
Ask HN: Are books worth it? - miguelrochefort
I have read less than 50 books in my life and probably less than 5 books in the past 10 years.<p>Growing up with the Internet, I always assumed that everything could be found for free online.<p>I spend most of my day reading online articles&#x2F;conversations, watching videos, and listening to podcasts. I have thousands of non-fiction (mostly self-improvement) books in my reading list on GoodReads, but almost never bother to read any. I assume that the best part of the best books will surface in daily conversations, YouTube videos, CliffsNotes, podcasts, Reddit posts&#x2F;comments, blog articles, etc. I even find myself reading the comments and not reading the article most of the time. I&#x27;m fine with bullet point style summaries and don&#x27;t care much about the fluff that fills most books I&#x27;ve read in the past.<p>Up until recently, I didn&#x27;t think I was missing out. I thought that online content was roughly equivalent to 80% of what I&#x27;d get from reading actual books for 20% of the effort. I also thought that most books probably don&#x27;t age very well and that most of the bleeding edge stuff could only be found online. But I&#x27;m starting to wonder if that&#x27;s true. I&#x27;m starting to see people online mention that books are infinitely better than online content. I read that millionaires and billionaires read tons of books. I wonder if I&#x27;m missing out?<p>One issue for me is that books are a very big time investment. I read very slowly and I don&#x27;t remember everything I read either. The last few books I read were mostly filled with fluff, anecdotes, stories, jokes, and trivialities. Even if I wanted to read books, I just don&#x27;t know which ones I should start with, out of the 1000 &quot;must-read&quot; books in my reading list.<p>Are books worth it? Is it more true for some fields than others? Is it more true for older books? Isn&#x27;t most of the information from books freely available online? Am I missing out?
======
oneplane
Online content is often low-quality, highly commercial in nature and very
ephemeral. Books, the real kind, when they are good can stay with you for a
very long time.

A well-written story, be it fiction or non-fiction can have a long lastig
impact and even an emotional connection that I have personally never
experienced with anything 'online'.

If you don't read books, you are missing out. Even only 1 or 2 books a year is
a world of difference, even if those books aren't the best ones out there.
This (as posted before) also has to do with the time investment and realtime
one-to-one (you and the book) time.

If you are having a hard time getting started, or keep reading a book to the
finish, start with something light and perhaps... generic. Like a Dan Brown
book. (and I know opinions vary wildly) Even a smaller book that might be more
targeted as a children's book such as Neil Gaiman's 'Ocean at the end of the
lane' are perfectly fine to get something going. Not everything will engage
you, but making it easier for yourself to get started and enjoy some reading
time is all it takes to enrich yourself. (which is perhaps not the best
wording... but I'm no writer)

~~~
ipython
+1 all the way. Online content is optimized not for quality but rather for
clicks and interaction. As someone who grew up during the 90s the hope was
that better quality would lead to more clicks. Clearly that’s not the case.

As a technical author myself, I can speak to the effort required to create a
book versus a blog post. A book requires you to think holistically about a
topic- building a comprehensive outline of what you intend to cover. Then you
have to write. A lot. If you’re a good writer (for example take w. Richard
Stevens) your text will include not just the information you wish to convey
but _context_ around that topic which is paramount to a deeper understanding
of the topic.

Finally you go through a vetting process with other people in the industry.
You’re challenged on your assertions, they help you correct errors, etc. Here
the Wikipedia model may actually be superior as you are not limited in time or
selection of experts for the tech editing phase.

In contrast, blog posts or tweets are optimized for speed and engagement.
Superficial yet sensational topics are emphasized, context is lost due to lack
of time and space to write, and the quality of the writing is highly variable.

Books are excellent and in fact I wrote my first tech book expressly because I
found no good online resources for what I needed to know. I highly encourage
people to read. It provides an excellent counterbalance to blogs and tweets.

~~~
oneplane
Regarding the technical writing, that is indeed one of the very best examples
when conveying an idea with a mindset or process on how that came to be (to
varying degrees). It's not just a summary of facts or a list of tasks, but
when well written it contains the core, the context, and how the core out of
that context came to be. If the reader then reads it, they will not only learn
the subject, but often also how that information was obtained in the first
place and get a sense as to how the information was optimised for the subject,
what was dismissed (and why) and often gives you a transfer of thought that
allows you to continue to build on that instead of having to do the same exact
learning process over again to get (and this is a lucky pun) on the same page.

Conveying an idea is hard enough as it is with the languages we have, but
writing it down and having to think ahead of time what the reader might think,
might already know, and might want to do afterwards, or ponder about upon
finishing the work, that is a very underestimated specialism. It enables not
only knowledge transfer but practically brings the level of understanding of
the reader(s) to a new minimum level (being a higher level than before but not
everyone might get the same out of it).

I work with a group of people in tech with varying backgrounds, ages and plans
for the future, but when we need to make sure everyone has at least some equal
foundation to start off from, we have at least one technical writeup (some
chapters in a book, or a series of well written articles) combined with
exercises to make sure that that base layer is there. You cannot really do
that effectively if you were to try that with... tweets. Or just videos. Or a
simple workshop. Getting somewhere still requires real work and real
(time/attention) investment. Well written and researched information is at the
center of this.

Every now and then I read a technical book on a subject I am not familiar with
or never had a real-life purpose for. For example, a lot of projects never had
to use a custom data format with custom parsers, or a new domain-specific
language. Yet reading a well written book on GNU Bison can be fantastic. (i.e.
the Flex & Bison one from O'Reilly) Even if you end up never writing a .y file
or having a need for a custom syntax parsing system. Strangely enough, while
the subject is different, and the goal is different, it can be just as
entertaining or maybe even enriching as reading The Gargoyle (by Andrew
Davidson) 15 years ago. No relation in content or context except that both are
books.

------
habosa
Yes.

I have always loved books. I read about 30-40 a year, mostly fiction with a
few non-fiction thrown in.

Novels are the closest thing I know to a form of magic. A good author can
completely encode an entire world full of people on 300 pages of black and
white text. And when they do it well, it literally never expires. I read
mostly books from the last 50 years but I think the best example of a book as
magic is Don Quixote. It was published in 1605. You can pick it up today and
relate to the characters, enjoy the plot, and laugh at their jokes. Most other
forms of popular media go stale in a year or maybe a decade.

You will also find that reading great writers improves your ability to think
and speak. The true masters, someone like John Steinbeck or Gabriel Garcia
Marquez, construct sentences so beautifully that they can stop up in your
tracks. After reading enough some of this will rub off on you and you'll be
shocked at small bursts of eloquence in your thoughts and speech.

So I strongly advise everyone to read at least a few good novels a year. You
won't regret it.

As for non-fiction I think the need is a little less obvious. Many times after
reading a 400 page book I think "I'd probably have preferred a 30-page article
on the subject". However that's not always true and many NF authors earn their
word count. But I can totally see the argument for the internet as replacement
for NF.

~~~
exegete
How do you decide which books to read?

~~~
maroonblazer
Awards are a great place to start. National Book Awards, Man Booker Prize,
Pulitzer, etc.

~~~
habosa
Yeah the Man Booker in particular tends to be a good source to find my
favorite novels.

------
smacktoward
_> I have thousands of non-fiction (mostly self-improvement) books in my
reading list_

“An honest bookstore would post the following sign above its ‘self-help’
section: ‘For true self-help, please visit our philosophy, literature, history
and science sections, find yourself a good book, read it, and think about
it.’”

— Roger Ebert ([https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/larger-than-
life-1996](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/larger-than-life-1996))

~~~
carapace
The people in the self-help section need something _else_. Those things
(philosophy, literature, history and science) are the luxury of folks who
aren't struggling with e.g. depression, abuse, drugs & alcohol, co-dependency,
etc.

It's a little like, "Have you tried not having a broken leg?"

Honestly, you're _lucky_ if the only personal problems you have can be solved
by philosophy, literature, history and science.

(I had crippling depression for many years and was cured in a single session
of hypnotherapy by a guy who publishes "self-help" books, so, while YMMV, I'm
a _lil_ defensive. I'm sure he meant well.)

~~~
coldtea
> _The people in the self-help section need something else. Those things
> (philosophy, literature, history and science) are the luxury of folks who
> aren 't struggling with e.g. depression, abuse, drugs & alcohol, co-
> dependency, etc._

Actually it's the inverse. A healthy dose of philosophy, literature, history
and science are what people suffering from "depression, abuse, drugs &
alcohol, co-dependency" can use to liberate themselves, understand their
situation, and get above it.

The rest (99% of the self help shelves) is snake oil sold by marketeers to the
gullible...

~~~
marcoseliziario
Hardly. High culture takes a level of attention that someone who is struggling
in life hardly will be able to attain. Moreover, philosophy is concerned with
truth, and truth can sometimes be brutal. It would be almost criminal to
recommend reading Nietzsche for someone who lost their job, got cheated and
divorced and has some serious disease.

~~~
DataGata
Well obviously you wouldn't do Nietzche (though I think you probably could).
Meditations is probably the book to read in those cases.

------
tarboreus
Books shouldn't be about absorbing "information." Think of them as
intellectual obstacle courses. A good book should challenge you, either with
radically new ideas or radically new viewpoints. I basically can't do serious
thinking (i.e. not administrative or programming thinking but broader thinking
about ideas) without reading.

On the other hand, you're not going to get this experience from "Rich Dad,
Poor Dad" or whatever, and if you haven't built these muscles you probably
shouldn't be starting with Gulliver's Travels or Walter Ong or some other
really challenging thing.

First of all, throw out your self help books and just read Thinking Fast and
Slow, which 80% of self-help books have ripped off for the past 20 years. It's
more boringer (I have a PhD so I can say things like that), but it at least
isn't just a bunch of cute anecdotes for an executive to amuse themselves with
while there's no wifi on a plane.

Second, start building those muscles with the few people who are both
challenging and accessible. George Orwell is great for this, read Homage to
Catalonia and get a collection of his essays. Read a few Beckett plays, try
Endgame and scratch your head at that shit. Read some Neil Postman and be
like, yeah, he was right about technology.

The idea with books isn't to make yourself know more stuff, though that does
happen to some extent. The idea is to improve your character and model the
world better. You're increasing WIS, not INT. If you're feeling impatience
when you pick up a book, if you get that feeling after three pages that you
need to put it down and move on to reading 40 news sites, that's your weak-ass
WIS. It basically means your brain is flabby. You're like the person at the
gym who hasn't been in 4 years. Just push through, give it a week or two and
you won't have that feeling.

P.S. People, stop calling things "content." "Content" is what you put the ads
around. Goddamn civilizational collapse.

~~~
sjg007
Thinking Fast and Slow came out in 2011. Also there is recent work showing
that some of its conclusions may be flawed due to failure to replicate.

Self help books are not all bad. The early ones around cognitive behavioral
therapy have been proven to help in scientific studies. I would look to ones
that have scientific basis. That being said the placebo effect is very
powerful.

~~~
sixdimensional
Any recommendation for the early CBT books you mentioned?

~~~
sjg007
Feeling Good by Dr. David Burns.

~~~
adamsea
Seconded.

There is also “The dialectical behavior therapy skills workbook”.

“Changing for Good” I highly recommend in general. It’s a very straightforward
description of a model for behavior change and based on research as to how
people quit smoking, both on their own and with the help of some sort of
program.

[https://hams.cc/ch5/](https://hams.cc/ch5/)

------
tiniuclx
I believe that the difference between sitting down and reading a book for an
hour vs. browsing the internet is _exactly_ what makes books so valuable.

You're right, books are a lot of effort. However, they teach something that
internet articles & videos don't, and that is delayed gratification.

In the digital age, everything is fighting for your attention and it is
getting harder and harder to actually focus on anything. Clickbait titles is
perhaps the most obvious manifestation, but you can see it in videos as well -
many popular videos are edited in a specific way (no pauses between sentences,
cut after cut after cut) that grabs your attention as often as possible.

Books let you practice tuning all that noise out and focusing on a single task
for a long time, while still providing entertainment. For a knowledge worker,
to be able to focus at this level is a very valuable ability!

Deep Work by Cal Newport is a non-fiction book that goes into more detail
about some of these ideas concerning focus in the contemporary era.

Another great non-fiction book that really couldn't be presented in another
medium is "The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and
Religion" by Jonathan Haidt. The Righteous Mind is not an easy read because
the ideas presented are complex and wide-reaching. It takes a lot of time to
go through and digest, but it is definitely worth it. The Righteous Mind has
had perhaps the most impact upon my understanding of humanity and politics out
of anything I've ever read.

If you want to see what it's like to read for fun, check out the Broken Earth
trilogy by N. K. Jemisin - this is probably the best pacing I have ever
experienced in a fantasy series.

And if you think science fiction would be more your thing, try to to take a
stab at reading Dune by Frank Herbert. This is a sci-fi classic that
essentially codified the genre, and some of the ideas in the series are what
made Star Wars the phenomenon it is today. I think you can't get better proof
that books can stand the test of time than this!

~~~
samiur1204
Can we be friends?

~~~
tiniuclx
Sure :)

As a side-note, I think that mastering a musical instrument is a good thing to
do for some of the same reasons: it teaches discipline and focus. I've found
that playing the guitar is a good foil to programming because it engages a
completely different part of my brain that hasn't been engaged during the
working day, and it also lets the analytical part of me relax.

~~~
samiur1204
I say that because I'm a big fan of all your recommendations, and also think
you recommended them in a way that doesn't come off as patronising or
condescending. Idk what your preferred method of communication is, but if you
can do Twitter, please drop me a message on Twitter @samiur1204.

~~~
tiniuclx
Done!

~~~
trwhite
We're witnessing history folks!

------
madhadron
> I read very slowly and I don't remember everything I read either.

Unless you have dyslexia, this is a skill issue. You're just not very good at
reading yet. The non-fiction that you're going to get through with this skill
level probably isn't going to be that valuable.

> Is it more true for older books?

Not exactly. It's rather that we've had time to figure out which older books
are worth keeping around. If people keep reading a work for two thousand
years, there's probably something to it.

> Isn't most of the information from books freely available online?

Oh goodness, no, unless you've gotten past books into primary sources, in
which case, yes, it's mostly online, but you need to have specialist knowledge
to engage with it at all.

The good news is that, if you learn to read well, finding the right books,
usually those meant for training specialists, can get you up to speed at a
remarkable rate. I usually explain it as someone who is a crappy player in a
professional league is going to be amazing in an amateur context.

------
dkarras
I despise reading analog books. Just sitting down calmly and committing time
to read pages and pages is not my thing. And I don't like fiction.

I had a similar mindset to you, had bookmarked tens of self improvement books
for the areas in life I struggled with, also books for entrepreneurship etc.
But I assumed most of what they contain would surface in online conversations
etc.

I hate wasting time, so last year I gave audio books a try. I don't like doing
chores or commutes not because I don't physically like doing them but because
the time it takes to do them - it feels like waste. So I thought "why not
listen to audio books while doing them to take the edge off?"

So I started listening to the books I wanted to read while doing the dishes
etc. I think last year I've listened to more books than I have ever read in my
entire life prior.

I can confidently say that books, if you choose them correctly, are worth it.
The curation of content and the layers of depth built into the content
(afforded to the author because of the long format of books) gives you a very
different experience.

Yes, you can find bits and pieces of wisdom from them online, you'll bump into
some of the stuff that is in there. But this idea clashes with your (and my)
"efficiency" argument. It would take you years to bump into all the wisdom
found in some important books randomly while browsing online. By just
listening to them while you are otherwise wasting your time with mundane daily
tasks you can be orders of magnitude more efficient with acquiring that info.

~~~
HereBeBeasties
> I hate wasting time, so last year I gave audio books a try

Interesting. I have exactly the opposite reaction to audio books. I hate
wasting time, and audio books don't let you skim sections that aren't of much
interest (essential if you want to read a lot of non-fiction IMO), and
generally take massively longer. I can read a good deal quicker than people
talk. I dunno, maybe 5x speed or something?

Treating reading the printed word as a waste of time is madness.

~~~
giaour
The big time advantage audiobooks have over the printed word is that can
listen while doing something visual but relatively mindless (e.g., driving,
cleaning, yard work, etc.).

~~~
ThatGeoGuy
Honestly the more I read I find this attitude to be exactly the opposite of
how I feel. When I'm trying to read a book, I need to be immersed in it. I
don't want it to be a mindless distraction, because I am putting 100% of my
focus into driving, or cleaning, or yard work. Driving perhaps is the one that
gets me the most, I can't appreciate fiction at all while driving because I
have to keep my imagination in check so I don't kill someone veering off into
space. And non-fiction, well, I have never been able to digest hard topics if
I'm distracted by wistful activities.

~~~
giaour
I had to stop trying to listen to a couple books last year because they were
too immersive to be safe driving accompaniments. I specifically seek out
mediocre books to make driving bearable (my commute would drive me insane
otherwise)

------
josephwegner
I recently did a book club at work, reading the book Being Wrong. At one point
the book shared some research that supported the notion that children largely
engage in play as a method of flirting with error and mistake making. Mistakes
made in play are easily forgiven and quickly learned from. Adults play
progressively less because there are fewer safe areas in which we can
regularly err.

Whether that line of logic is accurate or not, it did help me to realize that
in my own life I have very few opportunities to test my (mis)understandings of
the world around me and find where I'm wrong. I desperately hide in my safe
zones.

I've recently found reading books a good way to create fresh safe zones where
I can view the world from different perspectives and test my beliefs. People
of all different sorts in all different cultures from nearly all time periods
have written books, and often written them well enough to transport the reader
into their reality. It may not be "play", but I'm greatly enjoying the diverse
worlds I have recently been reading myself into.

I don't find many internet writings to have this level of depth that allows me
to rethink myself as I read.

~~~
hippich
Like OP, I also read very few books in my life. I started trying recently, but
more for therapeutic and experimental purposes.

Surprisingly, there idea you describe (haven't read Being Wrong, so only using
your comment as a description) is something that occurred to me as a result of
reading stuff online. And if that would be a totally novel idea for me, your
comment would catch my attention and I would start searching for content
published online to either confirm it or not (most likely academic papers)

So to me comments section is like bunch of clues, off which I would research
further if it catches my attention.

------
funkaster
Short answer: yes, you're missing. Books (usually) have more curated content,
have more research and are better at keeping you focused.

Here are some good pointers on how to start/improve your reading, using a
medium you're already into (podcast):

[https://www.npr.org/2019/11/21/781673493/how-to-read-more-
bo...](https://www.npr.org/2019/11/21/781673493/how-to-read-more-books)

[https://www.npr.org/2019/11/26/782946619/not-a-regular-
reade...](https://www.npr.org/2019/11/26/782946619/not-a-regular-
reader-4-strategies-to-make-reading-a-habit)

Also, it's totally fine to not like a book: just start reading it, or skip
chapters, etc. Number of books read also means nothing, just read what you
want to read.

Finally, fiction/novels are also a great source of wisdom/inspiration. Don't
disregard them. Some of my favorites: the Foundation Series, LOTR (of course
:P), old books by Stephen King, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky.

------
pubby
I have noticed in the past 10 years online content has become very click-
baited and regurgitated. Sites are designed to steal your attention with
information coming as a secondary concern.

Books, for the most part, avoid these issues. On average they are of higher-
quality, contain more research, and are better for developing your focus. So
read books!

With that said, I also think people use the amount of books they read to
value-signal their intelligence. Don't worry about that shit, worry about
finding high-quality content that's worth reading.

~~~
majos
I agree on all points. I want to expand on two.

> On average [books] are of higher-quality, contain more research, and are
> better for developing your focus. So read books!

Along the same lines, the time and mental investment required to read a book,
for me, produces a unique kind of immersive return. For example, I’m currently
reading John Dos Passos’ _USA_ trilogy. It is 1000+ pages of fiction about
1900-1930 America, and it takes time. But that time has given me a rich
picture of what the period was like, written by a guy who lived it. Both
because I’m spending time _and_ actively thinking while reading. It’s hard for
me to get the same thing from shorter-form or visual media.

> With that said, I also think people use the amount of books they read to
> value-signal their intelligence. Don't worry about that shit, worry about
> finding high-quality content that's worth reading.

Particular around new year/year in review time, I see many people online
talking about reading x books per year. But reading books is not like running
miles. It’s definitely about quality over quantity.

To take the example a little further, most people probably wouldn’t brag about
seeing 1000 paintings this year.

If you love to read many books then more power to you. There are certainly
several people I respect that read hundreds of books annually. But for me, I
think a couple of quality books per month is already a ton of good input, and
I hope people don’t get caught up in “# books read” as another metric to
simply pump up.

~~~
nsomaru
On this point,

> But for me, I think a couple of quality books per month is already a ton of
> good input, and I hope people don’t get caught up in “# books read” as
> another metric to simply pump up.

Schopenhauer puts it well:

"As the biggest library if it is in disorder is not as useful as a small but
well-arranged one, so you may accumulate a vast amount of knowledge but it
will be of far less value than a much smaller amount if you have not thought
it over for yourself."

------
austhrow743
>I have thousands of non-fiction (mostly self-improvement)

>and I don't remember everything I read either.

You know that if you're trying to learn then just consuming information, by
itself, is a terrible waste of time right? Doesn't matter if its book,
article, or video.

Understanding, active recall, and spaced repetition do the heavy lifting when
it comes to learning. Consuming the information is just step one. If that's
all you do then yeah, it's going to fall out of your brain pretty much
straight away. That happens for everyone.

And that's just for knowing facts. Actually putting it in to practice is a
whole other thing. Are your self help books all about how to spend most of
your day reading online articles/conversations, watching videos, and listening
to podcasts better? Or is there something else you want to be doing with most
of your day instead? If the latter, actually trying to do it would be a far
better use of time.

------
phugoid
A good book can immerse you in someone else's way of thinking, in their world.
I think the time it takes to read is an essential part of that process, in the
same way that watching a two-hour movie can move you more than the 20 second
preview that gives it all away.

For example, I ran across this gem recently:

"In the same way as people who've been to a concert carry about with them the
melody and haunting quality of pieces they've just heard, interfering with
their thinking and preventing them from concentrating on anything serious, so
the talk of snobs and parasites sticks in our ears long after we've heard it.
And it's far from easy to eradicate these haunting notes from the memory; they
stay with us, lasting on and on, coming back to us every so often."

I would never connect those two ideas. It's beautiful. The writer is Seneca, a
Roman who was born around the time of Christ. He was idealistic yet street-
smart, lofty though sometimes petty, and very opinionated. I enjoyed walking a
mile in his sandals.

------
carapace
I'm a bibliophile, so, yes, of course I'm going to say they are "worth it".

Nevertheless, I'll admit, yes, _most_ books are worthless.

However, the books that are important are _so totally important_ that it's
almost impossible to overstate how important they are.

Yet, there's no way to tell in advance _which_ books those will turn out to
be, for an individual, for a society, and for societies that come after. (A
few books are thousands of years old and still relevant and important to this
very day!)

Go! Search for treasure! (Cue theme of "Reading Rainbow"....)

~~~
netman21
Love this. I used to go to this giant book fair in West Bloomfield, Michigan
(USA). I marveled at how many books there were that, at first glance, were
horribly written. Yet, I could always find a handful of truly great books. A
book can be like a magic mushroom. One dose and your outlook changes for ever.

------
ljm
If I could suggest one thing, I would consider nuking your 1000-long list of
'must reads', and then find one book you really like the sound of. Find some
good fiction that fits into a genre you enjoy; maybe even try graphic novels
if superhero-style stuff is your thing.

Then, make it a habit to read out of enjoyment and not as an info gathering
exercise, or reading for the sake of reading. Take the book to bed with you
and read a few pages or a chapter before you doze off; read a few pages when
you've got downtime instead of browsing the internet. At the end of the day,
you're just choosing to enjoy reading from a different source.

But still, nuke the epic list from orbit. You'll likely never get around to
all of them due to the overwhelming size of the backlog. Your personal must-
reads will return to you again, if they're important enough to you. Meanwhile,
you've just reduced the scope to enjoying just a few books rather than all of
them.

If you still struggle, try audiobooks or readings of public domain works.

Two personal examples:

\- I don't give two hoots about Lord of The Rings. I read some of the books
but it just wasn't "me", so I stopped because it wasn't really speaking to me.
I saw one of the films and similarly didn't care.

\- I don't care about Star Wars and haven't watched any of it. Same reason;
wasn't my thing.

Popular culture would ostracise me for not enjoying these two works, but
popular culture doesn't dictate what I should and shouldn't spend my time
enjoying. So, do yourself the same favour and try and find what you enjoy, and
take it from there.

------
revicon
For me, I maxed out all the Sci-Fi movies and TV shows out there and wanted
more and discovered early on that Sci-Fi books are 1000 times better than
whats out there in movie land. My problem is I have a hard time keeping track
of where I am in all the book series I've been reading as new books sometimes
take a year or more to come out depending on the authors.

Here's a couple resources I recommend...

[https://www.reddit.com/r/printSF](https://www.reddit.com/r/printSF) \- Sci-fi
book subreddit

[https://www.goodreads.com/list/tag/sci-
fi](https://www.goodreads.com/list/tag/sci-fi) \- Sci-fi books on Goodreads

[https://www.scifibooklove.com](https://www.scifibooklove.com) \- My (small)
sci-fi book review site

~~~
zwilliamson
Your book review site looks nice. Thanks for sharing.

However, the order of books in Alastair's Revelation Space series doesn't
match up with I found on Goodreads

[https://www.scifibooklove.com/book_series/revelation_space/](https://www.scifibooklove.com/book_series/revelation_space/)
vs [https://www.goodreads.com/series/56392-revelation-
space](https://www.goodreads.com/series/56392-revelation-space)

I recently started the series and went with Redemption Ark as book 2
(according to Goodreads) Hope I'm not missing too much going with the
Goodreads ordering :/

~~~
revicon
Weird, the Wikipedia book order and the Goodreads order don't match...

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revelation_Space_universe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revelation_Space_universe)

[https://www.goodreads.com/series/56392-revelation-
space](https://www.goodreads.com/series/56392-revelation-space)

When in doubt I'm heading over to the author's website...

[http://www.alastairreynolds.com/novels/](http://www.alastairreynolds.com/novels/)

His take on this is: " The reading order isn’t that critical, in my view, but
it probably improves things to read REVELATION SPACE, REDEMPTION ARK and
ABSOLUTION GAP in that sequence. THE PREFECT (AURORA RISING) and ELYSIUM FIRE
may be read alone or jointly, but should best be read in the above order.
CHASM CITY, as well as the collections DIAMOND DOGS, TURQUOISE DAYS and
GALACTIC NORTH, can be read at any point."

------
woofcat
So I'm presuming you're limiting this discussion to technical books, and not
fiction, etc.

As if you're not limiting it to non-fiction, then yes you're missing out.

If you're limiting it to non-fiction, then yes. You're still missing out. Some
concepts take more than a blog entry to understand fully. You might get some
aspect of a concept but not all the facets.

------
CptFribble
Reading books is more than just looking at words on paper instead of a screen.
At least in fiction, the process of understanding the world an author has
created makes the story completely personal to you in a way that a movie never
can be, because the imagined version of the settings and events is completely
your own.

In this way, when a really well done book impacts you with some profound
lesson about life or the human condition, it hits a million times harder
because you've been living in that book's world and are emotionally invested.

The power of a good book is more than just ordinary transmission of
information, it's delivering profound thoughts, emotions, and ideas packaged
inside the context required to understand them.

------
LMMojo
My speed in reading as well as my endurance (amount of time I was able to read
in one sitting) greatly increased when I switched to an e-reader. I found that
the stress of reading small type was impacting my ability to read quickly as
well as affecting how long I could read before my brain started to shutdown
due to mental exhaustion.

Switching to an e-reader allowed me to increase the text to a comfortable size
without increasing the size of the thing (book) I was reading. Sure, you can
buy books in large print, but they are usually available for a premium, you
can't always but what you want in large print, and either the books are huge
or they're abridged.

------
ivan_ah
The way I see it, non-fiction books are all about distillation of information.
Yes most of the information from books is freely available online in some
other form, but you'll have to dig for it in many places, and learn from many
narrators.

The benefit of the book-length information product is that a single author
went through all the possible sources and used their expertise to give a
coherent story on a subject. You can think of the book as someone who read 100
blog posts for you and extracted the useful info from them.

If you have meta-learning skills like being to "orient" yourself in a new
space, and you're able to judge the quality of information sources then you
should be OK, and you don't need someone else to do the distillation for you.

Also the benefit of having the information all in one place reducing the need
for "foraging" on the internet to find info might be worth the time saving.

------
netman21
As an author I am encouraged by all the great responses here. In addition to
writing a book a year I read about 50. My question for OP: How do you learn
anything if you are not reading books? Sure, you can learn a lot about a
subject online. When I write a book I spend about 6 months reading everything
I can find (including books). Then I organize what I have learned and present
it (I hope) in an easy to absorb manner. A reader can learn everything I know
about a subject in 4-6 hours. Want to learn about the Cold War? Read Gaddis'
seminal book on it. Want to learn about WWII? Read Winston Churchill's five
book series that won the Nobel prize for literature? Civil War? Shelby Foote.
If history is not your thing what about biography? There are biographies of
practically every founder of great tech companies. (Jobs, Gates, Musk). How
about ideas? Malcolm Gladwell (Tippingpoint), Michael Lewis (Mondeyball). Or
maybe break into reading with fiction. Give yourself a present of the complete
Lord of the Rings. If you liked the movies be prepared to love the books. If
you hated the movies, no problem, the books are far better. OR science
fiction. Read all of Heinlein's books for young adults. Start with Double Star
then read Have Space Suit Will Travel. A Door Into Summer speaks to any
engineer. Tunnel In the Sky is the classic survival story. When you are hooked
on Heinlein read The Moon is a Harsh Mistress; it only takes a chapter to get
used to his interesting take on what English of the future will sound like.

I hope you are encouraged by all the great reasons listed in the rest of the
comments. I for one live to read!

------
peterlk
> I assume that the best part of the best books will surface in daily
> conversations, YouTube videos, CliffsNotes, podcasts, Reddit posts/comments,
> blog articles, etc

I don't think this is true. In theory, you may be able to find all the
information contained in the books, but it's drowning in garbage. The benefit
of books is that the information has been distilled for you. Good books
distill information better than bad books.

> One issue for me is that books are a very big time investment. I read very
> slowly and I don't remember everything I read either.

I hardly read books any more, though I do enjoy a day of reading in the sun
when it's warm. I listen to audiobooks while I'm traveling, working out, or
doing housework.

> I have thousands of non-fiction (mostly self-improvement) books in my
> reading list on GoodReads, but almost never bother to read any.

Different folks will tell you different things, but for me, the following
self-help content covered most of what I've read to date:

* Any Alan Watts lecture series - I listened to "Out of your mind" (listen to the whole thing) * The Book of Joy (Dalai Lama and Desmond TuTu) * Never split the Difference (Chris Voss) * The hard thing about hard things (Ben Horowitz)

And then read (or listen to) whatever strikes your fancy.

The concentrated focus of books makes them stick better, in my opinion, than
blog posts, online commentary, etc.

------
Lucadg
You're missing out. I think it has to do with depth. A real world parallel: I
recently travelled by car with no internet access with a friend for 3 days.
The level and depth of the conversation was surprisingly high because we could
build on each precedent layer. No interruptions meant a higher architecture,
so to speak. Books can take you in places nothing else can.

~~~
Gene_Parmesan
Exactly. For good or bad, reading a book is essentially an act of
conversation-at-a-distance with the author. Reading is very much an active
activity, as opposed to, say, watching television. The TV shows you all there
is to the story in pictures; almost no imagination required. A book,
meanwhile, requires you and the author to work together to build up whatever
structures they're trying to create in your brain. It's really fascinating
from a meta/philosophical sense.

So a great book is like a great conversationalist; it can build a vibrant
world of rich complexity, whether fiction or non-fiction. I would list Godel,
Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid as one of these. Read that book and then
imagine the author trying to present its complexities in a series of blog
posts.

But a bad book is as bad as a bad conversationalist. Reading a bad fiction
book will make you feel like you're watching campy soaps, or trying to listen
to an incoherent storyteller; reading a bad non-fiction book will either make
you wish you had just read an article on the topic, or worse, will make you
feel manipulated or lied to.

------
BrandoElFollito
I come from the academic world where the right references were (and still are)
a big thing. I spent long hours on libraries when gathering information (from
when I was a kid to when preparing my PhD in physics).

Today my children, when preparing some presentations for school, rely
exclusively on Internet, starting with Wikipedia.

I told them that one needs to cross check sources and whatnot. To this we went
together to our library to do this the right way.

What a nightmare. We lost so much time going through books and books to find
the averzge size of a horse, or how Versailles was built.

All this was readily available on internet, from zillion sources. From
Encyclopedia Britannica and from the blog of John Doe who thought that horses
weighted 2000 ks.

So yes, for non-fiction books are not worth it. Once someone learns to be
skeptical (which, by the way, the old "books are sanctuaries" approach will
not teach) then Internet is the way to go.

~~~
jackdbd
> So yes, for non-fiction books are not worth it. Once someone learns to be
> skeptical (which, by the way, the old "books are sanctuaries" approach will
> not teach) then Internet is the way to go.

I agree. I have been reading/listening to 60+ books a year (~60% books, 40%
audiobooks on Audible) for the past 3 years, and I rarely find a tech book
more valuable that a collection of blog posts of authors that I _already know
and trust_. I actually find that a good blog post with many insightful
comments has much more depth of a book. A nice exception would be one of these
short books by O'Reilly
([https://gist.github.com/augbog/d65f6600188fece854cb341734c5f...](https://gist.github.com/augbog/d65f6600188fece854cb341734c5fd12)).
I always reach for them when I want a quick overview of a technology I'm not
familiar with.

Many other non-fiction books - e.g. almost all self-help books - are also not
worth reading, and you could summarize them in a few pages.

A few tips:

\- try Audible if you don't find the time to sit and read a book. I always
listen to an audiobook when I go for a walk or do some light exercise.

\- read book summaries with something like Blinkist
([https://www.blinkist.com](https://www.blinkist.com)) before deciding to read
a book.

\- don't feel guilty leaving a book unfinished. If it sucks, or if it starts
repeating itself, stop reading it.

\- in the case of a non-fiction book, always take notes.

------
foopdoopfoop
Concerning fiction only: I see books as a way to experience things that I
cannot experience in my (rather repetitive) "real" life otherwise.

I don't necessarily mean this in terms of the fantastical but also in terms of
more pedestrian books. I still get to connect with characters (people) in ways
I wouldn't in real life, experience emotions that terminals aren't very good
at evoking, and have thoughts that wouldn't have otherwise occurred to me.

I don't really remember what I read very well. I can't quote some famous
passage and after a few months my memory of the book is reduced to basically a
blur. Since HN is ever pragmatic, one has to ask what exactly I'm walking away
with in the end. I think reading (fiction) gradually imparts you with a wider
soundstage through which to view (hear) life and is generally enriching in
that sense. It also, unquestionably, makes you a better writer--good writers
are rare in technical fields and learning to write well is really sort of
arcane in some ways, so I wouldn't underestimate that. (Nor would I
underestimate the value of good writing: bad writing sullies the fuck out of
an otherwise good paper.)

Since I'm a student, I'll often have periods for many months where I don't
read a single page. But whenever I come back to reading, I always find myself
asking why I didn't keep the habit up. Reading encourages a sort of
mindfulness (almost a meditation of sorts) that I always find myself missing
once I rediscover it when I start reading again.

------
Elof
I didn’t read books for many years for a lot of the reasons you list. 2019 I
read 24 and am already almost done with my first book of the year. I think
they are worth it.

Have you tried something like audible? I discovered that I get through and
retain spoken content much better than site reading. Listening to content
makes reading enjoyable and there are so many fantastic books

~~~
Elof
If you’re interested, here’s some info about how I listen to content:
[https://medium.com/@elof/listen-to-
this-f5faace03302](https://medium.com/@elof/listen-to-this-f5faace03302)

------
sevensor
Just today, I went back to one of my old textbooks (Lathi's _Signal Processing
and Linear Systems_ ) and came out with some really important points about
Fourier analysis that I'd missed the first time around. A good, carefully
written textbook makes hard choices about context, sequence, presentation, and
level of detail. It's a coherent whole. All the information might be out there
on the internet, but the cognitive load of evaluating whether the source is
trustworthy and relevant, and of interpreting it without supporting context,
is much higher on the internet than it is with a book.

And then, there are the pleasures of fiction. I can't argue for fiction other
than to say that it's good in a way nothing else is, and you have to
experience it to understand.

If you want to try, start with good short stories. You could do worse than the
sort of "anthology of classic short stories" they sell in the bargain bin at
the used bookstore. There's often gems in there. Look for O Henry, Mark Twain,
de Maupassant, Dickens, maybe some of Balzac's shorter material. Skip anything
that doesn't grab you. Once you've developed an appetite, try more involved
works. Survivor bias operates in your favor here: 19th and early 20th century
works that we're still talking about are generally _quite_ good, and there are
quite a lot of them. Both recency and copyright law oppose you finding good
novels written in the last century. There are many, but you're more likely to
miss something good because it's not fashionable, or read something bad
because it is.

So yes. Books are worth it.

------
werber
Absolutely, just the act of removing yourself from distractions and engaging
with one piece makes you flex different brain muscles. I personally think you
should just grab something that piques your interest, football, Murder, a
beach read, whatever and give it maybe thirty minutes a day till you finish
and see if you get value from it.

------
gherkinnn
The few self help and TED-style books I read (or started to read) were utter
shite and might as well be summarised in a tweet.

The moment I really enjoyed reading was when I dropped the idea of absorbing
as much information as possible. Being comfortable with reading something that
does not immediately return some value.

What reading can uniquely offer is a conversation with a very clever mind who
might be dead for a hundred years. You can stop, pause think. Reread that
section. Put it in current context and see what you make of it. Take a break,
walk around, watch the birds and come back.

You might even find that a 10 verse poem about a blue butterfly carries more
weight than any recent self-help book.

------
cgriswald
> Even if I wanted to read books, I just don't know which ones I should start
> with, out of the 1000 "must-read" books in my reading list.

My non-fiction reading list for the past year has been filled almost
exclusively with titles plucked from HN comments. I don't consider any of them
"must reads." They're all "want reads." All of them were suggested by HN
posters with explanations as for why _that_ book is the one to read on the
subject; often followed by comments comparing that book to other books on the
subject.

Each book I chose to read was read either because the subject interested me,
or because the poster had shown that the book had changed how they viewed the
world. If you don't know where to start out of the 1000 books, just start.
Find one that interests you and read it. Maybe 1000 years from now we'll have
AI that can recommend the perfect course of books for you to read, but for
now, it isn't nearly as important to pick 'the perfect one' from the list as
it is to just start reading it. And if you don't think it has value, put it
down and pick up the next one.

------
abiro
Books are totally worth it if they interest you. I’m living on a budget and my
highest discretionary expense is books, so you know I put my money where my
mouth is.

In my previous life, I had the misfortune of attending a Prussian style law
school which lead me to compulsively attempt to memorize every text I’ve read
for years, but lately I’ve found the joy of reading again. Here are a few tips
that worked for me:

0\. Books are just objects, don’t treat them with reverence.

1\. Order every book as paperback that you come across and find interesting.
Must read lists suck. Follow your interests.

2\. Have a bias for older books. The longer a book has been relevant, the more
likely it will stay relevant (aka the Lindy principle).

3\. Don’t read books cover to cover. Start in the middle if that’s the most
interesting part and feel free skip around. Put a book down immediately if it
bores you.

4\. Surround yourself with books. Make sure you can always pick up something
interesting wherever you are. Messy book piles are a virtue.

5\. Only use ebooks for fiction or tutorial type programming books.

6\. Disregard what other people think and follow your interests. If books
don’t interest you, that’s ok too.

------
phpspacestabs
For me books are a better entertainment. I find that the long form is good
because it helps build my attention span. It's all to easy to slip to barely
being able to focus for more then a minute these days. That said here are some
tips I've found online for reading books more effectively:

-don't worry about reading speed, you will get better with practice like anything else.

-do close the book at points and try to remember what you've just read. This can help you retain the information better. Sometimes I also like to remember that my subconscious will process the info into the neural net either way so it's like 50% remembered even if I don't consciously know it my decisions are shaped by it a little bit.

-do flip through a book and read random pages before you start. This way you can avoid books that are mostly 'fluff' or that just aren't relevant to what you want to read about. (I only heard this recently and it has been fantastic!)

Personally I like to switch back and forth between a nonfiction book, like
about science or computers, and a fiction one that entertains me. That way I
get the reward book after a harder book and the cycle keeps me coming back for
more. To many textbooks sorts in a row and I get bored.

Another way to remember what you read better is to take notes while you read.
These can be annotations in the margins or on a separate piece of
paper/computer. I read that just the act of writing those things down helps
you remember even if you don't look at it again. `Mind Maps` might also be
useful to you in understanding what you learn.

One last thing you probably already know but telling someone else about what
your reading can help you practice recall and find out what parts of it your
missing like a mini oral test.

------
sharmi
An observation from a book lover who has lately fallen into the self
improvement subject, most of the books are not worth it. They all need to be
either a blog article or a novella-size at best. They are usually padded up to
reach the 300 page limit and seem like worth paying for.

It can be a disappointing ride. There seems to be mad rush to churn out books
to capitalize on the obsession for productivity and high-achievers.

On the other hand, books in your area of interest, other than self-
improvement, can delve into depths that blog posts will not have the bandwidth
to achieve. They are a joy to read. Bon voyage.

------
guidoism
I wouldn't say that books are "infinitely" better. Online content can still be
good and there are truckloads of books that are garbage. But in general it is
easier to find really good books than really good online non-book content.

When I wanted to learn about something then I usually first go to Wikipedia.
Which by the way is OMG such an amazing resource I wish I had as a kid.

Then I move on to online articles or website devoted to the subject. Then I
usually start going through books.

But here's the thing. The value of a book might be mostly just be in the
bibliography at the end. Unfortunately a lot of those books aren't at the
bookstore, aren't at archive.org, aren't at the library. So I'm forced to use
the inter-library-loan service through the library. Which by the way is an
awesome service that I just started using.

And you know what? A lot of those books are treasures.

So, no, not everything that's worth it is available online or ever at your
book store.

------
jonnypotty
I "learnt" java from youtube and got a job doing it.

Took me 2 years of experience to realise what low quality materials I had been
using. Number of youtube views is ZERO indicator of quality. I had been
mislead and held back in ways I simply couldn't understand at the time.

Doing my oracle java cert and learning the book that goes with made me
competent.

------
chadlavi
Is this a joke?

Of course books are worth it, and no, you are in no way whatsoever getting
equivalent experiences reading stuff on the internet.

Books are not a "big time commitment" any more than, say, watching a TV show
or miniseries.

This makes me really fearful for the minds of people younger than me, and I'm
only in my early 30s.

------
bathMarm0t
I am in love with books and the notion that you can talk with another person
long dead without any distortion or distraction. Some rules I abide by:

1\. Any book that you expect to read once and once only (popular science, pulp
fiction, toilet-reading) rent from the library. Keep it by your bed at night
and give-er by the lamplight.

2\. Any book that you can read, word-over-word, end-on-end, without confusion
or introspection can be consumed in condensed form. Condensed forms come in
many guises:(audio-books, blog-feeds, wiki-pages etc.)

3\. You are missing out on all the glories that are not defined by 1 and 2. A
good book should be a conversation, held at length, over time.

You asked for philosphy in another comment:

Victor Frankyl: Man in search of meaning

Marcus Aurelius: Meditations

Jung: Development of Personality, Archetypes/Aion

Nietsche: all and any

For philosophical fiction:

Goethe: Faust

Hemingway: Death in the afternoon (this was my first glimpse into why books
can provide lightness of body, displacement of time: wait for the 4th-wall-
breaking-rapport with the old woman)

David Foster Wallace:Rise Simba, Infinite Jest, etc.

[https://harpers.org/wp-
content/uploads/HarpersMagazine-2001-...](https://harpers.org/wp-
content/uploads/HarpersMagazine-2001-04-0070913.pdf)

There have been studies that your brain scans feeds and webpages differently
than text on a page. You set yourself up to not pay attention / are just
"scraping the good bits"

Someone mentioned a while back that Infinite Jest (1000 page tome + 300 pages
endnotes!) had ~50 pages that made the whole thing worth it. The immediate
following comment was "why not just read the 50 pages?". It is the context
around which we find our content that gives it worth. The internet allows you
to bypass the context.

~~~
octokatt
> There have been studies that your brain scans feeds and webpages differently
> than text on a page.

This +1. Practicing reading longform books helps your brain work on regulating
and keeping a longer and longer attention span, which can be hugely helpful.

As experiments go, it might be worth swapping for a while, and seeing if you
notice a change in attention and concentration. I notice when I stop reading
books, I get a lot more impatient and I can't focus as well. (N=1, YMMV)

------
newjobseeker
I grew up before the Internet, and I used to read a lot more. Being online has
made me have very little focus for reading anything of length. I have spent
time recently trying to undo this. I would say you are missing out and
encourage you to make time to read some of the classics. I know it's hard to
find which ones to read, it will just have to be some trial and error (not all
the classics are good imo -- it's impossible for me to get into any of the
Russians). I tend towards American or English classics, I suggest one of my
all time favourites, it's a short one "My Antonia" by Willa Cather. I'm
currently reading Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy and enjoying it
very much.

------
csl
It appears to me that if one wants to make progress in mathematics one should
study the masters and not the pupils.

— N.H. Abel (1802–1829)

------
sombremesa
I'm not too sure about non-fiction books -- especially popular science -- but
reading (good) fiction books is definitely worth it. You might think that
fiction is nothing but made up stories, but usually it contains several life
lessons that were hard-earned for the author and they're placed within a
relevant context.

As for technical non-fiction books, some of them can be really good and
irreplacable.

------
rlt
(This doesn’t answer your question but feels related)

I have ADHD and find it incredibly difficult to read books.

I’ll often “read” the same pages over and over several times without actually
comprehending them because after a few pages I realize I was looking at the
words but thinking about something else. I also have trouble remembering to
(or having the motivation to?) come back to books I’ve previously started.

I like online content because it’s easy to skim or switch to something else
and not feel bad about it. I imagine over time this has made my ADHD even
worse, but I’m not sure how to break the habit.

The 3-4 ADHD self-help books sitting unread on my shelf certainly haven’t
helped :)

~~~
ryukafalz
As someone else with ADHD(-PI), I think part of the answer has to be removing
the potentially distracting stimuli. Online content draws your attention much
more easily than books will.

I’ve found that I often won’t get back to reading a book until I make a
concerted effort to get away from my phone, computer, etc. Only when I’ve
eliminated the more distracting options will I get back to reading. It’s hard
to get started, but it’s invariably more satisfying after the fact.

------
mxschumacher
I'm reading a lot and have done so for many years. It is one of the great
sources of joy and richness in my life. Choosing a book is more difficult than
it might seem. It sounds like you haven't encountered many great books yet.
Humanity has produced about 130.000.000 books and roughly 4k are added each
day.

If you are an avid reader consuming one book per week from age 20 to 80,
you'll get through a little more than 3000 books. Few people make it this far.
60 years of reading don't cover the output of a single day of publishing.

There are many more great books than any single person can hope to get through
in a lifetime.

Regarding the reading speed: As you read more, you will get better. With
enough practice, reading becomes a fully-immersive and effortless experience
(though the ideas in the book might stun you!). Your eyes and your mind get
more accustomed to the practice, for example through a better knowledge of
vocabulary.

Forgetting is a real issue that I struggle with as well. Spaced repetition is
helping a lot of people [0].

Paul Graham (pg) makes some great points about how reading shapes the mind (so
even if you don't remember all the facts, the act of reading still changes who
you are) [1]

I suggest you look learning strategies to process text more efficiently and to
aid retention. There is a well-rated course called "Learning how to learn" on
Coursera. [2]

Since selecting books is such hard work, you can benefit from the reading
lists of others, here's mine on Goodreads: [3]

[0]
[http://augmentingcognition.com/ltm.html](http://augmentingcognition.com/ltm.html)

[1] [http://www.paulgraham.com/know.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/know.html)

[2] [https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-
learn](https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn)

[3]
[https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/10152457?view=table](https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/10152457?view=table)

------
mchisto
> _The last few books I read were mostly filled with fluff, anecdotes,
> stories, jokes, and trivialities. Even if I wanted to read books, I just don
> 't know which ones I should start with, out of the 1000 "must-read" books in
> my reading list._

Lindy effect should help.
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_Effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_Effect))

Start with classics. Or at least with books that have been out for a few years
and are still talked about.

That's how I pick what to read.

------
d3fault
As a lot of other people are saying, yes, books are worth it.

I'm 19 right now, so I grew up reading paper books and interacting a lot with
the internet and video games. Around when I turned 15 I pretty much stopped
reading altogether. I was (and still am) very into CSGO and kind of just
dropped reading literature for playing CS with my friends. While that was/is
fun, dropping literature as a pastime left a hole in me that couldn't be
filled by any video game, podcast, blog post, or even eBook. I only got back
into reading fiction because my best friend here at uni was talking about how
much she loved Agatha Christie, and I happened to have a compendium of 5
Hercule Poirot books that had been sitting on my bookshelf (and taken with me
when I moved) for about 4 years. Now I can't stop reading (again).

Reading books (for me, fiction; for others, non-fiction) widens your
understanding of the world around you, the perspectives of those around you,
and most importantly your own imagination. Reading literature helps me
creatively solve problems and come up with inspired ideas that would've been
very difficult for me to come up with otherwise. It is something I would be
incomplete without.

P.S. For me paper books are 100% superior to ebooks. The feel of holding,
seeing, and smelling a paper book, especially an old paper book, is so
comforting and impossible to replicate with an ebook. Though, to their credit,
ebooks are nice if you read relatively quickly and want to read while on the
road.

------
TheHeretic12
Yes, books are worth it, physical books especially. 1\. The automated
information control that occurs online today, means that things are there one
day, gone the next. This happens accross the information continuum. 2\. The
Pareto principle: 20% of things provide 80% of the value. Online, where new
content can be created for nearly free, good information about anything can be
hard to find, drowned in a sea of advertisement and distraction. In a physical
bookstore or library, the cost of printing and stocking means that only things
that are worth printing, are kept around. 3\. Inheritance of relevancy: I
enjoy getting my books from the used bookstores, because time after time I
pick up some volume on history that someone has written incredible things in
the margins! Of course, we have comment sections and such online, but the
Pareto principle applies again here. 4\. Impression and discernment of value:
You can tell just from looking at the design of a book, what the intended
audience is. If the authors name is bigger than the title, for example, that
tells you a whole lot. If like me, you look for more uncommon, less known
things, you learn to disregard anything with flashy marketing or a bestseller
claim. Head straight for the plain and boring: the value is what gets it sold,
whats written inside. 5\. Obscure, out-of-print, actually supressed and
allegedly supressed works. This goes hand in hand with number 1: Its much
harder to round up 10,000 copies of a book, than to add the metadata to an
automatic blacklist. Everything from textbooks, to historical autobiographies,
to contemporary primary source reporting: the beast devours it all. Put it on
your shelf, then it cannot be deleted.

------
vo2maxer
From one of the best guides on reading a book:

“....a good book can teach you about the world and about yourself. You learn
more than how to read better; you also learn more about life. You become
wiser. Not just more knowledgeable - books that provide nothing but
information can produce that result. But wiser, in the sense that you are more
deeply aware of the great and enduring truths of human life.”

― Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent
Reading

~~~
guidoism
And as one of your first books take a look at How to Read a Book. I've enjoyed
my books much more since then. Especially since I got past my prejudice that
made me feel like if I started a book I needed to finish it before trying
another. These days I read many books concurrently. If I get bored or need to
let my brain churn on an idea in the background I move onto a different book,
usually a totally unrelated book.

------
Tiktaalik
It's pretty much the opposite. Stuff online, usually done for free, is usually
vapid trash with facts often wrong because there's not enough money to do it
right.

In contrast content from books is usually extensively researched and a wealth
of valuable knowledge.

Also worth noting that the internet is a relatively new thing, so if you find
yourself fascinated by a topic from the 70s or earlier you'll probably be much
better off walking to your local library.

------
tgdnt
I think many of us share the same thoughts you are describing, so thanks for
sharing them.

The principle I'm trying to go by is: I'm sure there are plenty of great new
books, new films etc, but I still haven't read/seen way too many of the
classics that people have been thinking about for decades and even centuries.
At least 30 years since first publication is the mark I joke about going by.
Perhaps you might add "award-winning" and/or "still in print" to your search
terms. For the most part, we can be trusted with keeping the best books
around. And of course that's just the principle, not the reality, as you can
infer from my having read this page.

I think if you read a modern non-fiction book about self-improvement you would
get a dreadful notion of what a book really is and would be right never to
want to read one again. There is no fluff in a classic, no such thing as
skimming it or speed reading it, it's just a totally different experience.

So I might suggest going back several years into lists of books that won the
Pulitzer prize, for example, or the Man Booker prize, things like that, and
seeing if something piques your curiosity. Perhaps a truly good book that
would fall within the "self-help" definition is "The Denial of Death" by
Ernest Becker. It was probably the first good book I ever read at about 24
years old, and the first time in my life I experienced sadness at getting
close to the end of the book ("what am I going to do when it's over?"). I
don't remember why I picked it up or why I actually read it, but I did for
about an hour every day at a coffee shop that I stopped at on my way back home
from work, and it was unforgettable.

------
baytrailcat
I believe most of us are living a "Google Bubble". When we are online, our
exposure to knowledge on a topic is limited by Search algorithms,
personalizations, the availability of content that is digitized and
searchable, etc. The people who comment on discussions, who creates content,
etc. are also subject to this bias. This slice is not really the same as the
larger body of collection of knowledge and insights about a particular topic.
Even considering the limitation of knowledge that is digitized, there are
plenty of sources that are not accessible and searchable (papers, talks, radio
programs, conversations, personal anecdotes etc.). Books give a window to this
larger world. This is the way we have done it for 5000 years. Books, in case
of non-fiction, are written by people who have spent significant (sometimes
their lifetime) time learning about a topic. And I believe the same logic
applies for fiction. The ideas and imaginations of whole of human kind is not
same as those of people who devotes time to create content online. In short,
books are a different way (and arguably better) to expand your horizon.

------
irrational
Yes, books are definitely worth it. Whether ebooks are physical books.

> I read very slowly

The more you read, the faster you will read. Reading is a skill that must be
practiced to master, just like any other skill. You wouldn't expect to play
the piano 50 times and suddenly be a master pianist, would you? The same
applies to reading. Read 500 books and then see what your reading speed is
like.

------
coffeefirst
Yes!

There's a huge gap in how much time and energy goes into most books vs online
stuff. That's the part you're missing. I can name all sorts of books I'd
describe as a life-changing experience, and maybe one blog post, and zero
youtube videos.

A few (hopefully) practical thoughts:

1\. My favorite way to find books to read is to ask people. It helps me find
books I'd never have noticed. Goodreads will lead you to the lowest common
denominator, but not to something that speaks to you.

2\. The more you read, the faster you'll get at reading, just like anything
else. Don't worry about remembering anything.

3\. You seem to be looking at books as a means to an ends. I suppose in some
cases that's true, I will occasionally seek out a book because I want to learn
something new.

But writing is a conversation held across time and space, almost a sort of
telepathy. If you're viewing it as strictly transactional, and overlooking the
ability to experience their stories and ideas, I think that's where you're
really missing out.

------
elchief
Magazines and blogs/articles exist to keep you coming back. Same with serial
television shows. The content is not self-contained, or particularly high
quality. Only enough to bring you back for one more episode or issue.

Books (and movies) on the other hand, are generally self-contained. The book
is the product, not your subscription. The quality is often higher

------
pontus
I have a very similar perspective as you. Most non fiction books, being
focused around a reasonably simple concept, could really be explained in a
blog post (e.g. any Malcolm Gladwell book, zero to one by Thiel, Super
Intelligence). By simple, I mean as opposed to complex, not necessarily easy
to understand or unimportant. The main reason, I believe, for these to be
books rather than posts is to examine that same concept from many vantage
points to allow it to "stick". For these books, I feel like I can usually get
most of the value by reading the first few chapters or many even a summary.

That being said, if you look for books on more complex topics, you find things
that can't be put into a blog post (e.g. WWII, biographies, technical topics).
These are things where each chapter really does bring something new. The flip
side is that they're hard to read; nothing in chapter 1-n will really help you
in reading chapter n+1.

------
DenisM
Nearly all non-fiction reading is junk-reading.

Reading is an observational activity, and just like you can't learn to swim by
observing swimmers you can't learn a subject by reading a book on it. The only
thing that reading is good for is feeding fuel into the furnace of deliberate
practice of the craft and discussions with practitioners of such. And that's
how true knowledge is really acquired - putting information to a practical
use. If you're not doing that you're just grinding water. A quality
conversation qualifies as "practical" in that exercises the relevant parts of
the brain, in fact Socrates would have you believe it's the only way to truly
learn.

Even by these low standards we lack in quality reading:

\- Book writers have, naturally, limited experience. Yet most are eager to
summarize it and pose as "the truth", with predictably disastrous results.
People who actually know a lot and a _can_ summarize well rarely write. I know
like one guy who is good at it (you know him too).

\- Book writers write too much while trying, but not quite succeeding, to get
to the point. Often times they try to start from the beginning and produce a
theory of everything (search "it's a warm summer evening in ancient Greece" on
youtube). There is a draught in the writing skill. The irony.

\- Book publishers insists on larger books because they look better on the
shelf and are more likely to fetch a higher price per buyer.

\- Book publishers largely publish books that are easy to sell given the
current fads, the ones that confirm pre-existing bias of the reader populace.
It might as well be readers directly dictating what the book says.

\- Online publishing has most of the same problems (except for the content
length), and lots worse on top.

The only educational reading is one that directs your practice of a given
field or a conversation with another practitioner. Everything else is
entertainment at best and mental torture at most other times.

As to finding good books - books that stood the test of time are likely to be
better quality, because fads come and go so whatever made the book popular
it's something better. Often times they are dated though. Otherwise just be
mindful whom you're getting your advice from. Did this person explain clearly
to you how fractional reserve banking works? They might have a good idea on
which book is decent for the subject.

------
mattfrommars
You can look into listening to audio books while commuting. But honestly
speaking, I have done that and I lost focus very hard. The problem with me is
my limited vocabulary. Just like you, I read slow even though I have read
strategies to read fast.

Even then, reading fast does not help if you are failing to grasp what the
concept and story is on about. Hence, I read slowly to understand what the
piece is talking about to make my effort and time worth it.

My only motivation to attempt to read book is the author's put a lot of time
and effort writing a book and getting it published. Therefore, the time spent
writing a book with numerous references used to write the book, you are
indirectly reading multiple books - accumulating ideas and knowledge from all
those books.

The book which I am currently reading is "Why Nation Fail", the number of
references used to write the book was what made me buy it.

~~~
latexr
> You can look into listening to audio books while commuting. But honestly
> speaking, I have done that and I lost focus very hard.

I suggest increasing the speed of narration: slow enough you can still
comprehend the content but fast enough that you have to make an effort. That
works to keep my mind engaged and not get distracted.

------
lowdose
Books are the best way to expand your cognitive capabilities. A writer spends
at least 500 hours on a book. Reading a book is like having conversation with
the writer. I prefer to read non-fiction books, many of which I found through
HN or podcasts.

I recently switched from ibooks to google books because googles app has a
superior reading experience on iOS. Plus the highlights are integrated with
google docs. So after color highlighting sections I have a summary of
interesting quotes automatically in a G Doc for every book in my gdrive. I
haven't got the time yet to write a script to auto sync these quotes with
google keep to function as a flashcard system.

I recommend the books of Jim Collins, he was a coach for Steve Jobs and
personal advisor to Jeffrey Bezos. Amazons business flywheel is based on the
theories developed by Jim Collins.

------
agumonkey
I never questionned the value of books but thought having online access to
libraries would be a clear improvement over printed ones.

But my mind (and many people) is sensitive to the context in which you read
information. A book is a passive block of sheets, it does not offer anything
else than that. It helps focus. Also I suppose that our brain likes to have
physical stimuli (touching pages, smell of paper, ink) and it might be a
little more pleasing for your neurons than pixels on a LCD.

Now if you're not easily distracted, online version can be as good.

Lastly, I found that wikipedia, with all the value and care given in its text,
lacks spirit. I can't really explain but when you read old encyclopedia you
have the feeling of part of the author's mindset in the words. It's summarized
and curated a bit differently. I found it nice too.

Cheers

------
ping_pong
I'm almost 50. The last fiction book I read was Frankenstein in 1995. I
haven't read a fiction book since then because it feels like a waste of time
for me, personally. I do read comic books and watch movies.

I have however read a few non-fictional books from Michael Lewis, like
Moneyball, Blind Side, Big Short, etc. Less than 5, though. I've read parts of
hundreds of computer books for work and for education.

Do what feels natural to you. I like reading computer books rather than blog
posts but it depends on how thorough the article is. I find a lot of blog
posts to not be thorough enough to answer my questions, and many books are
better for what I'm looking for. Others may feel differently, and it's all
personal preference.

~~~
peteforde
So, it's been more than half of your sentient life since you tried reading a
book that was written 200 years ago... and you're prepared to write off all of
fiction as a waste of time? I am begging you to see if perhaps you might have
a better experience today with a more contemporary book that frankly isn't
kind of dull.

I urge you to try audiobooks. There still exists a stigma that it's not "real"
reading, but that is like discussion of "real" men - absurd. Audiobooks are a
joy.

My personal favourite is Cryptonomicon by Neil Stephenson, but heck, Ready
Player One, Recursion, Delta-V, Walkaway by Cory Doctorow... just give it a
shot.

~~~
ping_pong
Yes, for me I find it a waste of time. That's a personal choice. I read comic
books if I have extra time, which I enjoy. And just to be clear, I loved the
book Frankenstein and it had a profound effect on my life. I just never had
any incentive after that to read another fiction book.

~~~
peteforde
Okay, I'm not trying to change your mind... just humour me. I'm selfishly
curious, and that's all: if you haven't done it in 25 years and you were only
a decade into your conscious adulthood, does it not seem even slightly
possible that ruling out all contempory fiction of every genre based on a 200
year old monster allegory means it's time for a check-in? I just don't
understand how you can be on this forum and also hold such a strong belief
that you have anywhere near enough information to make up your mind as a fifty
year old.

What if you're wrong?

------
rdl
The specific genre of books in your list ("self help") is basically not worth
it.

Virtually every other type of book is. Good fiction is amazing. Science is
great, especially when written at a level just above what you can comfortably
understand. Some biographies are inspiring.

------
voidhorse
Definitely. I'm currently reading _The Reading Life_ , a collection of C.S.
Lewis' musings on reading, and I couldn't recommend a better set of arguments
for the value of books in general (though it does have a humanities flavor).

As others have noted, the stuff you find online usually isn't nearly as deep
or interesting as what you'll get out of sticking with a good book, nor is the
reading experience the same. For historical reasons, the way we consume text
on a computer is rather sporadic. The internet, generally speaking, is a giant
distraction machine; it's not meant for deep reading. Maybe one day it can be,
but not today. Of course, your mileage may vary.

------
codingdave
Books typically (not always) have far more depth regarding the topics they
cover. If you do not read books, you are only scratching the surface of the
shared knowledge available to you because, no, most of their content is not
freely available online.

You are correct that not all books are good, though. For someone like yourself
who doesn't have a habit of reading, nor ideal speed and retention, you'll
want to select carefully. My advice would be to go ahead and keep reading
internet-based content, but as you do so, to think about which topics you wish
you could dive deeper on. And then ask others for book recommendations on
those topics.

------
armSixtyFour
I read a little over 50 books this year as a personal challenge. I think only
one of them wasn't worth reading and only because it was really out of my
wheel house and I just didn't enjoy it. It took up a considerable amount of
time, but I enjoyed every minute of it. It was absolutely worth doing and I
learned a lot that I wouldn't have come across on the internet without
specifically looking for it.

Start with something small and work your way up. If you're on hacker news,
maybe read a science fiction book, there's likely a movie out there that you
enjoy, start with something that was adapted from a book.

------
seltzered_
Generally hate leaving comments that just link to other things, but since I
haven't seen them linked nor have time to form a full opinion, a few pieces in
this space:

\- Sarah Perry - "Why Books are Fake" \-
[https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2017/06/01/why-books-are-
fake/](https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2017/06/01/why-books-are-fake/) \- being a
bit ironic here since her first point is "Every citation is either a homework
assignment or a promise." and here I am hyperlinking :P

\- Andy Matuschak - "Why books don’t work"
[https://andymatuschak.org/books/](https://andymatuschak.org/books/) \- and
related econtalk interview: [https://www.econtalk.org/andy-matuschak-on-books-
and-learnin...](https://www.econtalk.org/andy-matuschak-on-books-and-
learning/)

\- Naval Ravikant's Tim Ferris interview on what books to read:
[https://tim.blog/naval-ravikant-on-the-tim-ferriss-show-
tran...](https://tim.blog/naval-ravikant-on-the-tim-ferriss-show-transcript/)
\- "A number of people asked me what books I’m reading now. This is a
difficult question, because, at any given time, I’m at probably about 50 books
on my Kindle, and probably about six or seven hard-cover or soft-cover books
that I’m cycling through. I opened up my kindle. I look through. Based on my
mood, I’ll flip through to whatever book matches my mood. I’ll flip to
whatever part of it looks the most interesting, and I’ll just read that part.
I don’t read in the sequential order. The most important thing that does for
me is it lets me read on a regular basis. I can actually just pull up my
kindle here, and I can read off the names of some of these books that I’m
reading. I can give you mini-reviews, but I haven’t actually finished any of
them. They’re all in progress."

I tend to disagree with Naval on a number of things, yet that's how I'm
currently reading - though it's limited to 3-4 books all in a similar domain.
I'm taking notes and trying to find relationships between their viewpoints.

------
seibelj
Books are infinitely superior to internet content for most things. Basic
facts, no. I read lots of nonfiction and it’s so much more informative and
deep than a blog post. Reading both fiction and nonfiction gives a richer and
deeper understanding of the human condition and makes your life choices better
informed and more productive.

One thing that the internet does do better is giving a read about the latest
trends and anecdata. You can get details and perspective that is “under the
radar”. But otherwise, internet news is throwaway pulp. So much news is
written everyday and 95% of it is forgotten immediately.

------
fossuser
Yes you’re missing out.

There are a lot of bad books out there that waste your time (particularly in
self-help).

For an example of an excellent non-fiction book that gives sweeping background
to a topic that you can’t get from a blog post read The Emperor of All
Maladies (about cancer).

For one about Physics read Our Mathematical Universe.

There’s also Eliezer Yudkowsky’s Rationality which was a large collection of
blog posts put into book form.

For fiction I’d recommend The Nix for a really good novel.

The difference between good and bad in books is huge and part of the
difficulty is that it’s hard to know up front if a book will be a waste of
your time.

------
friendlybus
The best way to access the ideas of people you cannot talk to is to find the
depth in their books. I'm thoroughly enjoying reading a book on Aristotle's
work. There's so many well articulated perspectives on the world that
challenge and grow my own perspective on the world that I would not like to
live in a place without access to hundreds of great people and their books.

The internet is like the Starbucks version of the library. Fun, exciting with
lots of sugar and broad coverage but lacking quality and is probably not good
to have a lot.

------
nottorp
A lot of people have already told you that reading slowly just means you don't
have enough practice.

Also consider this: you watch a video or listen to a podcast on some subject.
If the speaker is a good actor, you are more likely to believe them even if
everything they say is bullshit.

Reading (well, after you actually get used to reading) is less of an assault
on your sensory inputs so you're more likely to be able to form your own
opinion about the subject.

Edit: also try reading fiction as entertainment. A lot of it is much better
than the current Hollywood drivel.

------
adventskalender
I love reading, however, I am sad to say, most books are _NOT_ worth "it"
(being read).

There are many, many books in the world. Only very few of them are good. I
don't know the percentages - perhaps 0.001%%

The good books are worth reading, but they are difficult to find.

As for information from web sites vs information from books: some books are
just the content from web sites blown up into book format. So there is no
general rule of "books are better than web sites", either.

Even though I am a fast reader (I think), I find many books too wordy.

------
mntmoss
A really good book has a sense of permanence and speciality to it that
outlasts typical online content.

Philosophy and mathematics books, for example, tend to exist outside time
because they are dealing with fundamental unanswerables and constructions of
assumption, not "extent of our knowledge" empirical observations as with
science. If their thinking is robust, they never go out of date.

History books likewise indulge in rich storytelling about what happened and
why. The story is assembled with fact, but filtered through the
historiographical lens of the author. There are many niches of history that
can only be studied in books. History is easily revised, but each telling can
uncover a more "complete" truth.

And fiction, of course, captures the world as a non-factual experience and
therefore says the things that can't be said(no words for them, little concept
or attention given to them). As a storytelling medium, writing is not
everyone's preference, but it is the singular most productive form we have,
and so a lot of fiction books express forgotten corners and small whispers of
thought.

Given that you have a serious temperament I would recommend starting with very
old books from ancient times, since those are the ones least likely to be
"obsolete" \- power laws being what they are.

------
mikesabat
I'm in the same situation although probably older than OP, so I've read more
than 50 books throughout my life. The question of whether reading books is
worth it is something that I'm also struggling with. Not only do I not retain
information the same way when I'm reading a book, but reading paper makes me
tired and so I get through 2-3 pages a night before falling asleep.

A few years ago I observed myself hearing an interesting author on a podcast.
I downloaded the audio book and loved it (Chris Voss, and the book is never
split the difference) so I subsequently found every podcast the author was a
guest on and listened to all the podcasts. It's really hard to say that the
audio book was worth it, because I generally find live conversations more
engaging and they make the material easier for me to remember. For non-fiction
it might be faster, cheaper and better to just listen to the podcast tour
rather than read the book or listen to the audiobook

Currently I'm in this predicament with Scott Galloway and the Algebra of
Happiness. I listen to the Pivot podcast, found 20 other podcasts or videos
where Scott has been the guest and I'm not sure that the book, or audiobook
would have that much value. Honestly, the biggest reason to buy it would be to
support the author.

As to the OPs question, there have been a few paper books that I've found very
much worth it. Zero to One and Hard Thing About Hard Things are books that
I've bought and read multiple times. I also get value out of classic fiction
because it's so high quality, inspiring and contributes to shared culture and
understanding of the world.

------
hooande
Often the point of a non-fiction book is to spend hours thinking deeply about
the book's subject. You could probably get the major ideas in the length of a
short blog post. But that's spending 10 minutes thinking about the topic as
opposed to 2-3 hours.

You can think of it as the difference between reading about a subject online
and having a long conversation about that subject with friends. For me
personally, the length and guided interaction of a book makes a difference

~~~
The_Colonel
Definitely. Few years ago I subscribed to this service called "Blinkist" which
summarizes whole books into several pages.

But soon enough I understood it's pointless. I got superficial understanding
of the books from the summary, but I forgot it just as quickly. If you want to
extract value from a book, you must give it time, you must think about it, go
deep, try different associations etc.

------
slx26
I find this thread interesting, but I believe many commenters are
rationalizing why books are good by focusing too much on arguments around
information quality, or trying to draw some differences between the
motivations for paper vs digital writing, ... but I don't see it that clearly.
I'm personally much more curious about others like:

\- how much influence does it have the fact that you have to actually sit
down, focus on something, sit somewhere comfortable, or not so comfortable but
ready to work on a material... or the fact that it's a book, that it's long,
probably dense to read, much more dense to write, that there's some sacrifice
there, so you face the material in a completely different way you would face a
random post or youtube video? we also definitely value very differently the
things we pay for than those that are free. if you paid for it, you might want
to rationalize it was worth it, and that might actually lead you to try to get
something more from it that you would generally get if it was free and you
didn't care. if you paid for it there's also a higher chance you were looking
for it consciously, etc.

I think it would be interesting to measure those and others by collecting
writing from different sources and presenting it on different formats. while I
agree that on average the quality and the signal provided by a book is higher
than that of a random video or blog post, I feel in many cases we are biased
to give books too much credibility, and we really underestimate a lot of
online content. there are many other factors, but I think we should open the
perspective a bit more if we really want to discover why books are so good

~~~
AgentMatt
> \- how much influence does it have the fact that you have to actually sit
> down, focus on something, sit somewhere comfortable, or not so comfortable
> but ready to work on a material...

Personal anecdote...

I started reading books again about 2 years ago, after many years of not
reading much. At that time it was a revelation for me, and I grew to despise
(some forms of) blog style writing and videos (which was also related to the
first two books I read being about modern media and advertising; The Attention
Merchants and Amusing Ourselves To Death).

After a couple of months of very slow reading, and learning how to read
(actively engaging with the material, etc.), my ability to focus and to
process information in this mode notably increased.

Nowadays I quite like watching videos (mostly of lectures) and reading well-
written online content, and engage with it in just the way you describe. But I
think before this period where reading books again taught me the necessary
skills for this type of engagement it was not possible for me to process
online content in this way. Too many ubiquitous distractions.

------
1-KB-OK
I mostly read fiction books and technical O'Reilly stuff. Would highly
recommend both. Reading books is infinitely more relaxing than browsing
content online aimlessly.

------
PandaRider
Most of the comments offer broad strokes of advice. I'll offer some here with
examples but a huge caveat is that I don't usually read full books so take my
advice with a pinch of salt. :/

Type I books: Recipes refer to books that teach you "how". They are often
must-reads in the topic. Example:
[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34689843-disciplined-
ent...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34689843-disciplined-
entrepreneurship-workbook) and
[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18652777-disciplined-
ent...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18652777-disciplined-
entrepreneurship)

Type II books: These are controversial, non-mainstream books that challenge
your thinking. Example: failory.com articles

Type III books: Wisdom refer to books that teach you "why". They are
generalisations that offer a thousand feet view but often suffer from
survivorship bias if one doesn't read it critically. Example:
[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18050143-zero-to-
one](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18050143-zero-to-one)

~~~
base698
May I suggest "How to Read a Book"?

[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18600043-how-to-read-
a-b...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18600043-how-to-read-a-book)

~~~
rokhayakebe
Then you come out with the Greatest Books of the Western Civilization and you
have enough reading for a lifetime and more.

------
0x262d
I'm sorry that you have viewed books this way for at least ten years. Deeper
treatment of a given topic or story necessarily takes a long time to explain
and the format of longform text exposition is called a book. They are worth
reading. Also many are timeless, most problems are not new. Please read books
and focus at first on books considered to be timeless classics. It sounds like
you will be pleasantly surprised. I expect this will enrich your life a lot in
ways you probably don't know exist. Don't expect immediate measurable
benefits. Also don't give up after reading one or two. Also you will get
faster at reading them.

I think a big part of the problem here is that if you focus on topical and
especially self-help books, the content in them is shallow, mostly meaningless
bullshit that is comparable in quality to online discussion. As a good general
rule don't read anything marketed as self help. And I can't emphasize enough
how shallow and low value online discussion generally is.

Fiction is good. Non-fiction can be good if you know what you want, but
popular non-fiction is more likely to be bullshit. I recommend One Hundred
Years Of Solitude, which is widely regarded as one of the best novels ever.

------
boulos
Most of what you're talking about is non-fiction "answers". Long form writing
isn't particularly conducive to reading online (mostly meaning the web/HTML
pages), but obviously you could do so via a PDF of a book. However, you're
completely missing out on long-form fiction if you don't read "books". I'd
recommend you read this recent article about binge reading [1], as it
concisely captures what you're likely missing out on: the engrossing nature of
a multihour in-depth read.

I now do most of my reading electronically (in my case via the Kindle iOS and
Android apps, but I'm about to get a Kindle Oasis, because it's finally good
enough), so don't restrict yourself to reading physical books. If you happen
to have an Amazon Prime account, you can read plenty of books for free via
Kindle. So you can also do this as a "no risk" experiment.

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/04/opinion/sunday/why-you-
sh...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/04/opinion/sunday/why-you-should-start-
binge-reading-right-now.html)

------
ssfrr
A lot of useful ideas are pretty timeless, and for learning fundamental
technical content, a _good_ book is worlds better than a collection of blog
posts and wikipedia pages. I remember when I was learning about quaternion
math, I spent a few days googling around, but often different authors would
use different notational conventions, or have different assumptions (e.g.
whether the coordinate system is right or left-handed), so the math would be
subtly different. Not to mention the ones that were just flat-out wrong.

So I went to the library, browsed through several books to find one that
seemed most relevant, and ended up checking out "Quaternions and Rotation
Sequences" from J Kuipers. Having a single well-thought-out book that walked
from the basic background all the way through, with consistent notation, was
way easier to follow than the scattershot collection I'd found online.

So in general I'd say if you're optimizing for the most up-to-date information
on a subject that's changing quickly, looking online is probably your best
bet. If you want to learn something more foundational and can find a good book
about it, I'd definitely go for that.

------
abathur
In the broad, reading books is worth it. Not every book. Not even most of
them. (It's helpful to avoid the sunk-cost fallacy. You've already incurred
whatever cost or risk came with obtaining the book--it's fine to give it the
lesser of 1/5th or 50 pages to hook you, and move on if it doesn't.)

I find that I'm more generative than usual (i.e., I become a fountain of
creative ideas) when I'm reading an engaging book.

In the specific, it depends who you are (generally, but also like _at a
specific time_ ) and what you're looking for. I think there _is_ value in
reading Great Works, but I've also read plenty of them that I found boring and
unrewarding.

Maybe a better place to start is with a deep (but general-audience-friendly)
dive into an event, place, time, person, thing, or technology that you've
either found intriguing for a long time, or find yourself surprised that
you've never heard about. Looking for something narrow (i.e., probably not a
war or a country or an industry--but maybe a battle, person, unit, company,
neighborhood) may help you filter for books on topics that the writer also
found deeply engaging.

------
agentultra
I mostly read literature, fiction, and classics. Occasionally I read some
modern science fiction and fantasy. Very rarely do I read the advice of
someone that I don't know.

Fiction (and some forms of non-Fiction) are about our inner life. They help us
discover questions to ask, how we feel, guide us in our understanding of
others, society, and the world at large.

My favourite books tend to be about outsiders: L'Entranger, Fahrenheit 451,
20000 Leagues Under the Sea, etc... I often find myself at odds with people,
with popular opinion, and sometimes even with society. Reading about these
figures has given me a lot to think about my place in relation to all of these
outside forces, question my own moral compass in relation to other
"outsiders," and even work on understanding the nature of otherness.

I've also loved The Nature of Things, The Prince, Days by Moonlight... poetry
by Allen Ginsberg, Patti Smith. They all take me places to where I can never
go and leave me a different person than I was before.

Books aren't meant to be consumed. They're meant to be inhabited, lived in,
worn like a favourite coat borrowed from a friend.

I can't imagine life without books.

------
keithnz
I read much less than I used to, but these days I tend to consume a non
fiction book at least every 2-4 weeks (sometimes more), either by reading or
by audio book (the library here is fantastic for this).

I would say you are missing out, given you read slow, I suggest an audio book
( which you can playback faster than normal speed ). BUT make notes.

NO... none of that "that sounds like a good idea, but can't be bothered"....
MAKE NOTES. Or at the very least write a detailed review of the book. Put it
on goodreads or something like that.

this will vastly increase your retention AND get your brain to do its own
analysis on the material.

For non fiction, which I mostly prioritize, occasionally I'll read a fiction
book, I suggest read widely over these subjects: History, Tech, philosophy,
autobiographies, science, social sciences, economics. Some of which may sound
dry, but there are many well written and interesting books on those subjects.
Those areas provide a series of mental hooks that all kinds of other
information hangs on (also in the world of fiction you can see authors
inspiration from those topics as well )

------
kwiromeo
"I wonder if I'm missing out?" It depends on what you're looking for. If you
are only looking to read about the most bleeding edge stuff, then keeping up
online is the thing to do.

"Are books worth it? Is it more true for some fields than others? Is it more
true for older books?" Yes. Maybe. Maybe.

I love books because they always take the path of depth on topics. A book on
psychology will offer more than a single post. From a book, I get list of
examples that allow me to remember concepts better, ,and give me ideas on how
I can apply those concepts to my own life. Books can also give context to
what's happening today. It's easier to catch up on a topic by a reading a book
that summarizes a topic / field that it is to look for the information online.

And if the concern is cost, and you're in the US, consider getting a library
card and download libby
([https://www.overdrive.com/apps/libby/](https://www.overdrive.com/apps/libby/)).
Free rentals of audiobooks from your local libraries.

------
ffast-math
My experience attempting to optimize information intake:

-Many books are no better than podcasts or articles, and only leave you with a handful of takeaways.

-But the best books are fantastic and well worth the time/money.[1]

-Audiobooks are great if you integrate them into your routines. Think commuting, getting ready in the morning, exercising, etc.

-Videos (e.g., documentaries) tend to be the most informative per unit time for non-technical content, but there are far fewer of them for most topics.

-Re-reading/viewing the best content repeatedly addresses forgetting and amortizes purchase prices.

[1] This may not be a result of them being books _per se_ ; it could be more
that the top .1% of content on any medium tends to be excellent, and reading
books gives you access to another pool of top content. Though I've also found
that many people who _really_ know what they're talking about or have
exceptionally interesting lives write books, not articles. This might be
because articles are too short, they know that people will pay for their
content, and/or they want the reputational benefits of publishing a book.

------
thisisit
There has been an influx of information. And it applies to books as well.
There are tons of books written by ever growing breed of aspiring writers.
Most of the recent books tend to be full of

> fluff, anecdotes, stories, jokes, and trivialities.

The amount of insights in each book have grown less and less.

That said, books are still the best source of information. The problem is -
with ever growing list of recommendations it is easy to get overwhelmed with
your to-read lists.

> I have thousands of non-fiction (mostly self-improvement) books in my
> reading list on GoodReads, but almost never bother to read any.

I was in your position too. Then I read Straight Line Leadership (one of the
few books which is really short and to the point)
([https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11556152-straight-
line-l...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11556152-straight-line-
leadership))

One of big takeaways from the book was - Knowledge acquired and not used puts
you in the same category as an uneducated person. Learn stuff and then use it.

Since then I have worked towards identifying what I really want in life and
then reading stuff geared towards it.

For example, after reading tons of recommendations on HN about NVC, I tried
the audio recording from YT. I was half way there I got bored and gave up.

I thought it over and found that NVC didn't align with what I wanted "now" in
my life. I might acquire skill but never use it. And I will end up forgetting
most of it with time. So I have put in on hold and drawn up a plan on how and
when I will need NVC. Currently I plan to get to NVC in the 2nd quarter of
this year and doggedly pursue to applying in my life.

------
combatentropy
Most books are wordy. But then again so are most articles, podcasts, and
videos.

Good books, however, are some of my favorite things: The Language Instinct by
Stephen Pinker, Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis, On Writing Well by William
Zinsser.

One advantage of a book by someone who is both (a) an expert in the field, and
(b) an expert at expression, is a coherent, thorough treatment of a subject,
from start to finish. It's usually best to first get your hands dirty for a
few weeks and then search for the best book on the subject (rather than the
other way around). For example, I fiddled with JavaScript, writing little
snippets, got them to kind of work. But I could not say at that time that I
understood JavaScript. And had I tried to learn JavaScript by reading scraps
here and there online I wonder if I would have ever developed a coherent
understanding. What I did was buy the O'Reilly book, JavaScript: The
Definitive Guide, by Brendan Eich, which is 500 pages, and I read it cover to
cover. I was then ready to write my own framework :)

~~~
BrendanEich
David Flanagan wrote "JavaScript: The Definitive Guide", I did not. Not sure
why you thought I did -- please tell me in case there is an error somewhere I
can help correct. Thanks.

------
shay_ker
> I assume that the best part of the best books will surface in daily
> conversations, YouTube videos, CliffsNotes, podcasts, Reddit posts/comments,
> blog articles, etc.

I don't think this is true... while conversations may refer to certain
sections or summarize certain things, topics of great depth require a lot of
time. There's no substitute for reading the original source.

> One issue for me is that books are a very big time investment.

This is one of those "is this a feature or a bug?" situations. Reading for a
long time slow you down on purpose. It's meant to create moments of critical
thinking and inspiration. It's meant for you to sit down and truly think.

I do agree that, still, reading takes way too much time. I don't read a lot. I
usually read on vacation/airplanes, or if I can't sleep at night. Because they
take a long time, I'm also very picky about the books I _do_ end up reading.
For learning things, though, I usually listen to podcasts or watch videos at
2x the speed.

And lastly.... have you tried reading fiction?

------
francasso
I think you are confusing information gathering with understanding. To give
you a practical example: consider the book “How to draw portraits in charcoal”
by Nathan Fawkes (great book btw). You can find all the main points of the
book online condensed in bullet point lists. In fact here are the main three:
get to know the 3d shape you want to draw and learn to project a simplified
version on paper; simplify, group and design areas of dark and areas of light;
keep the values in the areas of light separate in value space from those of
the areas of dark (the value distribution should be roughly two peaks that
don’t touch).

So how much better are you at drawing portraits in charcoal after reading the
list? Not much. What matters is putting the principles in practice.

Good books design an experience to help you do that. They should be treated as
bibles to look at for guidance, knowing that another human being that already
acquired the skill has done his best to provide a good map to speed up your
development.

------
pgcj_poster
One benefit that books have over articles, reddit comments, youtube, etc. is
that they're hard to write. Consequently, people who write books on a subject
are usually very knowledgeable and invested in it, meaning that books are more
likely to contain good information than other media.

Usually, when I hear an interesting idea online, the person relaying it got it
from a book.

------
crashbunny
I believe 2 things about books (with no citations provided so don't believe me
but if interest search for studies) reading books helps keep our memory and
concentration in top shape, possibly reading long articles is OK in that
regard, too.

Reading text books helps us learn things we didn't know we needed to know.

ie if you've learnt the basics of programming, you're going to solve
programming problems using the skills you know. If you get stuck you might ask
or search for a question framed with your current skills, it might be the
wrong question to ask though, similar to the XY problem. You'll probably be
able to solve the problem the way you want to solve the problem, but it could
be the wrong way to solve the problem.

If you keep doing this, not reading text books on programming and just asking
or searching for questions when you get stuck, it's going to take a lot longer
to master the skill. This is all my opinion and not fact.

------
kragen
Yes, books are worth it, and you are missing out. It's fine to read them
online, but Reddit comments, daily conversations, Cliff's Notes, etc., are not
an adequate substitute, and neither are books filled with fluff, anecdotes,
and trivialities. Bullet-point-style summaries give you the illusion of
understanding, and maybe a preview of what you could learn, but actual
learning is something else.

Learning is when you become able to do things you didn't know how to do
before. Books, especially textbooks, are a useful resource for learning. But
just reading a book, even a good one, will not cause you to learn by itself.
You still have to spend effort on practicing the skills the book discusses.

Most of the information from books is freely available online on Library
Genesis. But be careful; some books on Library Genesis are there without a
license from their copyright holders, which makes it illegal in some
jurisdictions to download them.

------
Dowwie
“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never
reads lives only one.” -- George R.R. Martin

------
dragonsngoblins
>I assume that the best part of the best books will surface in daily
conversations, YouTube videos, CliffsNotes, podcasts, Reddit posts/comments,
blog articles, etc.

Are you exclusively talking about reading for learning or are you including
reading for pleasure? Both are "worth it" in my opinion, but if you are
including reading for pleasure the idea that anyone could think this blows my
mind.

Do you enjoy film/TV? Because if so you could think of what I just quoted as
being equivalent to saying "Oh I don't need to watch anything. I just
eavesdrop on watercooler discussions and watch highlight clips".

Or in other words good books are more than the sum of their parts. CliffsNotes
and comments can be interesting but won't include the full context, the
playful uses of language, the pacing, and so much more.... They won't include
_the art_ of the text.

------
raindropm
For me, it's all about focus. The internet brings you anything but focus. Our
generation have every learning capabilities except focused mind and focus is
the important key to learn anything substantially. Yet our attention are
fragmented, shattered, and being manipulated everyday by the internet and
social media.

The nature of internet is always distracting. Even while you are reading
something, you unconsciously thinking about other thing you might do, in a
most frictionless way possible -- just a click away. The book, reading in
quiet environment, cut that distraction off completely (I mean, technically
you can think about hundreds of thing too, but it's not just a click, tap or
swipe away)

I used to read tons of article I save in my Pocket app all day, which itself
miles better than junk content on social media of course, but even then, at
the end of the day I cannot tell myself what I really learn at all —
everything feels, rushed, shallow, distracted. I don't know, I found myself
never have real 'focus' when I read online, even what I read is good.

Back to your question, IMO, one good books worth more than hundreds of
(sometimes marketing-induced) online articles out there. Also, those 'cutting
edge' trend is just that, a 'trend'. Thing that just got popular for whatever
reason at certain point of time. It comes and goes quickly than you will ever
remember. Most trend dies away after a short while and you don't missing
anything at all my friend. If that trend is actually good or important, then
you'll see it in one way or another anyway, when all the dust settle — the
same with all the "news" out there. You don't have to know them at all and
still perfectly fine.

On the contrary, good book with good content always stand the test of time.
New doesn't always mean good and old doesn't always mean outdated, especially
things about how human think about something. You can still learn a lot from
wisdom in the past, that doesn't existed in today's fragmented, always-on
environment.

------
adamsea
Reading something by someone who is passionate about and an expert at the
craft of writing — be it literature (which has special pleasures and gifts of
its own), or nonfiction.

It is a unique way to learn about another persons interior universe and gain
additional perspective on the world.

It is still the case, I believe, that the very best writers publish their
writing in print — books or reputable magazines.

Obviously they are online too but more are in print.

And if you consider works which are seminal in their field or have withstood
the test of time —— print.

Lastly there are studies showing that our brains process information
differently when reading from a book Or magazine (or even a printed out PDF,
probably) because of the physical interaction occurring along with the mental
one (or something like that).

There are definitely people who find it easier to learn in other ways and that
is totally legit.

If you haven’t tried though you should give it a shot.

------
Mathnerd314
There's a lot of dark matter, content not indexed or not highly ranked by
search engines. If you want to go really deep into a topic, PhD level etc.,
you're eventually going to want to look at a few physical books that simply
aren't available online. But you'll find some echo of them online, at least
the parts that are easy to explain and understand.

When people are telling you to read books they aren't referring to those kinds
of books though; they're usually talking about popular nonfiction books
published in the last few years. My experience there has been that books are
slightly better edited and fact-checked than online blog posts, but it's not
really sufficient and they are often still full of bullshit. There are good
books and bad books and the range of variation is similar to everything else
written.

------
ericskiff
I was like you. I spent my first 10 years after college reading essentially 0
books, instead filling my reading/idle time with news, podcasts, and other
pursuits.

When I started my company, my co-founder was reading books at a heavy clip,
and was suddenly coming in with great ideas to discuss, new perspectives on
things, and a whole world of different opinions based on what he was reading.

I vowed to keep up with the awesome pace he was setting, got over my
"audiobooks aren't real reading" stigma, and have since torn through over 100
books on 2x.

I have learned SO many amazing things about business, history, my own
philosophy, and how to interact with other people through reading. Reading has
enriched every possible portion of my life.

I typically read 3 business or self-enrichment books for every 1 fiction book
I allow myself, and I find that's a great balance.

~~~
paavoova
> got over my "audiobooks aren't real reading" stigma, and have since torn
> through over 100 books on 2x

So in your post when you refer to "reading", do you actually mean listening to
audiobooks? While audiobooks have their place, I don't believe them to be the
equivalent of reading. To think so is to believe the value of the book is the
content itself, but literature as a medium is more than its written word.
Literature can be an art, and not just in terms of prose and the writer behind
it, but also in cases before mass printing was invented and entire books were
written and illustrated painstakingly by hand.

And between reading and listening, I wouldn't be surprised if reading required
more "brain power" to process, in the same way that (supposedly) reading does
compared to watching TV. The auditory system is just more innate than the
process of reading is, which is a learned skill you aren't born with. Of
course this makes audiobooks more accessible and easier to digest, which would
be one of their merits for a lot of people. This is my largely unsubstantiated
opinion and I'm not trying to insinuate anything in particular. I just believe
reading to be its own distinct pastime and skill.

Personally, I can't stand listening to audiobooks, especially while doing
menial tasks like chores, because it feels like anytime I get distracted, the
words go in and come out the other ear. The retention just isn't there, it
might as well be background noise.

------
AgADoodleDo
One thing I have found to be a big help is graphic novels. I used to love
reading quite a bit, and fell out of it for a couple years as I gained more
freedom with screens. Graphic novels are not given enough credit considering
the myriad of excellent stories they have housed. Books like Watchmen, V for
Vandetta, and The Dark Knight Rises are all very well written, with excellent
writing, fleshed out characters, and thought - provoking themes. Graphic
Novels are also great for people bored by long periods of imagery, because the
pictures in each panel provide than in a quick glance. If you don't really
like traditional novels, I urge you to try reading comics. They can be a great
way to reintroduce you to books as well.

------
ritchiea
First of all no one remembers everything they read. If you spend time reading
lots of books you will find things that stick out to you personally that you
are surprised other people didn't bring up in the summaries you are accustomed
to hearing elsewhere. You'll also find yourself disagreeing with other
people's summaries and interpretations of books you've read.

So yes, I would say reading books is worth it. And the best way to start is
for now is put aside your "must read" list. Instead think about something
you're personally curious about right now this moment and pick a well regarded
book that touches on that thing you're curious about. Don't limit yourself to
nonfiction, if you're interested in memory maybe you could pick up Daniel
Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow or maybe you could choose Tom McCarthy's
amazing novel Remainder. If you're interested in live performance maybe you
could pick up Viola Spolin's Improvisation for the Theater or maybe try Philip
Roth's Sabbath's Theater.

Then repeat, follow your curiosity again. Pick another book, maybe the first
book you read pushes you towards selecting another. You want more from the
same author or topic. And don't be shy about not finishing things, sometimes a
book doesn't pay off on the curiosity that led you to it. I often start
reading a handful or more of books at a time until I find one that really
grips me. Or just keep alternating between reading lots of different things
for weeks. Kindle & the kindle app are actually very good for this because you
can send yourself samples of books so you can try them before investing in
them.

I would also say in general, the depth of knowledge shared, and the quality of
work put into a book tends to be much greater than 99% of what you find
online. It is a lot of work to publish a book, the authors, editors and
everyone else involved want to make it worth it. Not that there isn't great
online content, but people work hard to make books worth the time investment.

You are missing out. At least try to get out there and read.

------
jason_slack
I own about 600 books currently. Ranging from A-Z in terms of subject matter.
When I've moved, it has been a huge hassle to box and move and re-shelve them.
My wife gets pretty irritated about this.

I wouldn't change this.

Physical book on specific subject matter tend to be very thorough compared to
any content I could find online.

Physical books make me pay attention to it. They are right there in front. No
blue light emissions, no notifications.

Physical books cost money. You can never sell them for anything near what you
paid. I want every dollars worth our of them.

When someone asks me about a subject, if I own books on them I am happy to
part with them and pass them along to that person provided they agree to do
the same, if asked one day.

OP, please read more books, on any topic. Your mind, stress, creative spark
will thank you.

~~~
bbbobbb
What are your thoughts on ebooks?

I have never had 600 books in my library but couple years ago when moving I
simply got rid of every single physical book I owned.

I have not bought a new one since. All my books are electronic and I don't
feel like I am losing anything. Of course there is a chance that in 15 years
all my backups are gone or nothing can read the several formats I have them in
but how likely is that?

And until that is happening, I can carry the hundreds of books in my pocket or
search through them easily on my computer when needed. It makes moving so much
easier and saves up a lot of space.

~~~
jason_slack
This is true. It’s valid.

For me if I carry a book with me I’m going to read it. Carrying the weight of
the physical books ensures I read it. I don’t want to carry it around for
nothing.

------
jhedwards
You're definitely missing out. Some of the most challenging intellectual
experiences of my life have been obtained from books. Rarely, if ever, does a
digital media experience come close.

Take one for example: _The Logic of Life_ by Francois Jacob. This book gives a
detailed account of the history of biology as a discipline and shows how
change occurs as a result of feedback between human concepts (our
understanding of what life is) on the one hand and concrete techniques (the
technology used to investigate living systems) on the other. Jacob has an
incredibly detailed knowledge of this field and, if you read his book, you are
invited on an fantastic journey that relatively few people get to experience.

And that's just one book...

------
cosmodisk
I've been reading a lot ever since I learned how to do it. While I do read a
lot of stuff online,most of the stuff out there is just low quality crap. Yes,
there's some brilliant stuff too,but it's probably 0.001% of the overall. For
instance,I recently started reading a pretty heavy book( 800+ pages). It is
well written, factually correct, the author doesn't assume I'll just google
some other 20 tutorials to make his work and the depth of knowledge is
outstanding. No blog would ever match it. Yes,I can get all the info that is
in the book on the internet,the time commitment just googling, verifying and
understanding would exceed the time itdi take to read 5 books of similar size.

------
hellofunk
There is nothing that replaces reading great fiction for your growth and
development as a human.

------
arthev
You're missing out.

For one, relying on information to surface in light-weight form means that -
even if it surfaced - you would be behind the curve.

Secondly, it probably doesn't surface. A heavy book you engage with builds
rich models: you don't get that from light-weight online content.

Thirdly, if you want to positively differentiate yourself, acquiring
information others don't have is one method. Reading books others don't read
is one way to get that information.

Anecdote: Feynman used to have others ask him to look at the integrals they'd
been unable to solve, and he was often able to solve them - something he
attributes to having read a different math book that presented some seldom-
presented integration technique.

------
villasv
> Are books worth it?

Maybe not for you. They are for me. This is impossible to answer generally.

> Is it more true for [older/some fields]?

I don't believe there will be such a simple heuristic. I've read many books
that were not worth it, many I did not finish, and the common aspects were:

1\. The topic did not interest me / My motives to read were not the right ones

2\. The author was not very good / The content was low quality

You can prevent(1), but you'll have to at least give it a glance to identify
(2) where you can just drop it.

> Isn't most of the information from books freely available online?

Including books? Free online books? What's the point here?

> Am I missing out?

Maybe not. If you don't get enjoyment from books, move on. There are plenty of
rich and informative entertainment nowadays.

------
snow_mac
Yes, absolutely. Books contain a lot of good information. You're a slow
reader, I'm an ADHD reader, therefore I find that audiobooks are a stellar way
to read. I plow throw 3-6 audio books a month, I've got my overdrive app from
my local library, plus hoopla and Audible.

In tech land, I find some books, like pragmatic programmer or design patterns.
Tech books have the problem of being poorly written. Fiction books on the
other hand and many business books have a tendency to be of really high
quality.

A good publisher is Random House, they have a really good audio department
too. I really enjoy Scott Brick as a narrator; also checkout authors like
Nelson Demille, Tom Clancy and John Grisham.

------
nick_urban
The idea that you can get 80% online what you can get from books is somewhat
true for "fluff" books such as many business books and self-improvement books.

Serious books, however, are incomparable more valuable than either fluff books
or internet reading. They require a bigger investment, but they can give you
whole new ways of seeing. That only comes through a substantial investment and
effort to see with a new perspective.

Try some books that have stood the test of time, such as those published by
Everyman's Library or Modern Library. Often insight comes not so much from
keeping up with the bleeding edge, as from about understanding enduring truths
about life and the world.

------
jayeshsalvi
A general rule of thumb is the older the written word, more valuable it is.
Accordingly, the books that have been around for a while and are still well-
known they give highest value from the time you invest in reading them. The
content on Internet is mostly about current events and it lacks the depth that
old books have. News or opinions on current events will most likely become
irrelevant and obsolete. The stuff worth reading will survive the test of time
and you can read it in future. Staying up-to-date with current happenings is
overrated, because most of those things don't happen our daily life. Therefore
best invest your time reading meaningful books.

------
whatsmyusername
There's a ridiculous amount of information on most topics you can learn the
hard way on the internet and through horrific trial and error for free or the
easy way by reading one solid book at a nominal cost (or for free, since
libgen exists).

------
rayrrr
Reading a book--a real, classic book, not a business, technical or self-help
book--can literally change you as a person. Read the right book, and the
entity in your body reading stuff on the internet might react differently
afterwards.

------
calewis
I also struggled with books. Despite being an avid WW2 and science fiction fan
I avoided lengthy texts and just got my information online. As has been said
many times over that information is often, although not always, low quality.
For me I never connected my dyslexia with my inability to read (obvious I
know) then I discovered audio books and my world changed.

I’d recommend also trying audio books. The format is not for everyone, but
quality stories, be they fiction or non-fiction expand the mind.

Someone here recommended the Count of monte cristo as an amazing read, and I'm
currently half way though, its thrilling! Thank you to that person btw.

------
DreamScatter
Math books are a solid investment and do not become obsolete. Looking at a
digital math book is inconvenient, since learning from a math book often
requires flipping between pages and the index. That is why a physical math
book is more convenient. For many math topics, books from 50 or 100 years ago
will also provide useful insights that are still entirely valid and true today
and into the future. Books from non-math genres may not age as well, because
the information may become obsolete or outdated. However, for pure math books
this is not the case, which makes physical math books a good investment that
could last.

------
AdrianB1
I read probably over 1000 books, many more than once, and I think it was worth
it. It helped me build a culture one cannot get from Internet, I read books
that stimulated my imagination and also books that gave me information or
perspective I never considered (ex: some books about China, Iran, Hong Kong
and Russia). I learned so much from the books, much more than what I will be
able to experience myself. Now I find myself reading a lot about technology
and less fiction, mostly because after you read the top 10-20 books in each
area it is hard to find something interesting that you did not already read.

------
tiriplicamihai
I am a fan of both worlds - I spend a good amount of time watching conference
videos on youtube and reading articles and I also like reading books. What I
like about books is that they put everything in context way better than a
short article and/or youtube videos (just think about the difference between a
book and movie made after it). Another advantage of well written books is that
by providing the context they give you time to think about a possible solution
or reflect on a similar real situation before giving you a solution. The
information sticks with you better this way in my opinion.

------
punnerud
The problem is not what you know you don’t know, but the things you don’t know
that you don’t know.

The solution I have found to this problem is to discuss with other people or
read books. Internet almost works as a echo-chamber some times.

------
mark_l_watson
I am not sure how to answer your question because different things work for
different people.

For myself, I like eBooks because it is easy to occasionally hilight
especially useful or inspiring bits of text, then months or years later, I can
review a book by just looking at the stuff I hilighted and this triggers my
memory.

Also, some books really have inspired me (e.g., reading Bertram Raphael’s Mind
Inside of Matter changed the whole course of my career) and it just makes me
feel good to have the really important books on my book shelf.

Also, don’t forget to use your local library for both physical books and you
can check out eBooks.

------
srslymiguel
Are coffee shops worth it?

I have had less than 6 cups of coffee in my life, and probably less than 5.

Growing up in the suburbs, I assumed that coffee was a necessity.

I spend most of my day drinking tea, browsing the soda aisle at the
convenience store, and shopping for caffeine pills.

Up until recently, I didn't think I was missing out. In fact, I wondered why
there were all these coffee shops around. But recently I've started to notice
that there are people in the coffee shops. Am I missing something by sticking
to tea? Isn't all caffeine the same? I don't even like coffee, why are there
all these cafes?

Am I wrong? Am I missing out?

------
brightball
I was a developer for about 5 years before I looked in a book for an answer on
how to do something in a language I’d been using for years. Then I saw
something else I didn’t know. And something else.

Ended up reading the whole thing and now, whenever I want to really learn a
new topic or language I always go to a book for depth and understanding.

As a side effect, as I’ve gotten older I’ve found that history books are
fascinating in the same way. Most people have very little understanding of the
context around the history they know. It’s truly more interesting reading
history than fiction in my opinion.

------
cryptozeus
Ignore the fact if its good or bad to read books. Comments here advocating one
way or the other are relative to their experience. Think why do you read
slowly and why do you think reading a book is different then reading online.
My relationship with reading the books completely changed after i heard
naval’s podcast. This article explains it in brief. Podcast link is inside

[https://hackernoon.com/everything-i-knew-about-reading-
was-w...](https://hackernoon.com/everything-i-knew-about-reading-was-wrong-
bde7e57fbfdc)

~~~
cryptozeus
Tldr:

“Everyone I know is stuck on some book. I’m sure you’re stuck on some book
right now. It’s page 332, you can’t go on any further but you know you should
finish the book, so what do you do? You give up reading books for a while.
That for me was a tragedy, because I grew up on books, and then I switched to
blogs and then I switched to Twitter and Facebook, and then I realized I
wasn’t really learning anything, I was just taking little dopamine snacks all
day long.” — Naval Ravikant

“we’re taught from a young age that books are something you finish, books are
sacred. When you go to school and you’re assigned to read a book, you have to
finish the book…” — Naval Ravikant

------
ryanobjc
Most of your books in your must read are... self improvement? The field of
self improvement non fiction is widely regarded to be filled with fluff and
extra words for little content and purpose. They are the equivalent of
listicles and blog post spam.

You can do better.

Books are one of the greatest human achievements. The internet was supposed to
be the worlds largest library but that promise has failed.

For a moment, by analogy, do you think you can get 80% of the experience of
your fave 2 hour movie by watching every single 5-10 minute review of it? If
that sounds absurd, then so does your post to me.

------
neillyons
Reading a book for me is an incredible slow process. I can only really focus
on reading if it is the first thing I do when I wake up.

Wake up, make a coffee, and then sit and read for a bit. I can tolerate about
20 minutes before I start to get restless and need to do something else.

If I have exposed my brain to some high stimulating environment. Like browsing
the internet, or even just heading out. It is game over. I can't concentrate.
I end up constantly getting distracted.

I think I need to be bored/ in a low stimulating environment to read physical
books.

Having said that I do listen to audiobooks just fine.

------
rossdavidh
If I am wanting to know the best way to do X using framework or library or
language Y, I absolutely go to the internet. If I'm wanting to see how to do
bookbinding techniques for a certain knot, video is easier to follow than
books, actually.

But, if I'm wanting to concentrate on a topic for a substantial amount of
time, then the fact that I'm holding a paper book instead of sitting in front
of a screen, helps me to stay on task. The limitations of paper are their
strength, there. So, if you want to engage with a topic in depth, read a
(paper) book.

------
deng
* Read fiction. Start with a genre that interests you.

* Books only _feel_ like a big time investment because you are not used to read a single thing for more than 20 minutes. If you read for one hour each day, you should be able to finish a book in a week (on average). People often greatly over-estimate the amount of time they actually read (an ebook reader will tell you the hard truth).

* It is normal to forget lots of things you read. That's ok.

* Don't spend hours on GoodReads/Amazon/etc. to decide what to read. Just start reading.

* Don't hesitate to drop books you don't like.

------
sixdimensional
A related question is whether you should read “electronic books” (e.g.
E-readers) vs. physical books. I’m part of the bridge generation that grew up
with only physical books but then everything went digital, and I find that so
far, I can’t replace the act of physically reading a book with the digital
equivalent, it just doesn’t feel the same.

Are there people here who only use e-readers and prefer that for functional
reasons, above and beyond the efficiency aspect of less trees, less weight,
etc.?

And are there any suggestions of decent e-readers that aren’t made by Amazon?

~~~
jrgaston
I read a lot and I use both ebooks and physical books. I'm pretty happy with
my Kobo e-reader. The screen is perfect for text even in the sun, the back
lighting means I can read in the dark, and I can move between reading on the
Kobo, my iPad, and my Win10 box. Books with photos are better on the iPad,
though. Also, the kobo has no advertising.

------
marksimi
on the time investment: "Ramit's Book-Buying Rule: If you're "thinking about"
buying a book, just buy it. Don't waste 5 secs debating. Even 1 idea makes it
worth it."

~~~
latexr
I disagree. Most non-fiction isn’t worth the book. That _one idea_ can often
be learned in a more interesting and faster way by watching a good talk by the
author. By “not wasting five seconds” to consider if the book is worth it,
you’re potentially wasting hours of your life (and some money) on a dud.

------
rs23296008n1
I find the act of reading a book from start to finish over a period of time is
a good deal. There is definite progress toward a goal, you generally learn
something and books are portable and generally cheap.

It's also a decent way of exploring something without distraction and to a
guided level of depth. Usually by the end of it you have a feel on how deep
you want to continue and what aspects you don't understand. Depth vs breadth
is usually more easily traded off each other after you've read one or more
books on the subject.

------
matco11
Not all books are good.

Your learning comes from the experiences of your life. Reading a good book is
like learning someone else’s life.

...That’s why a truly great fiction book may be worth 100x a truly great non-
fiction book.

~~~
b_emery
I agree with your first few points, but I've never encountered a fiction book
that I thought was greater than the best non-fiction. Surely, opinions differ
but can you name a few (perhaps unusual) fiction books that make the 100x
mark?

I'm open to being convinced.

~~~
elcomet
Not the OP, but I can name a few.

I found Anna Karenina, or Crime and Punishment 100x better than all non-
fiction books I ever read.

~~~
b_emery
Thanks, I'll check them out.

------
hola_mundo
Books from major publishers typically undergo a merciless editing process that
can take something pretty good and make it exceptionally clear, memorable, and
entertaining.

This rarely happens for online content, which I suspect is one reason I retain
so little of what I've read online: it just wasn't that great.

Echoing a couple of others: pick up whatever book looks fun or entertaining to
you. No judgement.

Developing a habit of reading books should be the real goal.

The "best" book is whichever one you'll actually read.

------
brailsafe
It seems like you're frame of reference for everything is about lists of
things that have been recommended to you for some reason, whether it's online
content or books that you've gotta read.

Just throw that out, erase your list of stuff, and go to a bookstore or a
library and pick something up. Some books will catch you, some won't. You
wouldn't very well deny going to a movie with friends because you can find the
synopsis online and that's more efficient.

------
arendtio
It depends.

From my perspective, reading a book has a different quality. In general, you
spend more time on a subject and the content is often a bit deeper than online
articles.

On the other hand, if you want to learn some skill, you need to practice it
and for programming, it is a lot easier to practice it while you sit in front
of a computer ;-)

So asking if books are worth it, is like asking if the internet is worth it.
There are good pages and bad ones and similarly, there are incredible books
and boring ones.

------
readme
Books are definitely worth it, but what worries me is how little patience I
have to sit down and read one when I can get everything through a fire hose on
the Internet.

------
Gonzih
I got advice on reading long time ago that helped me a lot: "Start reading
what you like until you start liking to read". And yes, books are the best
source of any information that has to be digested by you. Its very personal
journey not biased by other who might digested this for you (like blogs or
podcasts). Its important to learn how to understand and digest things rather
than consume and reproduce thoughts of others.

------
outlace
Are books worth it? Absolutely. I avoid anything superficial (e.g. tweets,
facebook posts, brief journalistic articles). I enjoy long (2+ hr) podcasts
and books because a good book can give a complex subject its due nuance and
depth. I mostly read non-fiction and I'm looking for things that will change
my worldview or will teach me something important, and for this I need to
invest in a book-length treatment of the subject.

------
m4r35n357
There were books before the internet, and they do not go obsolete so they will
outlast anything on the internet.

Books can really belong to you rather than a hardware device.

------
erokar
If your reading list consists mostly of self-improvement books I don't think
you're missing out, and I think you're wise to continue getting summaries of
that content online. Books in that genre are typically filled with irrelevant
fluff and anecdotes to fill pages -- I avoid such books.

Only content cannot replace good fiction however, so you will need to use
books or an e-reader if you have an interest in that.

------
chiefalchemist
If reading books were easy, everyone would do it. Put another wy, reading
books is a subtle way to seperating yourself from the masses. Mind you, I'm
not suggesting you be elitist about it. Only that books are like using your
gym membership; a healthy workout for your brain.

As for what to read, me thinks your over-thinking it. Just read. Read what you
like, otherwise you're less likely to stick with the habit.

------
slavapestov
> I spend most of my day reading online articles/conversations, watching
> videos, and listening to podcasts. I have thousands of non-fiction (mostly
> self-improvement) books in my reading list on GoodReads, but almost never
> bother to read any.

You’re wasting your life and rotting your brain. Get a hobby, friends or just
go outside once in a while. Also “self improvement” books are all a scam.

------
throwawaypa123
Yes. Find the top 10 most popular books by century read those. Never read
anything where the author is still alive.

At the very least read Ben Franklins autobiography.

------
jey
Here's is a useful categorization of nonfiction books into three kinds:
narrative, tree, and branch. The "tree" books are the most enlightening and
worth reading to have your perspective shifted and grown.

[https://commoncog.com/blog/the-3-kinds-of-non-fiction-
book/](https://commoncog.com/blog/the-3-kinds-of-non-fiction-book/)

------
peteforde
Books are wonderful. There's value in online articles and conversations, but
you are likely depriving yourself of a few layers of nuance and enjoyment. No
time to start like the present.

Step one: get a library card, and then download the app they provide to access
books on your tablets and phone. Then _power move_ find the option to look for
"Skip the Line" or equivalent to get a list of books other people are waiting
months to read in a queue. Thank me later.

Step two: start listening to audiobooks. You'll start at 1x speed and then
gradually move up to 2x, depending on the type of book you're listening to and
whether the narrator has an accent. I get through a book every two days by
listening during my morning prep, when I'm walking or biking. You will find
yourself slowing down to finish chapters in no time. Audiobooks are
incredible. There are haters; they are wrong.

I recommend switching up between fiction and non-fiction, otherwise I get
exhausted. I like business books (Shoedog by Phil Knight, or The Hard Thing
About Hard Things) and books about behavioural psychology; Thinking, Fast and
Slow is excellent, so is anything by Malcolm Gladwell. Enlightenment Now by
Steven Pinker, Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari are both great. Authors like Dan
Ariely and the Steves that wrote Freakonomics.

Lots of audiobooks are pleasurable in a special way because they are read by
the author. For example, literally every book by David Sedaris is best enjoyed
when read by David Sedaris. This is also true of good biographies; Failure Is
An Option by H. Jon Benjamin will get you kicked out of a restaurant because
you'll be laughing so hard.

Fiction is a really personal realm, but I prefer sci-fi and some fantasy. I
read Cryptonomicon in my early 20s and loved it, but listening to it in my
early 40s was a transcendant joy. Don't be scared by the runtime - you won't
want it to end. Other authors I happen to enjoy very much include David
Mitchell (Thousand Autumns or Bone Clocks FTW), Cory Doctorow (Makers,
Walkaway), Blake Crouch (Recursion), Daniel Suarez (Influx, Delta-V, Daemon),
Robin Sloan (Sourdough, Mr. Penumbra's 24-hour Bookstore).

Just to wrap up and repeat what has no doubt been said elsewhere in the
thread, fiction in particular is the gateway to empathy and imagination.
Reading is a muscle; it gets easier and then it gets addictive. There's a
reason people keep doing it, unlike yoga. ;)

------
jarcoal
I just started reading books again in the last couple of years and I think
it’s definitely worth it.

My recommendation is that you start with a physical book and not an ebook or
audio book. It might test your attention span at first, but it’s the best way
to get your focus back and you’ll find that your reading speed and
comprehension will start to improve. Also, it’s nice not having to charge them
;)

------
stonedge
I am a fan of Goodreads and their yearly reading challenges. I’ve got about
250 books on my to read and, due to the social nature of the platform, can get
new recommendations from my network.

One tip I’ve found is that, for non-fiction, if the average rating is 3.75 or
higher, it’s going to be good. I’m prejudice against books lower than that and
often cull before I read.

That tip doesn’t seem to apply to fiction.

------
mclightning
Start reading a few pages from this book;
[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9778945-the-
shallows](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9778945-the-shallows)

I was looking for an answer to the very same question. This book, kept me
hooked and gave me an answer. Try it out, just few pages, and see if it does
same to you.

~~~
CuriousSkeptic
I’ve read about 60% of this book, but didn’t feel it got anywhere after the
first chapters. So let me ask the question for this book specifically, is it
worth reading in full, or did it get its important points across after the
first chapters?

------
anta40
I'm a photography enthusiast and hardcopy photography books is _A_ must.
Period. I mean books that display the works of the photographers. Sure you can
find some of them on Flickr, Instagram, etc. But to study the complete work,
gotta buy the books.

For the rest, I'm fine with digital books. Take no physical space, can be
easily read on phone/tablets.

To sum it up: for me, yes they are worth.

~~~
ege_erdogan
Regarding the photography books, how does a complete digital archive of a
photographer's works compare to a physical book of the same content? Would you
still prefer the physical book in that scenario?

~~~
amanaplanacanal
Many people think that you really need to see a photo printed to get the whole
experience. Seeing it in a screen isn’t the same. I suspect resolution is part
of the problem.

------
jolmg
I was just shown a cookbook that absolutely blew my mind. It explains the
effects that each ingredient has on the food and how they interact with each
other chemically. It seems like one would get a supremely good understanding
of what's going on as you cook and otherwise prepare the food. I don't think
I'd be able to find anything as good as it online.

~~~
jsncbt
The Food Lab?

~~~
jolmg
I can't remember exactly, but I believe it was one of the "Cook's Illustrated"
series of books:

[https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/cook%27s+illustrated](https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/cook%27s+illustrated)

A really thick, textbook-sized one.

------
rdiddly
Most books don't age well, you're correct. Which is why you should read old
books. Old books that are still around today are actually the few that were
good enough to keep around. The crappy books from back then have long since
aged out and been forgotten.

Meanwhile the "bleeding edge" is still so new, that the crap hasn't aged out
of it yet, so your good-to-crap ratio is going to be lower. And while I'm on
the subject of crap, don't read too much self-help - not that it's necessarily
crap, but being a motivational type thing, it tends to be, essentially, a
sales pitch - either for the ideas in the book itself, or possibly for more
cynical things such as ancillary product$ or other book$, or for the author's
cult of personality. That sort of thing will tend to be, as you said, filled
with disconnected fluff/anecdotes/stories etc.

Though at the same time I had to laugh that you complained that _"... books
... were mostly filled with ... stories."_ Yep they sure are! Done right, a
story is sometimes the best way to tell something. Problems can be solved
obliquely don'tcha know. You might learn more about "How to Win Friends and
Influence People" (to pick a classic self-help title) by reading something
like Dostoyevsky (though I wouldn't recommend that as a first try).

Get you some fiction. A book that captures something of the universal essence
of being human, that's a book that can transcend time, and that's why, again,
somebody and a bunch of other somebodies decided to keep reprinting or
republishing it. Find a book or an author you believe in, that you consider
worth it. Because that was your question. It's partly a self-fulfilling
answer. Are books worth it? Read some books and find out.

Any time you skim something, you are putting yourself above the author, making
yourself their editor essentially, deciding which parts of what they wrote,
needed to actually be written and which parts can be skipped. You're probably
not even reading this now, huh fucker? Ha, got you. Seriously though, find an
author you can trust, and then surrender to them and their book more. Instead
of thinking you know best what can be skipped, actually assume the author
knows what they're doing, and wrote all those words on purpose. That won't
work if you don't trust them, and it won't work if the author is no good (i.e.
can't be trusted).

I bet this approach will also make you, to a surprising degree, remember
stuff, whereas before, you (maybe correctly) surmised that nothing in the book
was particularly important. You probably had yourself a crap writer right
there, that's what that was.

------
nabla9
Reading ability don't stop at the level where everybody agrees that you can
read. You can develop it much more. If you read very little and read short
pieces in the internet, you may never develop it full.

First you should practice it with something relatively easy before you dwell
into classics and must read. Read a lot whatever you want, quality does not
matter.

------
gwbas1c
I suggest reading for fun. Find some good fiction, and just read it for
pleasure. Long-form fiction will never be obsolete, either in print or on a
device.

(If you like sci-fi, I suggest starting with Issac Asimov's foundation
series.)

Oh, don't waste your time with self-help books. They're mostly garbage written
by people trying to justify their over-inflated ego.

------
joi_de_vivre
Yes, if you care primarily about skimming the surface of things, collecting
ideas you can bring up in conversation and being "up to date," books are
totally overrated. Content aggregators fill that role much better. But if you
actually want to get back into reading as a hobby I would recommend starting
with some easy-to-read fiction.

------
dmos62
I've a small bag of thoughts on this:

\- Whether it's books, videos, short-form articles, long-form articles,
academic papers or podcasts, it's about searching for good information and
positive stimulation. Both of these criteria are subjective.

\- How you search and filter is also highly personal. It might be that your
needs are such that the content you find in those mediums you listed are ideal
for you.

\- For me, people who write books and people who do videos/articles/podcasts
are often not the same people, and I tend to be more interested in what the
book writing people have to say.

\- Videos/articles/podcasts present first-hand ideas far less often. The
opposite is true: authors of interesting and original ideas often elect to
convey them through books. Again, subjective.

\- If an idea is novel enough, short-form mediums like those you listed are
not enough to convey it. A book (or rather its length compared to e.g.
article) allows the author to explore and swim around in his ideas. You need
that for innovative ideas. Noam Chomsky said that at the time (1960s or 70s)
how much time you got to present your idea on TV -- 5 minutes -- was not
enough to change a person's opinion, so the medium itself framed the
discourse. Same applies to all mediums. It pays to be mindful of that.

\- A good book is much better than a good series or film. HBO's Game of
Thrones versus GRRM's A Song of Ice and Fire. Umberto Eco's The Name of the
Rose versus the recent series. Richard K. Morgan's Takeshi Kovacs series
versus Netflix's Altered Carbon. Same goes for non-fiction.

\- I'm a lover of film, but I turned to books because there's only so many
good movies, but there's orders of magnitude more good books. Same goes for
fiction and non-fiction.

\- If you're looking for stimulation, rather than technical information, a
book lasts much longer. I've stretched out reading some book series for years
and it was awesome.

\- If you don't enjoy a book, don't read it. Don't hope that it will get
better or that it will have been worth it. Odds are stacked against it. I
regret that when I started getting into books way back when I forced myself to
read even those I didn't immediately like; I now know to give a book a serious
30-60 minutes and if my gut says no that's that. Reading takes time so spend
it enjoying yourself. This applies to technical reading too.

------
analog31
I read books for entertainment, even non fiction and technical. I don't
believe that I have to spend every waking moment improving myself. If I
benefit from books, it's because every once in a while, disparate things from
disparate books click together in my brain. "Chance favors the prepared mind."

------
pfortuny
Is it worth visiting the Sistine Chapel or going to the Louvre or the
Hermitage? Who knows!

But it is completely different from seeing pictures of them.

What books are worth it? Hmmm. Depends. But some are very much so.

Is The Art of Computer Programming worth it? Is little Rudin worth it? Is the
“Feynman lectures on Physics” worth it? Is “The Ides of March” worth it?

Depends.

------
tfont
Written book content is so dramatically different than online content.

The single fact that books have to be reviewed, edited, and published takes on
a whole new world of quality and information.

Personally, I don't even bother with ebooks due to the lack of creditability
in the quality of information and writing.

So, yes they are.

------
songshuu
I would suggest you read this before you pass a final judgement on books :
[https://www.amazon.com/Reader-Come-Home-Reading-
Digital/dp/0...](https://www.amazon.com/Reader-Come-Home-Reading-
Digital/dp/0062388789)

------
newnewpdro
Yes, but I recommend combining book reading with another time-consuming
"unplugged" activity: camping in nature.

Turn in early, and read a book by flashlight in your tent for a few hours,
preferably with no rainfly and the Milky Way visible through a mesh top. Kill
two birds with one stone.

------
spoonyvoid
A non-fiction book provides a set of ideas from multiple perspectives. It's
unlikely that you'll remember a concept as soon as it's laid out but when
reading, which is essentially engaging in a written discussion with the
author, it's much more likely to sink in.

------
nicholast
This question better posed as "Are any books worth it?", a much easier one to
answer, then if yes it naturally follows with "Which books are worth it?", and
I am sure there are several heuristics available to help approximate solutions
to this third question.

------
frou_dh
I would say that reading non-fiction books/ebooks is a waste of time if not
actively dog-earing and annotating pages.

Reading a book front to back, committing the important stuff to memory, and
leaving the book unmarked, is a fantasy as far as I'm concerned.

------
pi-rat
Have you considered audio books? Doesn't work that well for many(/most?)
technical books, but it's great for fiction, and easy to pair with a busy
life.

I listen to tons of audio books while walking, commuting to work, doing chores
at home, etc.

~~~
Koshkin
To be fair, an audio ‘book’ is no longer a book - in a very important sense.
Reading is not a strictly linear process, while listening (to a recording)
most certainly is. (And no pictures.)

------
zzo38computer
I like to read many books; I think it is good. When I am not working on
computer, I can read a book. This can be sometimes in my own home, or
sometimes in library, etc. Sometimes I will have something on the computer but
would prefer a book.

------
yawboakye
Unlike content on the internet, whose links can die for a myriad of reasons,
physical books are always with you. I intentionally make a distinction between
physical books and e-book options, where sometimes you have the book on
subscription.

------
sys_64738
Well-written books like K&R or the GO-Lang book by Google are much better than
their online/kindle versions. The only problem with books is their weight.

Plus, reading a book on a tablet or reading a physical book - who looks
smarter? :)

------
SkyMarshal
High quality long-form writing that requires focus, patience, work and though
to both write and to read/understand is worth it. Books are more likely to
fall in that category than what you listed, but not exclusively.

------
coldtea
> _Growing up with the Internet, I always assumed that everything could be
> found for free online. I spend most of my day reading online articles
> /conversations, watching videos, and listening to podcasts. I have thousands
> of non-fiction (mostly self-improvement) books in my reading list on
> GoodReads, but almost never bother to read any. I assume that the best part
> of the best books will surface in daily conversations, YouTube videos,
> CliffsNotes, podcasts, Reddit posts/comments, blog articles, etc. _

Why read books when you can have a shallow understanding of everything through
internet posts?

Why learn anything from millennia of human experience or get to see the
perspective of others through literature when you can watch YouTube?

Why try to get the subtler side of things, when you can read a PowerPoint /
cliff notes style "good parts"?

------
pier25
Pros of long written form:

\- more in-depth content about a topic

\- presents a structured approach

\- can make you think about problems you didn't know you had (vs googling for
a problem you have right now)

Cons of long written form:

\- usually not up to date (some topics are less affected by this than others)

\- you have to pay

------
charlzbryan
I have the same problem - I'm trying out these apps - Blinkist and getAbstract
that basically summarise books into 10 min reads. My experience with them so
far is that the material has been condensed a bit too much.

------
baxtr
Definitely: yes. I try often to research something I remember I have read
online. I am almost always disappointed. I think it is not even because it
does not exist online, but it is just so hard to find through google.

------
guidoism
Also, audiobooks are an excellent way to get into reading books, especially
for fiction and especially those with awesome narration. Don't let anyone tell
you that listening to a book isn't reading it.

------
maxlamb
Whatever that list of 1000 must-reads books, I would include "Guns, Germs and
Steel" and "Collapse" by Jared Diamond, and "A General Theory of Love" by
Thomas Lewis et al.

------
WalterBright
About 95% of books are essentially trash. But the the other 5% is very worth
reading.

What books offer is a deep dive into a subject your interested in without
distractions, while online content is optimized for short attention span and
serving ads.

For example, you can spend an hour watching a documentary on the battle of
Stalingrad. Or, you can spend an hour reading Beevor's "Stalingrad" and learn
50 times as much, and you'll gain a far greater understanding of it. If you
want to learn even more, you can dive into Glantz's trilogy on Stalingrad.
You'll never find any of that in any documentary.

Or, if you're into politics and wonder how LBJ managed to manipulate a hostile
Congress into passing his Civil Rights bill, check out Caro's incredible
quadrilogy on LBJ.

If you want to know about Rockefeller beyond the glib soundbites on the
internet, try Chernow's "Titan".

~~~
nickpp
Hey Walter, I'd love some more book recommendations from you. Maybe some sort
of favorite lists even? Thanks!

~~~
WalterBright
I really should do a list, but here's a few more:

"Nothing Like It In The World" Stephen Ambrose The men who built the
transcontinental railroad 1863-1869

"The Pity of War" Niall Ferguson Explaining World War 1

"Steve Jobs" Walter Isaacson

"The Wright Brothers as Engineers" Quentin Wald

"With the Old Breed" Eugene Sledge

"Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman" Richard Feynman

"Small Wonder" Walter Nelson The amazing story of the Volkswagen Beetle.

"Masters of Doom" David Kushner

"Reach for the Sky" Paul Brickhill

~~~
nickpp
Thanks a bunch!

------
kp98
There was something my AP literature teacher told us when someone asked why
literary analysis would ever be necessary; he said something along the lines
of: “math and physics might be more valuable in the job market, but if you’re
ever depressed or your soul needs nourishment you’re far more likely to reach
for classic literature than the math textbook.” 5 years later and I find a lot
more peace and joy in pondering the topics literature is focused on; love,
death, life, purpose, war, compared to sifting thru the endless news on hacker
news.

Literature and the great novels have consistent themes that are unending in
their search for answers, and often this evokes a deeper level of thought
compared to the internet.

That said, when I do watch tv I try to stick to artistic movies or something I
can learn from. Recently I watched Come and See, an excellent movie about
Nazis in Belaruse. After watching it I thought this movie deserves a literary
analysis of its own.

------
2snakes
I have a hard time remembering everything I read. There's an app for that
called Readwise! It emails you highlights you've made previously. It also has
some advanced features.

------
masa331
For me there is nothing like reading a good story. And good stories are
timeless. On the contrary, tech, money, billionaire's thoughts... they age
fast.

So lately i'm wondering, is HN worth it?

------
nxpnsv
If you have the patience for podcasts you have the patience for audiobooks. A
substantial difference between the two is the typical amount of effort in
creating what you’re hearing.

------
Gene5ive
The feeling of cracking open an epic fiction novel, smelling it, reading,
enjoying it, and finishing it is like eating a steak and having sex at the
same time. So there's that.

------
thunga
Books are probably the only way to expose you to multiple nuances on the your
personal and professional framing/narrative for both personal life and
professional narrative.

------
underpand
Some positives of books:

Books are widely vetted but it is difficult to find quality online content.
Books work your long form attention but much online content is self contained
and shallow.

------
Forge36
Try audio books. I've just started, and more average one a week (many self
help, though they aren't all good). Give your eyes a rest is sometimes
necessary

------
elcomet
I would say fiction is really worth it.

You can learn so much by reading classical fictional work (Tolstoï, Flaubert,
or whatever) about humanity.

As we say, a reader lives a thousand lives.

------
DanielBMarkham
I don't know. Is the symphony worth it?

Let's say you never saw a baseball game before in your life. You know nothing
of baseball. You come to visit me, so you and I go out to the baseball game.

It would make no sense at all. Who are these people? What's the stick for?
Does everybody get to run at the same time? Why do they keep changing around
so much?

I, on the other hand, would be fascinated, enthralled. Each player has a
backstory, the history of these teams playing is involved and dramatic. And
did you believe those calls? It was robbery!

It's not the baseball game, the game is the same for both of us. It's the
preparation and expectations that define our differences.

Books are a particular form of artistic expression. For fiction at least, I
would argue that they involve a physical object you manipulate in various ways
to hear a story conveyed by an author. It's an experience. You have a special
reading place, you might have a favorite beverage, there are things you expect
from various genres, and so on.

E-books and online reading are a separate art form, at least in my experience.
For instance, the average video viewer only watches a few seconds. Content
online has been optimizing around realtime reader stats for many years now.
It's a separate art with its own separate genres.

I would argue that there are certain things you can experience from a symphony
that you can't from a music streaming service. But it's not for everybody.
Without the background and preparation, without the context, it just seems so
much of a waste of time. And perhaps it is for you. It's for you to decide.

The only thing I'd add is to not make the mistake of confusing art with
information. The net primarily exists to move information around. Art
primarily exists to be experienced. They sound the same, but they're not. A
good author can convey feelings, thoughts, and opinions to you in a book that
you'd never get from a thousand wikipedia articles or blog entries.

tl;dr not everything collapses down to a tl;dr

------
stevebmark
If you get information from Reddit you deserve your ignorance. Books are worth
it, and more generally paid content will give you higher quality information
than free content. Nutrition is one area highly susceptible to this
paid/unpaid information imbalance. The best information from doctors is in
books, not online. For example most people aren't even aware of the _idea_
that saturated fat and cholesterol are healthy (which we've known for 20
years) because they learn from the lowest common denominator (like Reddit).

------
archsurface
Try short stories. There are all sorts: PK Dick Beyond Lies the Wub, Autofac,
to Nabokov Signs and Symbols, Chekhov the Duel, to HP Lovecraft.

------
yiyus
You can be fine with looking at a few pictures and some wikipedia pages, but
it is not comparable to making a real trip. Books are worth it.

------
clSTophEjUdRanu
Reading comprehension and speed comes with practice. Before habitually reading
I'd have the problem of things not sticking.

------
lol666
omgs... just read about what books do to your brain... and you will know, its
not about getting short notes, its about letting your mind experience a deep
and beautiful journey - world and stories is not just about facts and
summarizations :) if ur not sure where to start pick some fantasy or sci fi or
adventure and let your neurons build up

------
SirLJ
I wonder what your background is? And to answer your question, I think you are
missing a whole dimension in your life...

------
gordon_freeman
a lot of good comments here and I'd like to add some book suggestions here.
You could start with some high-quality classics such as Meditations by Marcus
Aurelius or other philosophy books such as from Epictetus or Seneca and see
for yourself how much wisdom you can get out of these books.

------
jlangemeier
I think you're viewing books and online content as entirely equivalent media
forms; which would be much the same as treating movies and theater as
equivalent content - they're adjacent, and provide similar material, but don't
meet the same ends and their method of consumption are wildly different.

True, long form reading is also a skill that can be built up, and that skill
even varies from topic to topic. Anybody that's done any academic reading
(a.k.a. reading through dense academic journals and papers) will tell you it's
a learned skill that is vastly different from either non-fiction or fiction
reading. I can easily pound my way through a 1000 page book from Neal
Stephenson in a few nights, but I need weeks to dig into a single paper in
Category Theory, Non-linear Systems, or Control Theory; and it's because
reading those academically isn't a skill I've built up yet.

And while it's true that much of the synopsis information on a topic can be
found online, and you can get the details on Grapes of Wrath from piles of
YouTube'ers and CliffsNotes; there is detail and meaning that you may take
away from that book that you wouldn't find in those short reviews (they're
great for school reports in a pinch, but not great for actual
contextualization). So, in all, it also depends on what you're reading for.

And that brings me to my last and probably most important point, "What you're
reading for." I read something like Stephen King for enjoyment, plain and
simple, there isn't some meaning of life that will probably be gleaned from
it. I have a friend that reads piles of "bodice rippers" for enjoyment, they
read a lot of other things, but that's their junk food reading. I read various
pop-science or pop-psychology or pop-history type books for a mix of enjoyment
and seeing if I want to dig deeper on the subjects they're covering; and they
can be better (and sometimes way worse) at conveying interesting points on a
topic than a quick few articles online. I read academic journals to further my
education and keep up with new things coming out in my fields of interest. And
like most of us, of course I plow through online content, news, the
Twittersphere, and bloggers I follow for many of these same reasons.

So it's honestly up to, and on you, for the reason you read books (or don't).
Reading of any kind is a learned skill, and can atrophy in the same way your
muscles will when you stop going to the gym - so if you want to read books, go
for it; if you don't don't; but just like going to the gym, don't let the
first few weeks/months/years/decades/lifetimes of soreness stop you from the
goal you're interested in.

------
tarsinge
Personally for fiction movies and video games don’t match the amazement I can
experience with a book.

------
sunir
Almost all non-fiction books are garbage. But like the best ideas get surfaced
in blog posts and videos, the best books get cited over and over again. Read
those.

I try to filter out anything published in the past 5-10 years. There are
definitely fad books.

Some books people talk around but don’t cite because they are so famous, like
taking about Marxism instead of Das Capital or Darwinism instead of the Origin
of Species. It is often worth reading the books that shook the world in your
lifetime.

------
ctdonath
Really important & useful ideas require hundreds of pages to express.

------
haecceity
This is an excerpt from one of Seneca's essays which might convince you of the
merit in books:

Of all men they alone are at leisure who take time for philosophy, they alone
really live; for they are not content to be good guardians of their own
lifetime only. They annex every age to their own; all the years that have gone
before them are an addition to their store. Unless we are most ungrateful, all
those men, glorious fashioners of holy thoughts, were born for us; for us they
have prepared a way of life. By other men's labours we are led to the sight of
things most beautiful that have been wrested from darkness and brought into
light; from no age are we shut out, we have access to all ages, and if it is
our wish, by greatness of mind, to pass beyond the narrow limits of human
weakness, there is a great stretch of time through which we may roam. We may
argue with Socrates, we may doubt with Carneades, find peace with Epicurus,
overcome human nature with the Stoics, exceed it with the Cynics. Since Nature
allows us to enter into fellowship with every age, why should we not turn from
this paltry and fleeting span of time and surrender ourselves with all our
soul to the past, which is boundless, which is eternal, which we share with
our betters?

But we may fairly say that they alone are engaged in the true duties of life
who shall wish to have Zeno, Pythagoras, Democritus, and all the other high
priests of liberal studies, and Aristotle and Theophrastus, as their most
intimate friends every day. No one of these will be "not at home," no one of
these will fail to have his visitor leave more happy and more devoted to
himself than when he came, no one of these will allow anyone to leave him with
empty hands; all mortals can meet with them by night or by day.

No one of these will force you to die, but all will teach you how to die; no
one of these will wear out your years, but each will add his own years to
yours; conversations with no one of these will bring you peril, the friendship
of none will endanger your life, the courting of none will tax your purse.
From them you will take whatever you wish; it will be no fault of theirs if
you do not draw the utmost that you can desire. What happiness, what a fair
old age awaits him who has offered himself as a client to these! He will have
friends from whom he may seek counsel on matters great and small, whom he may
consult every day about himself, from whom he may hear truth without insult,
praise without flattery, and after whose likeness he may fashion himself.

We are wont to say that it was not in our power to choose the parents who fell
to our lot, that they have been given to men by chance; yet we may be the sons
of whomsoever we will. Households there are of noblest intellects; choose the
one into which you wish to be adopted; you will inherit not merely their name,
but even their property, which there will be no need to guard in a mean or
niggardly spirit; the more persons you share it with, the greater it will
become. These will open to you the path to immortality, and will raise you to
a height from which no one is cast down. This is the only way of prolonging
mortality—nay, of turning it into immortality. Honours, monuments, all that
ambition has commanded by decrees or reared in works of stone, quickly sink to
ruin; there is nothing that the lapse of time does not tear down and remove.
But the works which philosophy has consecrated cannot be harmed; no age will
destroy them, no age reduce them; the following and each succeeding age will
but increase the reverence for them, since envy works upon what is close at
hand, and things that are far off we are more free to admire. The life of the
philosopher, therefore, has wide range, and he is not confined by the same
bounds that shut others in. He alone is freed from the limitations of the
human race; all ages serve him as if a god. Has some time passed by? This he
embraces by recollection. Is time present? This he uses. Is it still to come?
This he anticipates. He makes his life long by combining all times into one.

------
dominotw
Yes because a kindle or a physical book is less damaging to the eyes.

------
hirundo
1\. books without internet 2\. internet without books

I'd pick 1.

------
2snakes
Might want to look into an app called Readwise.

------
dillonmckay
Go hang out at your local library for a day.

------
zelly
Read books published before the internet.

------
pps43
tl;dr: yes

First let me address the time investment angle. Not every hour is the same.
There are active hours when I'm creating something, having conversations,
actively learning. There are passive hours when I'm consuming content -
watching movies or YouTube videos, listening to podcasts, reading books. An
hour spent reading a book is not an hour not spent learning a new ML
technique. It's an hour not spent watching TV. Once you realize that, you stop
feeling guilty.

Now back to the main subject. Reading Cliff's notes and comments will give you
some idea of what's in a book, but it will be by definition incomplete, and
likely biased. A good example is George Orwell's 1984. You need to read the
entire book to understand the very last sentence. It is very powerful, but if
you skip the book and just read it out of context it won't have the same
effect. You may think you understand what the book is about, but that
understanding will be rather shallow.

The biggest problem with books is that, like everywhere else, 90+% is crap and
it's not easy to tell which books you'll like. Recommendations don't work well
because they depend on people. You won't necessarily like a book I liked. So
effectively you're on your own as far as discovery goes.

------
gdne
tl;dr Yes. Books are worth it.

For the vast majority of my life, I didn’t read any books. Reading for me is a
painfully boring experience. I simply lack the ability to read and comprehend
at a speed that keeps me engaged.

Then, I realized I assimilate information very differently based on the
medium. For me, math is a very visual thing. Graphs and plots make
mathematical concepts immediately understandable. For general learning,
hearing someone talk about a topic is most effective for me. This is when I
decided to give audiobooks a go. This has been transformational for me.

Any good audiobook app will allow for faster playback. I’ve trained myself to
listen to books at 2x speed (or faster). This is easily 5x the speed I would
comprehend the material if I physically read it. So it’s super effective for
me. I listen to these books in my car during my commute. Audiobooks convert my
commute from a time waster into probably the most valuable time I have in my
day.

So why are books worth it? For me, books end up performing like the repetitive
learning system of Anki
([https://apps.ankiweb.net/](https://apps.ankiweb.net/)). A good book is
somewhat repetitive as it goes deep on a focus area. Spending 10+ hours over
the period of a week or so consuming a topic and having time for my brain to
stew on it is incredible. I can’t get this from pod casts or blog posts and
other online content.

I only listen to non-fiction books, typically on topics around human
psychology, business, and topics I hope to give me new insights.

Bottom line: books are worth it because they offer depth that I can’t get
anywhere else. That depth is the value.

------
ulisesrmzroche
All your assumptions are super wrong, especially that one about how everything
can be found for free online

Like you don’t even know that books have to be digitized.

Or that part how magically the most salient and important points will rise up
in natural conversation, which is just like what?

Also, this thing bout books being 90% fluff. That’s the biggest giveaway of a
non-teaser. How do you even recognize what fluff is? You wrote 4 paragraphs
worth of it

Like basically, this is just dunning kruger

------
ChuckMcM
The definitive answer is "it depends on you, are they?"

I know that isn't helpful but lets unpack a number of things from your
question and address them separately.

First lets talk about skill. You said "I read slowly and I don't remember
everything I read either."

In my experience most people don't remember _everything_ they read, but they
do remember the "big points" that a book was trying to make. I say this to
reassure you to not get hung up on how much you retain, you can always re-read
the book and get more out of it. But the other part was you said you "Read
slowly."

Reading is a skill, like bicycle riding or playing the piano, or shooting
baskets in basketball. The more you practice it the better it gets. A strategy
I used with my kids and with folks who are new to reading is to find books
that are not too challenging to read, and are _engaging_ which means you want
to read them. Science fiction stories, mysteries, any of a number of
categories of fiction meet the bill. Go to your nearest library and ask a
librarian for some suggestions on things to read that have good stories. Ask
for skill ranges from early reader to college level. Check them out, read them
all, and make notes of the ones that were interesting, the ones that weren't,
the easy ones to read and the hard ones to read. No need to write a book
report just write down "Read '1001 Arabian Nights', found it entertaining but
kind of boring." or what ever your take was on the book. Since you aren't
"learning" from these books, just practicing your reading skill, you should
not be anxious if don't remember all of the details or even who the main
characters were. Go back to the library and give your take on the books to
them and ask them to help with picking out 5 or 6 more. Rinse and repeat.

What this does is it hones your sense of what you find "fun" to read. And when
it's fun, just like video games, there isn't really a question of where does
the time come from. But let's talk about time for a minute.

You called out that books were a "big time investment." Which is true, it is
one way to invest your time. What are your other time investments? Have you
done the experiment where you journal how you spend time every day for a week?
Doing that will give you insight into what you are spending your time on now
and give you an idea of what you are "investing" in. Reading will develop your
vocabulary, sense of humor, conversation skills, knowledge, and mental acuity.
That is what you get by investing in reading books, compare that to what you
are getting out of your current investments and perhaps that will inform your
choice on how much time you might spend. Also it is useful to remember that
you can start and stop reading easily, carrying a book on your commute (if you
aren't driving) is an easy way to get extra value out of your time, you are
both going or coming from work _and_ you are improving your reading skills!
bonus!

Then there is this: "I always assumed that everything could be found for free
online." This isn't ever going to be true. Not the 'free' or 'online' part,
the _found_ part. While most information ends up online, either legally,
quasi-legally, or illegally, finding it is becoming exponentially harder as
various forces work to monetize, hide, or discredit it. Having worked at a
search engine that indexed billions of nominally "good" web sites I can tell
you that our experience was that 99.999% of it was crap. Finding the good
stuff is really really hard and getting harder. And it moves so finding it a
second time can be just as hard.

The bulk of the things you want to know can be found already written, in
books, by someone who spent time collecting the information, verifying its
veracity, writing it up, having an editor help them rewrite it for clarity and
having a reference department check it for accuracy. You can check those
things out at a library for free. You can buy them for small change at rummage
sales and yard sales, and you can share them with others by swapping books.

What I've found as I've gotten older is that books for me fall into three
categories, entertainment, working knowledge, and reference knowledge. I found
the "Dune" series by Frank Herbert very entertaining and keep a copy on my
book shelf. I have a copy of "The Art of Electronics" with post-it "flags" at
sections I often refer to as part of my working knowledge set. And I've
digitized (scanned into OCR'd PDF files) dozens of text books which I think of
as my "reference" set. I use a simple search engine to look up specific things
in those books.

Bottom line: Work with a librarian at your local library to beef up your
reading skills and ability to use a library. Then use those skills to read
books that make you feel happy or more useful or more knowledgeable. You may
find, like I did, that reading is more fun that watching television or playing
video games. Or you may not. Again, it's a question only you can answer.

------
shantly
> I have thousands of non-fiction (mostly self-improvement) books in my
> reading list on GoodReads, but almost never bother to read any.

> The last few books I read were mostly filled with fluff, anecdotes, stories,
> jokes, and trivialities.

> I thought that online content was roughly equivalent to 80% of what I'd get
> from reading actual books for 20% of the effort.

For self improvement and pop-business books, it's more like you can get 99% of
the value from 5% of the effort by reading about the book, or skimming it,
rather than reading it closely.

> Are books worth it?

You need to know what this "it" is first. I don't mean that flippantly. Do
many people find reading books useful or enriching or valuable? Oh, yes,
certainly. Now: worth _what_? To you? Are films worth "it"? Are Casablanca,
The Seventh Seal, the Up documentary series, Manos: The Hands of Fate, Cave of
Forgotten Dreams, Mars Attacks!, and Debbie does Dallas, worth "it"? Are they
all replaceable with a bunch of 5- to 15-minute Youtube videos?

> Is it more true for some fields than others?

Self-improvement, pop-business/leadership books, and generally anything
written to sell consulting services (there's a lot of that in both those
categories) are regarded as kinda jokes. If you're looking there for wisdom
you're combing the desert for a pearl.

> Is it more true for older books?

The filter is that if a book is still considered good decades, centuries, or
millennia after it was written, it very probably is good. Good books somtimes
don't pass this filter (these are periodically rediscovered) for various
reasons. But almost no bad or low-value books pass it.

> Isn't most of the information from books freely available online?

Not at all. Start studying any topic past the surface level and the only way
you'll get any further "online" is buying or pirating ebooks. Keep digging—not
even that far—and you'll find some that do not exist in digital form, not even
on Library Genesis. If you want to seriously learn about a topic, pick up a
good academic book on it, then follow up on all the books they (very probably)
mention in their introduction as other major works on the topic, and maybe
also the books that book directly credits as references. Often this is a
faster and more accurate way to learn what the expert consensus of
"foundational" works in a topic is than trying to find that out online, let
alone trying to learn the information contained in those works purely online,
without books (usually impossible).

> Am I missing out?

What is "it"?

> One issue for me is that books are a very big time investment. I read very
> slowly and I don't remember everything I read either.

Take notes.

> Even if I wanted to read books, I just don't know which ones I should start
> with, out of the 1000 "must-read" books in my reading list.

Stop. Pick, like, five that seem really important or that you just most want
to read. Aim for variety, don't pick five all on the same topic. Ignore the
rest until you're done. Don't even think about them. If you're not going to
finish five there's no damn point in maintaining and stressing out over a list
of 1,000. They'll still be there when you've finished your five.

One further note: as hinted at by the movie comparison above, reading a book
is a _process_ and that process is part of the effect of the book. The time it
takes, the curation or generation of material by one author or editor or a
team of same working together, the focus and intention of the creators, these
matter. Reading 200 blog posts is not the same experience as reading a book,
even if they mostly cover the same territory. A tree can become boards, but
boards cannot become a tree.

------
mke
Try Kurt Vonnegut.

He’s not the GOAT, but his abbreviated style lends easily to folks who prefer
short form content.

------
rexpop
I will not pretend that reading is easy. I cannot appreciate your difficulty.
I am eager to read. I read voraciously. What number you've read in your life,
I consume in a year. I should, perhaps, regard you as a marathon runner would
regard a couch potato looking to get into the sport of running.

I have this to say: I will _never_ reach the bottom of books' wellspring of
value. I have not, yet reached diminishing marginal returns. Every book I read
makes the next one more valuable.

You don't, however, have to read as much as I do to gain the benefit. My whole
life, every year has brought me a handful of life-altering, mind-blowing new
books.

That being said, I have put down many bad ones. Do not be afraid to quit a
boring book. There are too many to read. There are so many more out there.
Skip to the next one.

> I assume that the best part of the best books will surface in daily
> conversations.

I don't.

> I even find myself reading the comments and not reading the article most of
> the time.

Me, too. Books are way different, however. Articles too often, in my
experience, couch the _news_ in many paragraphs of exposition, and background
context. I skim them looking for the _novel_ information. Not so, with books,
which I read in order to _augment_ my contextual, background understanding.

Time spent absorbed in a book allows for deeper re-wiring of one's basic
precepts. An article may help you navigate your current mental models with
agility, but only a book offers us the substantial choice of retaining or
replacing them.

> Life-transforming ideas have always come to me through books. \-- bell hooks

Novels, likewise, afford a world-altering subsumption of reality. Our
imaginations are massively powerful--or else, to put it another way, our
connection to material reality is tenuous, and can be all-too-easily shifted
to project ourselves into fantasies. A visit to alternate realms--even as
mundane as contemporary fiction set in a different town--grants us
opportunities that short forms don't. I have only rarely been swept away by a
reddit comment, and felt myself to have visited another place. (One example
might be the roadside in "Today You, Tomorrow me.")

I think you're reading in the wrong genre. There are dozens, and truly their
boundaries are fluid, but self-help is perhaps the most vapid.

You are missing out.

I would recommend Bujold's "The Curse of Chalion" as a fantastic, mature novel
with fantasy elements, or Stephenson's "Snowcrash" for a colorful adventure
not without gravitas. If you're trying to gain non-fiction information, I
would recommend Galeano's "Open Veins of Latin America," CrimethInc's "No Wall
They Can Build," or Ehrenreich's "Dancing in the Streets."

In the realm of pure intellectual pursuit, Sacks' "The Man Who Mistook His
Wife for a Hat" will not disappoint.

------
soapdog
I'm 39 years old and books have been an integral part of how I define myself
as a human. I grew up with books and they've been a constant presence in my
life regardless of what I was doing. It is my personal belief that there is no
substitute for good books. By books I don't mean the paper medium, I mean long
form narrative that you can absorb and revisit on your own time, it could be
eBooks, paper books, audio books are a bit trickier for me but they do fit my
own personal criteria mentioned above.

What I think you've been missing the most is the experience of immersing
yourself in a book. The way you've been consuming content which is with small
nuggets of information is very common today. Most people these days
(regardless of age) don't want to invest too much time into content "reading",
everyone want the TL;DR, the bullet lists, the KPIs, and in my opinion that
this prevents many people to actually discover what is enjoyable about books.

You'll seldom read a book in a single reading session (unless it is very
small). If the book is good, it will resurface in your mind, you'll ponder
about it between reading sessions. You'll not be engaged with it only when
you're reading it, you'll be with it through the whole experience and also
after it as it makes an impression in you. By being able to control how the
content flows (which is not the same with a movie) you can stop to think about
stuff without losing content (this is trickier with audiobooks). You can come
back again over paragraphs that made an impact on you and study them to
understand why. You an take notes to help you reason about stuff. Lets imagine
that take you two weeks to read a book in a casual pace, all that knowledge
and content will be with you. The curiosity to know more about it, to get back
reading, to learn what happens. That lasts longer, it is a more involved
process than consuming video. A good lenghty book might change how you think
as you spend a long time with it.

Humans are moulded by the stories they tell and by those they've been told.
Books in one form or another have been with us through millennia. They've
formed us and will keep doing that in the future in whatever form they evolve
to. For me, it is the different of diving deep into something and how wetting
your feet in some shallow puddle.

Another important aspect in favour of consuming more books is that there is a
chance of reading content by the original author in the original form (or
something close to it), which makes it for a more intimate conversation
between you and the author. Just stop and think with me for a second, a book
is a conversation between you and the author across time and space. You might
be reading a long gone author in their original words, getting to know their
style, how they thought, what they valued. This is different than absorbing
content via a third party which is telling you what they've thought about it,
which is the case of podcasts (which I love too, they are awesome but I prefer
books). Getting your content from "primary sources" is very different than via
third, fourth or even fifth parties.

Even though we produce a lot of audiovisual content on the internet, it
doesn't encompasses the whole spectrum offered by books. Yes there are a
gazillion videos about Sun Tzu Art of War but there is a lot of longform
content that is not popular or clickbaity which doesn't surface through the
algorithms used by those social networks we tend to use to discover new stuff.
Content from books trickle very slowly to the digital realm. It is like an
iceberg, you get a lot of content above the water but unless you're prepared
to dive into it, you be missing a ton of stuff. Only very popular information
is moved to the internet in a way that it appears easily to people browsing
social networks or searching. There are many good stuff that is very hard to
find online unless you really know what you're looking for, which makes
discovery of such content a bit hard.

I'd urge you to engage with books not because millionaires do it, but because
you want to do it. While it is true that some fields move too fast and you'll
get the best content about them online. For a lot of other fields, books are
better.

------
schlagetown
Certainly, the majority of books are not worth your time; the same is of
course true of YouTube videos, podcasts, blog posts, or any media you may
consume. But the _best_ books do offer things you can't get elsewhere.

Crucially, reading book is _not_ just about information intake! Really great
books don't just teach you things, they open you up to new ways of thinking,
expose new corners of the universe and of experience, stretch your mind, and
so on.

If you're reading books filled with "fluff" — read better books! If a book
bores you, find a different one! Reading a great book should be a joy.

It's true that most books don't age well — but the converse to this is that
books that have been around for a long time and are still popular are usually
well-known for good reasons; they've endured on their merits for far longer
than any bestsellers of the decade.

Challenge: don't read any more self help books. Instead, read books on
education, economics, science, technology, nature, history. Read epics, read
science fiction, read poetry.

Do some research on the areas that most interest you, and take time to find
the _very best_ books you can find — based on Amazon/Goodreads reviews,
suggestions from friends, best-of lists, whatever — and pick just a few to
spend time with. And keep in mind it's always a better use of your time to
read 10 really amazing books than 100 average ones; take your time and have
fun :)

I recently took up a Twitter challenge to post 100 opinions about books and
reading, and I wrote a lot about the concept of the "antilibrary" — basically,
the value of knowing _about_ books even if you don't necessarily read them,
and getting good at curating your reading list. You may find some of this
useful for how to think about reading:

[https://twitter.com/schlagetown/status/1206268052498780160](https://twitter.com/schlagetown/status/1206268052498780160)

A handful of these book thoughts that may be particularly relevant here:

1\. Every curious person should be a serious reader. Ever serious reader
should build an antilibrary.

(Essential vocab for this thread: your antilibrary = all the books you know
about but have _not_ read, designating a sort of potential energy for learning
/ knowledge / reading)

‪2. An antilibrary should exist in both physical form (books on your shelves;
books browsed but unpurchased at your favorite bookstores) and virtual form
(in digital lists; in tweets and reviews scanned; in your memory).‬

‪3. An antilibrary should have many levels: books you have an urgent desire to
read, books you definitely want to read someday, books you find intriguing but
may never read, books you've lost interest in entirely‬

‪Categorize not only by topic but by priority / importance / status‬

‪8. We should all be more aware of (& deliberately apply) the many different
levels of reading that exist — the spectrum from close reading to skimming a
book quickly for major themes / ideas.‬

‪Different books + different contexts demand different approaches for optimal
reading.‬

‪17. There aren't _that_ many truly great books you definitely need to read.‬

‪While there are infinitely more good books than you can ever read in a
lifetime, you can probably get to a surprisingly high portion of those that
are both excellent & a good match for you personally.‬

‪24. Building your "read really big books" muscle is helpful for practicing
sustained attention & deep engagement. Living with a text for months on end,
whether a particular story or set of ideas, creates a special type of
relationship!‬

45\. You should have a "non-reading practice" — being intentional about not-
reading certain books (just as some authors should not-write certain books!)

Abandon more books. Browse many; read few. Choose to engage w/ books & their
ideas outside the text itself.

52\. Best books I've read in the last year: Underland—Robert Macfarlane How to
Do Nothing—Jenny Odell Go Ahead in the Rain—Hanif Abdurraqib Daemon
Voices—Philip Pullman Carceral Capitalism—Jackie Wang So Many Books—Gabriel
Zaid The Collected Schizophrenias—Esmé Weijun Wang

53\. Best books I've read in the last 10 years: The Moonstone—Wilkie Collins
Moby Dick—Melville Infinite Jest—DFW Pilgrim at Tinker Creek—Dillard
Impro—Johnstone Time and the Art of Living—Grudin Le Ton beau de
Marot—Hofstadter Death and Life of Great American Cities—Jacobs

72\. There are many books we should know _about_ for reasons other than the
story or info (etc.) of the text itself.

Reasons like: important cultural context, influence on future books,
significance to people you love… Such books are prime candidates for
antilibrary inclusion!

------
atmb4u
Yes, Definitely, books are worth it. I was at the same place as of you ~3
years ago, doubting the value of reading books - so, I can speak to it.

tl;dr: For breadth, online reading is good enough; while for depth and study,
books tend to be the way to go. No matter which
medium(book/audiobook/summaries), reading more is always better.

I can think of at least 4 major differences between online content and books.
1\. Comprehensiveness 2\. Background research 3\. Test of time 4\. Focus and
grounding

Let me explain.

1\. Most of the online content is "designed" to be consumed in < 10 minutes.
So, it assumes fundamentals or ignores details otherwise are critical to the
topic. This is useful for quickly grasping a concept, but if you want to go
deeper, books will give you better context

2\. "92% of the online content is designed to prove a point" (Above statement
is a made-up one, and I have no idea what percentage of the online content is
made up)

A lot of content available online are valuable and accurate. At the same time,
the credibility of online content is questionable, while books tend to be more
research-oriented. A person has spent at least 6 months to put together a
book, and multiple people spend hours to get it out. Books tend to be more
linked to the credibility of the author. Paul Graham's essays
([http://paulgraham.com/articles.html](http://paulgraham.com/articles.html)),
for example, are gems and it doesn't matter if it is consumed as a book or a
blog - it does contain valuable content.

3\. Books age well than online content - some of the timeless classics still
stay relevant in the current decade or century. More people review them, so
more crowdsourced opinions. This might sound contrary to the belief, but this
is something I've observed over time.

4\. Most importantly, you may devour the internet for a whole day, and learn a
bunch of things but the very next day, because everything was so unstructured,
you'd tend to lose clarity and only a few things stick. This is more pertinent
to some people than others. So, consuming or learning about new concepts
systematically through a book will improve the stickiness of the ideas and be
more structured while thinking about it. Books, also tend to be more detailed
with more examples to put things in context, to which you can relate to. It
gives you time to think and organize. Think about it as taking a structured
course, rather than learning bits and pieces from here and there.

Now, the Pareto Principle (80/20) does apply and reading 20% will give you
general context on 80%. But more often than not, on most subjects, 20% does
contain in-depth information you'll miss out on.

Listing a few books I recommend, which I believe are worth reading

[1] The Science of the Artificial by Herbert A. Simon [2] Gödel, Escher, Bach:
An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter [3] Maps of Meaning: The
Architecture of Belief by Jordan Peterson [4] Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow
by Yuval Noah Harari [5] A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose by
Eckhart Tolle [6] Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder by Nassim
Nicholas Taleb [7] Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche [8] The Origins
and History of Consciousness by Erich Neumann [9] The Hero with a Thousand
Faces by Joseph Campbell [10] Essence of the Upanishads by Eknath Easwaran

------
datashow
I think it really depends on whether you want to advance the breadth or depth
of your knowledge.

If you want to go breadth, meaning touch a little bit of here and there, yes
you can rely on the internet. There are many non-fiction books can help you in
this direction, but you do not have to read them.

But if you want to go depth in a particular field, I think you have to read at
least some most important books in that field. I do not believe you can learn
an advanced field, say quantum physics, by just watching youtube videos or
reading online articles. The reason is that many in depth knowledge are only
presented in books.

For programming, I think yes you can definitely become a programmer by
learning online. But then again, if you want to be an expert in a particular
field of programming, you have to read books in that field. Even for data
mining and AI those kind of stuff, there are good online courses, but I don't
believe online materials can cover important details as in books.

The most cutting edge materials are usually presented in research papers or
conference presentations.

------
rolltiide
Way too many generalizations on the medium, socioeconomic attainment, quality,
etc.

Yes, many books have high-quality information that is not digitized and not
accessible without reading them. This is true for older books and newer books.

It is more true in fields like finance, tax, legal and hyper local historical
accounts.

It is also true in the software field as well. For example, a programming book
by one author can still expose you to elegant efficient techniques that would
never be found on someone's blog or on sites like stackoverflow where the
community consensus masquerades as better.

In finance and economics there are financial products and circumstances in
older books that you might not have heard of, which can become advantageous in
upcoming "new" market condition that now only you recognize.

In tax, you no longer have to be one of the citizens angry that wealthy people
have accountants to perceive obscure advantages, because you can already
perceive them.

Sometimes the exposure to concepts in books can make your internet searches
more specific so that you find where these daily conversations occur, or new
communities where people take the knowledge to new modern levels. Compared to
being in the same communities you are now and assuming you aren't missing
anything.

------
duelingjello
There’s nothing magical or sacred about a particular medium, but the internet
doesn’t contain _all_ human knowledge, it doesn’t contain much of past human
knowledge and it rarely preserves knowledge through archival. This is
concerning because future generations may give up on history and/or give up on
preservation/archival.

i. Try short books at first.

ii. Take frequent breaks (short and sometimes device-free days) from glowing
screens to reduce dopamine dependency.

iii. Listen to audio book versions.

iv. Read to understand, not to get to the end by skimming.

v. Try epaper ebook readers that are less stimulating and more like books.
This can be an easier way to make books portable and compact.

Here’s a short one, read or listen to Smedley Butler’s book [0, 1].

0\. ebook version:
[https://books.google.com/books?id=trl4DwAAQBAJ&printsec=fron...](https://books.google.com/books?id=trl4DwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false)

1\. audio book version:
[https://archive.org/details/war_is_a_racket_1903_librivox/wa...](https://archive.org/details/war_is_a_racket_1903_librivox/warisaracket_01_butler_128kb.mp3)

Another book I would recommend is _Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las
Indias_ (1542) which has been translated into English as _A Short Account of
the Destruction of the Indies._ It’s a must read to know the scale of the
Spanish rape, pillaging and genocide of native American and imported African
slaves.

I also go to libraries to see what they have for physical and electronic
checkout. And, frequent the torrent sites to look for video courses and good
book / audiobook packs. It also takes curiosity and critical thinking to
actively seek out, discover and evaluate works of others.

I would also recommend reading important and banned books like Mein Kampf, Das
Kapital, The Bible, The Quran, The Communist Manifesto, Heart of Darkness,
Brave New World, Catch-22, Crime and Punishment, Howl, Fahrenheit 451, The
Satanic Verses, Ulysses, Uncle Tom’s Cabin and so on. Especially important is
to re-read them every 10-20 years, because your outlook on life will change
with the seasons of life, you will find these works appear different than you
remembered and you will get more out of them because you have more life
experiences.

------
crimsonalucard
Books are also dangerous. Because the amount of effort you have to invest in a
book is quite large people tend to develop biases around a book.

It's a strange phenomena. The more effort someone invests in something the
higher their bias towards it. Much is the same for books.

I know of no human who has read every detail of the books war and peace or
Moby dick with their own free will and came out saying that the plot was total
crap. It's literally because the energy placed into finishing the book is so
high that the bias is even higher.

Movie adaptations of said books will likely have terrible plots even when the
plots are literally identical to the books. The only thing missing from the
movies is your bias.

Note that this does not mean I am saying books are bad. They do offer things
that online articles fail to offer. Just wanted to note that almost no one
mentioned the dark side of investing so much time into books.

------
aldoushuxley001
Yes

------
jimmyvalmer
The answer should be apparent from the signal-to-noise of OP. He merely needed
to ask "Are books worth the time?" to get his point across, but instead
couched it in 350 extra words. Books are similarly inefficient. Verbosity is
an existential threat.

~~~
jlangemeier
You also were too verbose...

    
    
        OP Q: Books worth it?
        Answer: Nah.
    

Or maybe we can remove all the vowels and connecting verbs and extraneous
adjectives and still get your point across...

    
    
        "Ans shld b obv frm SvN. Shldv ax "books worth time?" Books take 2 mch time 4 same pt."
    

Yup, you were definitely still too inefficient...

------
draklor40
Reading books is honestly overrated. Especially popular non-fiction.

If you are reading for pleasure, then so long as you are pleased, any number
is fine.

If you read for knowledge, you should be able to see if you have any chances
of applying the knowledge to your life. Unused knowledge is at best, useless,
at worst, dangerous (too many valueless thoughts taking by brain CPU cycles).
I used to read ~30 books a year. Only read 10 books last year. This year it
might even be fewer. But each and every book I read adds value to the fields I
am focused on (history, religion and a little bit of non, pop sci fiction).

------
brenden2
Books are just another form of entertainment, and I wouldn't think of them as
much more than that. Yes, there may be value in reading some books, and many
of them contain interesting facts and opinions, but the truth is that reading
lots of books won't raise your IQ anymore than watching TV.

It's become fashionable to boast or brag about how many books you read, but
this is nothing more than signalling. Nobody really cares which books you've
read, except it may be interesting to discuss books to help others find new
ones that may interest them.

I personally have read many, many books over the years and I've found that I
tend to forget most of the information shortly after reading them, with some
exceptions. For example, I tend to find it easy to retain primary themes
(i.e., I've read a number of books about stoicism and I have hung on to the
core tenets of the philosophy but I don't remember the specific details).

These days I've caved into consuming audiobooks, mostly because they're
extremely convenient. I like to listen to books while taking walks, which
allows me to accomplish 2 things: 1) get some exercise, and 2) "read" a book.
It's not really an additional time investment because I like to take walks
anyway regardless of the book.

~~~
yters
I've heard the best predictor of performance on IQ tests is number of books
read.

In my experience, reading a book forces me to conceptualize the content in a
way watching TV and listening to audio does not. It is also faster than
watching and listening. I think this has improved my conceptual thinking
ability, as well as being able to articulate my thoughts, and expanded the
number of concepts I can use in my thinking.

My general experience is well read people seem to generally be more open
minded and better able to understand other points of view. On the other hand,
in the social media world of sound bites and text snippets, the ability to
have a logically coherent extended discussion seems to be diminishing.

Yes, it does sound like reading books can improve a person's mind, and that
can sound elitist, but it may well be true.

~~~
AdrianB1
I think reading books correlates with IQ, but it does not increase it; it
provides information and stimulate imagination and analytical thinking, but
there is no known method to increase IQ.

~~~
yters
Why do you claim there is no known method to increase IQ? I can definitely
tell a difference in my cognitive performance based on certain practices. For
instance, the better I can hold a concept entirely in my head, the better and
more rapidly I can reason about it. During a period I was memorizing and
solving Soduku entirely in my head, and that produced a noticeable improvement
in my memory capability.

On the other hand, the less sleep I get, if I am out of shape, feeling
depressed, etc. all have a negative impact on my cognitive performance.

So, while there may be individualized hard limits on cognitive performance, it
also seems clearly the case that an individual's cognitive performance can be
greatly improved through various habits. Think of it akin to athletic
training. Some people are born with an athletic predisposition, but everyone
still benefits from working out, training and diet. Hard to see why the same
cannot be true for cognitive performance.

Now, taking the topic of reading vs more sensory media such as TV, the former
require more internal cognitive processing to understand, whereas the latter
minimize the amount of focus needed to consume the media. Based on my previous
analysis, it would make sense that a reading habit would produce a higher
cognitive performing individual than just consuming sensory media.

~~~
AdrianB1
I don't claim that, I read some psychology stuff (my sister-in-law is also a
psychologist, but I am not considering her as an argument). I think I also saw
a few clips with Jordan Peterson telling the same; even if you don't agree
with him on other matters, he is a respected professor of Psychology at the
University of Toronto and he knows his stuff.

~~~
yters
Huh I have heard the same before, and I don't know why there is such
certainty. Similar to the claim bad eyesight cannot be fixed through
exercises, which is not totally correct.

