meat. When I look at my bookshelves, I wince at titles like The Big Tech Score and Managing Inter@ctivity. It's not that any of these books contain bad information; they simply speak of a time that is going or gone.