Here’s a hypothesis I came across recently:

Some books have a centripetal force – they suck you in from other books.

Others have a centrifugal force – they spin you out into other books.

For instance, The Little Prince is a centripetal book to me. I often see it referred to in blog posts, quotes and other books. For this reason, I find myself returning to it, time and time again. It continuously sucks me in.

On the other hand, The Psychology of Money: Timeless Lessons on Wealth, Greed, and Happiness is a centrifugal book. This piece draws insights from other books and encourages the reader to look for them. After reading it, I found myself hungry for the origin of these ideas.

Both types books are valuable; neither is necessarily better than the other. Furthermore, these categories may differ from person to person: one reader’s centrifugal book could be another’s centripetal and vice versa. Some books could even do both sucking in and spinning out.

In my experience, I find non-fiction books tend to be the centrifugal type. These often summarise ideas from different areas and encourage the reader to explore more. In the other hand, fiction books tend to be more centripetal. There’s something brilliant about a good story that seems to suck people in from all walks of life.

There are also some books that do neither of these things: they don’t move you in any way or spin you at all.

These books are to be avoided.