I used to have a heuristic where if I couldn’t summarize the book in a good way, then the book was probably good. When someone asked me, “What’s The Brothers Karamazov about?” it was hard for me to give a good summary. Even though my memory of the book has faded, it is still one of my favorite books.

I didn’t really understand the mechanism behind the rule, but I think I know now. I’m reading this book on complexity. It explains Seth Lloyd’s proposal of 3 dimensions for measuring complexity: 1) How hard is it to describe? 2) How hard is it to create? and 3) What is its degree of organization? [Note: I’ve lifted these verbatim from Mitchell’s book.]

I can connect this back to my heuristic on books. I think the books that were hard for me to describe were more complex. They didn’t have simple characters and simple plots. As a high school student, I liked more complex books because I was a smart kid who wanted more challenging reading material. Moreover, books that aren’t simple have more to say about the human condition because they mirror real life better.