I don't read web articles anymore, but I read books

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34309671

by sasha_fishter • 4 years ago

358 291 4 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I noticed that I'm no longer reading an article, blog post, etc. I just scroll through it and close the page. It' really very rare that I spend time on some blog post, but I do read books, and I do it more than ever.

Are we slowly losing a joy of reading blog post because there are so many? Are the books gaining popularity again? What are your thoughts?

johlits• 4 years ago

We are searching for quality now in this AI driven age.

sasha_fishter13• 4 years ago

I agree, but there is also a ton of shitty books, still I'am more eager to read the entire book, than for example 10 blog posts. It seems that blog posts are just to 'thin' and not providing too much value.

dgb23• 4 years ago

I've read incredibly insightful articles online. One of the things that help is RSS and self-curation.

bamboozled• 4 years ago

I've got this new strategy where I just leave a few books around the house and I've building a habit where I just reach for a book instead of my phone.

It's personally been quite effective, albeit very simple.

Funnily enough, I just finished a book without replacing it and I'm straight back on the phone :)

Anyone else try this?

sasha_fishter13• 4 years ago

Interesting idea. I usually have books on the shelf that can be easily reached. Also I read every day, and after a few months it is just a habit. I like the feeling when I focus only on the book. Even though I don't have distraction from tech and other stuff, I have my mind to conquer. So it's easier just to fight with you mind than with mind and tech and all other distractions.

molly03• 4 years ago

I think I’ve unconsciously started to “plant” books around the house and it works as a primer like - oh that book was interesting I should read it again/something similar.

epolanski• 4 years ago

I read the articles and books that interest me.

Blogs are easier to consume, but obviously you cannot expect every author (especially the tecnnical ones) to be a proficient and solid writer or to have paid editors and reviewers.

The problem with many books is that you realize they are crap halfway through the investment. The investment for blogs is much smaller.

rr888• 4 years ago

I wish I could do this, as books are far more rewarding. However I keep getting distracted by regular browsing & SM.

sasha_fishter13• 4 years ago

We all have this issue. I just turn off everything and get a book in my hands. I started reading some easy books like adventures or something like that. And then I just start searching for some psychology / psychology books, as I have great interest in them.

niemandhier2• 4 years ago

Try audiobooks, I usually listen for 30 minutes before sleep. It’s not great for math and cs but philosophy and history work well.

Lapsa2• 4 years ago

consider quitting social media. what helped me best to do that was consciously recognizing ratio of time I enjoyed vs time I just got annoyed (by advertisements, censorship, dumb opinions by old school mates, all the political agendas circling) - it's like 1:9 or something.

woolion• 4 years ago

I think formats are better suited to express certain types of ideas than others ("the medium is the message"). Blogposts tend to be ideal to express fairly short, singular ideas. Books should develop an entire thought system and connect various ideas, which take much longer, both in producing and consuming. The range of what you can express is also much more expanded, since you need the person to be in the right state of mind to understand or accept an idea; with a book, you can slowly lead them to that state.

Compared to a few years ago, I don't remotely have the same enthusiasm I could have for blogposts, and on the contrary I often find the writing style to be irritating -- especially hyperlinks-rich ones, which break the flow of thought, like internalized distractions. Yet I've also started to write my own blogposts because there are some ideas that I wanted to express in that form and did not find on the internet.

My guess, based on my own experience: you have reaped what you could from the ideas that can conveniently be expressed in blogposts, and it would be very hard to find new ones that would enrich your worldview. You have to go deeper, thus find the format that is more suitable for this.

sasha_fishter13• 4 years ago

Yes! It seems that blog posts are 90% written for self promotion, or to express thoughts so we can save them somewhere for later.

dpkrjb• 4 years ago

The trap in hyperlink rich blogs is clicking every link the moment you come upon it and essentially depth first read your way through an idea.

namaria2• 4 years ago

Clicking links in order is hardly equivalent to a depth-first traversal. Blog posts are not a data format.

evanwise• 4 years ago

To be fair, sometimes a single idea is difficult enough that it deserves an entire book.

f0e4c2f7• 4 years ago

I find that articles and blogs are good for questions, books are good for answers - or at least an attempt at that answer.

Sometimes you'll find an article that is as good as a book but other times I read a book proceeding an article and then wish the author would have started by reading some books themselves.

I find other long form content like podcasts or filmed presentations can sometimes hit that quality mark of books too.

Articles / tweets are good for learning the name of a concept I've never heard of.

Books / podcasts / YouTube are a good way to deep dive on the actual concept itself.

parasec• 4 years ago

yes. The ADHD fulfilling dopamine rush has a consequence on your brain chemistry. I started reading books in addition to blog posts, articles, etc. and it had a positive outcome on my mood. I'm reducing my internet-dopamine time more now.

molly03• 4 years ago

I’m a firm believer that the UX of reading physical books beats every other alternative. Looking forward to when this is no longer the case.

dredmorbius13• 4 years ago

What's underappreciated by many is how much the book is a highly-crafted and optimised product.

There's very little about a book that's innate, rather, conventions from size to font to structure and organisation, contents, indices, notes, pagination for eff's sake, all had to be arrived at and designed.

That's happened over centuries, and represents a great deal of embedded wisdom.

I become painfully aware of this when reading online, whether on desktop (can be OK with a suitably large screen), laptop (horrible), OLED tablet (OK, but not great), or e-ink device (far better, though still has limitations).

A book's robustness, persistence, and flexibility of access are hard to match. Digital gives options for search, access, and automation, which can be handy.

What most plagues online book formats, I'm concluding after using an e-ink device for nearly two years, is displays. Emissive, low-resolution, wrong format, and difficulty in reading under bright illumination. E-ink addresses most of these (at sufficient size: 8" minimum, 10" or 13" is preferable for detailed works).

That still leaves a lot to the specific technical format and typography of individual e-books, and there are designs which work better than others.

There's also the mechanics of ebook reader software, most especially of navigation and annotation. The directness of physical objects (leafing or flipping through pages, scribbling a quick note in pencil or pen, dog-earing, physical bookmarks) is lost, though good designs can come reasonably close.

(I'm trying to find a book on, erm, The Book, which I'd found and believe is somewhere in my (electronic) collection, though it's been eluding me for the past quarter hour or so.)

Edit: Found it. Keith Houston, The Book: A Cover-to-Cover Exploration of the Most Powerful Object of Our Time (2016)

<https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393244793>

<https://archive.org/details/bookcovertocover0000hous>

<https://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=5D3A0B91464FE40568F5BBA...>

<https://www.worldcat.org/title/956980330>

Not without some irony, a book which is far better in print or PDF than ePub format.

molly03• 4 years ago

You explained it very well, and “The Book” looks interesting.

But… Apart from being nice to look at, a (very big) bookshelf is such a waste of space I wish there where something in between a real book and an ebook.

rlgth• 4 years ago

I no longer read blog posts because they got worse. There are no longer any active quality bloggers like Steve Yegge or Joel Spolsky.

Employee blog posts from Big Tech now push the corporate agenda. Stepping out of line "has consequences", so no one speaks freely any more.

Self employed people are afraid of being crushed by Big Tech if they dissent. The result are blogs that are as interesting as reading the Pravda.

Purely technical blogs got unfocused in presentation, are largely self-promotional and rarely address interesting subjects.

piva00• 4 years ago

They might even exist but are so much harder to find nowadays that I ended up on the same spot. I haven't read or followed blogs of anyone for the past 10 years at least.

I've definitely migrated back to reading mostly books and long-form articles. I'm even considering, for the first time in my life, on paying for subscriptions of reputable newspapers and cut that off from my internet usage. It's getting too far into overwhelming territory to keep up, maybe it's my age showing making me very tired of the pull-model for consumption of news/content... I want something curated, well written and with interesting points, anything else feels like a waste of time.

distcs• 4 years ago

Agree! That is why I did an Ask HN sometime back:

"Ask HN: Relatively less known but good blogs?"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34258458 (6 points, 5 comments)

It did not get the number of responses I hoped for. But as a rule I avoid anything coming from mass blogging platforms like medium, substack, devto and similar sites. They may occasionally have good articles but most of the articles from these sites are poor and self-promotional. I would love to find a directory or search engine where I can search for good blogs maintained on independent websites by independent people.

I did another Ask HN now to collect links to some good articles: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34310222

sasha_fishter13• 4 years ago

Seems like a great idea for building a product :)

carom• 4 years ago

I'm taking a break from a few social media sites right now (not hn). I've noticed I suddenly have time to listen to books, read my email, text my friends. When you don't have a dumping ground for every thought you have a lot more to say. Similarly when you aren't reading other people's thoughts or ads constantly you seek out things to read. Only a few days in but it is nice.

ajsnigrutin• 4 years ago

There are good books and there are bad books... both subjectively and objectively. If a book is still bad (for me) after a few chapters of reading it, it stop reading it, because it's a waste of time. Usually I do atleast some research before starting reading a book, but sometimes even really high goodreads scores and recommendations from friends don't mean i'll personally like the book, and I'll still stop reading it.

Blog posts are another thing where there are many, many, many of them available, but basically zero reviews and recomendations from friends, and maybe, sometimes you get some quality-indicator if it's reposted here or on reddit and you see the upvote ratio... otherwise you never know what you'll going to get.

So, as with books, you read the first paragraph, sometimes you stop reading there, sometimes you scroll down and "read" vertically while scrolling (just looking at text to see if it contains something interesting) and many times it doesn't, so when you scroll to the bottom after 7 seconds of scrolling, you just close it and move on.

I don't see why this is a bad thing.

Some bloggers have gone to SEO optizimation schemes (as with recipes, where instead of a recipe, you get the authors childhood story first, then his family situation, what s/he likes to do on saturdays, etc..), some keep it short, some insert unneeded politcs everywhere, and some also manage to write something interesting and readable to the end. If you started reading books so often and unselectively as you do blogposts, you'd stop reading a lot more books too.

beardyw• 4 years ago

With a no phones in the bedroom policy there are always one or two books by my bed.

Baxxter• 4 years ago

As others have said, books and articles have a different purpose and audience. I enjoy reading books. But there are many, many good blogs and online periodicals that offer quality that you would not want to find in a book. For instance...

What I don't enjoy - and have quickly learned to avoid - is this certain type of non-fiction book that ought to be an article or blog post. They're easy to find now, they're usually just shy of or right at 300 pages, they have a catchy core idea and they tend to expound on that idea about as much as a blog post would. The rest is just there to service the notion of having a book. Ugh. They were I think a bigger problem 3-4 years ago, but maybe that's because I've gotten better at avoiding them.

levesque2• 4 years ago

The brevity can be an advantage, I'd much prefer a dense 200-300 page essay to a long drawn out 500-page argument where the author loses both themselves and the reader. But I agree that some of those non-fiction books can be poorly written -- or thought out? They sometimes read like a string of supporting evidence for the author's hypothesis, while blatantly disregarding the evidence that does not support the argument.

dredmorbius13• 4 years ago

There's a strong element of "now" vs. "then" both being expressed in this thread and in my own experience of various media, where contemporary media seems ... low in reward:effort ratio, which can be said of both online and dead-tree published media.

Which raises two caveats:

1. This isn't uniformly the case, and there is in fact excellent writing in all formats, though I would suggest it's getting harder to find especially by way of keyword / content-based Web search (as opposed to searching by specific title, author, or organisation).

2. There's a heck of a lot of nostalgia, survivorship, and other bias at play here. There are a great many badly-written old books and articles as well. We tend to remember the ones that are in fact good, and those also tend to be the ones most recommended. I'm struck by how old the works on curated lists of best books (fiction or nonfiction) are, especially in light of how vastly more works have been published in the 20th and 21st centuries relative to all prior time.

So, yes, there are a lot of overly-padded books which are really pretentious magazine articles, and much poorly-written copy in news and magazine stories as well. I definitely notice this and try to turn away from the form when I realise I'm reading it.

(The assessment cost of determining whether or not a text is worth reading is among the nonrecoverable costs of an overactive reading habit.) I read enough older news and magazine copy to feel reasonably confident that the problem isn't entirely in my head: writing, even within the same publications or classes of works, seems to be getting worse, with efforts to precisely attribute every last statement or source being one notable part of that within news pieces.)

That said, I too have been tending strongly toward books and more-traditional print sources (journals, magazines) than online media. The problem with the latter is that the early promise of removed editorial gatekeepers has evolved toward its rather predictable end-state: the slush pile has migrated from the editor's desk to our browser and smartphone, and we're left with the challenge of wading through dreck in search of rare gems.

It's also hard to avoid the allure of novelty and mystery. I keep having to remind myself that the odds of the best or most relevant works of all time having been written within the past 24 hours are low at best. And without unnecessarily reifying the past, there's a lot of wisdom in old works, as well as the benefit that any pressing alternate incentives for publication are now largely stripped of their manipulative capabilities. Even reading old magazines and newspapers, the advertising tends to feel quaint or charming rather than urgent. This holds even when reading works I had read at the time a decade or four ago, suggesting it's less the advertising itself than the liveness of the attempted ad-verting of my attention that's salient.

I also am finding myself relying far more on bibliographic rather than Web search to turn up materials. Not exclusively, and HN itself plays a large role. But when I find a work referenced elsewhere --- whether in an HN comment, as a podcast comment or show note, or as a mention, citation, or note in a book or paper --- those referenced works tend to have far more salience than what Google or DDG-fronted Bing suggest to me.

(I've serious regrets that Worldcat, the only global Union Catalogue I'm aware of, seems to have, seems to have gone Full Spyware: <https://twitter.com/libraryprivacy/status/157018300668967322...>. Library catalogues are otherwise generally excellent guides. I may simply have to start using university or large-public-library search tools directly.)

FpUser• 4 years ago

I read an awful lot of books. Blogs - rarely, mostly glance over.

sasha_fishter13• 4 years ago

Yes. I like that. Blogs for inspiration, books for knowledge.

trgn• 4 years ago

Same here. Thanks OP for bringing this up, I wondered about this too. I lost attention span for online content, and reading a lot more books (fiction and non-fiction) than I used to instead. Change was fairly abrupt.

MisterTea2• 4 years ago

Are the books you read similar in subject to the blog posts you read? I bet they are not.

To me it sounds like you are bored or tired of reading about the same material. It's burnout really. It might be the simple that there isn't much new or interesting material in your area of interest and most blog posts are rehashing the same info you already know.

Taking a break is fine. Maybe its time to explore hobbies you've been interested in perusing but have not yet had the time.

sasha_fishter13• 4 years ago

It's similar. I.e. psychology of users, building startups as I'm right now building one, so I want to learn as much as possible. Blogs are not bad, I personally just loose ambition to read it and absorb it like I do when I read the book. I know it's totally different medium, and blogs are fast, books are slow, but I just waisting time scrolling through post, while I can read a book meanwhile.

MisterTea2• 4 years ago

Perhaps the issue is the style of writing? SEO speak has ruined many blogs in an attempt to bring in more ad money resulting in low quality content called blogspam.

niemandhier2• 4 years ago

Some topics move to fast. Until someone wrote a book, blogs sometimes are the only source of insight.

The day after stable diffusion appeared people were already blogging about it, long form writing can never be that fast…

Even worse, blogs often are the only free source of insight, with books and papers locked behind paywalls.

saalweachter• 4 years ago

You can write one good book, and it's fine. Sure, people may ask you to write another, and one book is not a career as a writer, but if the book is good it can stand on its own and be read and enjoyed and learned from for decades.

You need to write one blog post a week, minimum. Three a week, daily even. For years and decades. If you don't regularly publish a new post, your blog withers, and if you stop entirely, your blog dies.

It's hard to have that many new things to say, let alone things of value.

fedeb952• 4 years ago

I have noticed the same, however my conclusion is different. Typically when you read a book, your average book has more signal than your average web article or blog post. That's because more filtering has happened, like time, editors, etc. sometimes I find good web content (mostly from the top HN posts) and I don't just scroll, but I read. When I find myself scrolling the first few lines, I immediately close the link.

input_sh• 4 years ago

My experience is completely opposite.

There's a lot of incentive to bump up the number of pages, so most of the time when I pick up a non-fiction book I end up regretting it and shouting into the void this could've been a blog post. Even in decently edited books I always feel like they could've been cut by at least 50 pages without losing any of the substance, but I guess nobody wants to publish a book under 200 pages.

Good articles are not easy to come by, but I never run out of them. The best ones are usually in the range of 30 min - 1 hour to consume, all of which could have easily been padded with fluff into a ~250 pages book, but they weren't and I appreciate that.

That isn't to say I don't read books, but about 90% of them are fiction noawadays. And I do mean read them, as I find that much more engaging than audiobooks (my mind drifts away, I lose the plot often). Good fictions are easy to find, much easier than say TV shows which take longer to consume, or worse get cancelled after a season or two without a satisfying end.

fedeb952• 4 years ago

Sorry, I haven't mentioned that I mostly read old books (at least 100 years old usually) and very rarely new things. I think the only living author I've read is Taleb. History is a powerful filter.

a13o2• 4 years ago

I stopped reading non-fiction books. Most of them have about a blog post worth of ideas, but the publisher had the author pad it out to X00 pages because that's what makes their business model make sense.

I haven't fully sworn off blogs, but I will skim anything brought to my attention on Medium, a corporate site, or from search results. My default assumption for these is that I'm reading content marketing and not an actual blog post.

Tutorials are probably the most information dense things these days. Followed by podcasts, although the content marketers are actively trying to corrupt that medium.

WA• 4 years ago

Similar here. If a non-fiction book interests me, I check out the table of contents, try to derive the content from this and read a bunch of reviews on goodreads.com

Most of the time, it's clear that there's not much more in the book.

levesque2• 4 years ago

Every medium has its gold nuggets. A lot of podcasts are garbage, even amongst the ones with interesting topics -- nothing more than a few bros hanging out and improvising on a topic with a little preparation. There are some very high quality podcasts in the mix, and the same is true of non-fiction books.

jventura• 4 years ago

One podcast I really like is The Art of Manliness podcast [0]. I learn about a lot of interesting topics and get good book recommendations from it. All episodes are interviews with book authors regarding a specific book.

Brett, the interviewer, seems to be very well prepared for the questions and the conversation has always a good pace with every episode mostly under 50 minutes.

[0] https://www.artofmanliness.com/podcast/

blisterpeanuts• 4 years ago

When studying history in university, I reveled in the deep, meaty kind of books I had to pore through, loaded with facts and arguments on every page, thick with footnotes and tempting bibliographic references to follow.

I had to take copious notes to make sense of the mass of information, to organize it in a way that my brain could take in, and to glean the facts needed for my research papers.

In some cases, I had to dispute the historian's arguments, which required even more concentration to get inside the head of a scholar who was backing up their statements with 20-30 years or more of research and learning.

That's what I think of as real writing! Then we have fiction (fantasy and science fiction have always been my preferences) that allows us to lose ourselves in a brilliantly described world created by an incredible imagination and lovingly crafted.

Modern writing... yeah, not quite as seductive, though once in a while one can find some very interesting stuff on substack or medium (or here on HN for that matter). There's always more to learn.

wellanyway2• 4 years ago

most information dense things these days. Followed by podcasts

Funny you should say that. I can't bring myself to listen to any because of all of the filler and gimmicks.

D13Fd• 4 years ago

Exactly. If I'm listening to a podcast on a specific subject matter, I want discussion of that subject matter. I don't want 30 minutes of irrelevant back-and-forth about personal issues by the hosts before they get to the relevant stuff (or, even worse, tons of filler interspersed with the relevant content).

wintermutestwin• 4 years ago

the publisher had the author pad it out to X00 pages because that's what makes their business model make sense.

I got a subscription to Blinkist this year and use these ~20min audio summaries to determine if I think it is worth slogging through the whole book for more detail. It rarely is with modern non-fiction. I read most non-fiction to absorb information and learn new ideas, not for the joy of reading - that's what fiction is for. Of course the genre of non-fiction book is usually indicative of how much it is full of blaa blaa anecdotes, etc. Blinkist is at its best when listening to self improvement for example.

nullsense• 4 years ago

I tried blinkist but it never stuck. I think long-form stuff is better for developing semantic memory. Sure you can get to the point quicker with shorter form content, but tends to be less sticky.

I haven't gone back to blinkist to try this but I think a way to build up semantic memory with blinkist would be listening to every single title in a specific category to go really deep on that one category. At that point you're doing the equivalent of reading a full length non-fiction book anyway, so you haven't saved time, but at least you could triangulate what the core ideas / themes are through the entire category and really get the lay of the land whilst also getting the core messages deeply ingrained.

xtracto• 4 years ago

I've found that ChatGPT makes outstanding summaries of famous self-help/non-fiction books. Particularly if you ask it to give you a 100 word summary of each chapter.

gorjusborg3• 4 years ago

I stopped reading non-fiction books. Most of them have about a blog post worth of ideas

I feel like this is very true for topics that are extremely shallow, like programming language frameworks.

Otherwise, I find that a good non-fiction book has no equal when it comes to transferring a nuanced mindset or base understanding from the author to the audience.

A tutorial is nice for what it is, a way to quickly become a beginner. Books at their best can give you so much context around they how and why that is very difficult to build by scouring the web for short form content.

I do agree, though, that bad books are insidious time wasters. I've had to find ways to quickly identify if I'm reading one of those, and I apply that process any time I start a big book (I also tend to search out opinions on good books from others before I ever have the book in my hands).

acidburnNSA• 4 years ago

Yeah like I'm reading The Radiance of France about the French nuclear industry and there is no way a blog could be nearly as informative. A blog would be good for a few quick highlights though.

halkony3• 4 years ago

What metrics do you use to identify vacuous books? My current methods so far:

1) Check user reviews for complaints of repetition

2) Read the Table of Contents. If the chapter titles seem more "narrative" (e.g. The Man that Couldn't Tell a Lie..) I expect the kind of fluff I see on social media.

3) Read a chapter towards the middle or end of a book and see if it is building on prior concepts or just rehashing them and presenting new, potentially irrelevant information.

jjice• 4 years ago

I feel like this is very true for topics that are extremely shallow, like programming language frameworks.

I'd argue that the framework in question matters a lot. If you could link me to a blog post to get me up and running on Rails, I'd ask for a link (seriously, would be interested).

For vast frameworks like that, I think a book could be very beneficial. "Getting Started" sections can focus too much on streamlined starts when (at least personally) I'd love to dive into how the ORM works for more complex joins instead of just a single "get all" query for a single table.

jrm43• 4 years ago

An odd pleasure of mine that I've subconsciously developed a way to sniff out is "self-help books that are a genuine effort from the author, regardless of whether they're precise or intelligent or verifiable."

You have to watch out for the ones who want to start a business or a cult, but it will be something like "Check out my new system of psycho-cyber-kinetics" and it's just "be kind to people." I imagine a lot of people wouldn't be into this but I love it.

If you've seen the show Severance, the for now imaginary "The You you are" would be a perfect example of this (and I'm hoping they really write it.)

It's not so much for the quality of the content, but for the...feel?

edit:

The more I think about it, I'm realizing I probably do this as an antidote to social media? Social media being "quick, not very thoughtful, hot takes, often unkind" and the above is the opposite?

halkony3• 4 years ago

I was laughing my ass off when they started reading that self-help book like it was gospel.

It does convey an interesting idea though -- that if you knew nothing of the real world, even something written by that benevolent doofus brother-in-law would be emotionally impactful. I think I get what you mean by genuine authors.

grvdrm• 4 years ago

I'm not off non-fiction entirely but I do agree with one variation: I don't read non-fiction books that are written as prescriptive "do this to succeed" business advice. Nothing turns me off more quickly. Those books are right up there with top-X lists or "do this to succeed" twitter threads.

bitexploder2• 4 years ago

I started writing a real blog. My mindset is notes to myself. A place to collect my own writings and thoughts that I myself would like to refer back to that I also don’t mind sharing. It is almost entirely for myself, but I might as well make what I can public, maybe someone finds it interesting.

mancerayder2• 4 years ago

What blogging platform or writing tool do you use for this? It seems like an interesting idea I might adopt: write a blog for myself only.

Veen• 4 years ago

There are crappy books, and there are excellent books. I find that business and self-books in particular match your description, and sometimes popular science books. But not well-regarded histories and biographies.

a13o2• 4 years ago

I don't read history or biographies so it's definitely a blind spot in my non-fiction claims

hgsgm• 4 years ago

You seem to be referring to "pop" nonfiction books about one specific claim, not biography or history or a textbook or a monograph. There are many great accessible nonfiction books, like those from Isaacson or Gleick.

What makes such a nonfiction book different from a fiction book, which is usually just a bag of tropes?

vippy• 4 years ago

I also found this to be true. "Thought leaders", individual personalities as experts, etc. However: there are mountains of really good non-fiction books if you're willing to get a little boring. I've started digging heavily into mathematics and philosophy, and found Walter Rudin, Richard McElreath, and Nancy Cartwright. I read Bree Fram's With Honor and Integrity: Transgender Troops in their Own Words. I basically survive by a few curated Twitter accounts, the Washington Post and AP, and good books these days. The web today feels like too much content, too much manipulation, too little value, too little time.

halkony3• 4 years ago

We covered Baby Rudin in college. That book is so dry and clinical it simply must have something worth learning inside (if you can navigate it).

beej712• 4 years ago

I stopped reading non-fiction books. Most of them have about a blog post worth of ideas, but the publisher had the author pad it out to X00 pages because that's what makes their business model make sense.

(One trick here is to buy short/small non-fiction books.)

Looking at books to use in class, I'm constantly surprised at how many words they use to convey so few concepts. Teaching is an optimization problem, and if you're optimizing for something else (e.g. making money), the teaching is likely to suffer.

For that reason, you're right on about distrusting blog posts. A lot of them are written in order to make money. Sometimes they also teach.

Not that there's anything wrong with getting paid for your work. I've made a great deal of capitalist money doing various things. But I also believe that I should make my money doing something else, and use that to fund the information-sharing portion of my life.

When it comes to teaching, I don't demand anything from my students or readers. At least not directly--students still pay tuition, and some of that goes to me. But all the ebooks and materials I write are free to use and have no ads and no tracking. The only goal is to teach as efficiently as possible, and no have money enter the picture.

Again, if one wants to make money with your blog or videos or whatever, I'm not judging. My personal ethic prohibits it for me, but of course people are free to do what they want. I just tend to value sites without advertising more than those with.

So I guess I am judging. :)

SuoDuanDao• 4 years ago

I'm interested in the statement 'teaching is an optimization problem'. I enjoy teaching (did it professionally for a brief and happy time in my life) but this is the first time I've encountered the idea it's an optimization problem. Could you speak a bit more on that?

Regarding making money, I've found at least one way that I think aligns the different needs - some of the videos on my youtube channel are book reviews and summaries of books I've genuinely enjoyed and find worth recommending. Easy way to put an affiliate link in front of people who'd appreciate it, and it's not enough of a concern for me that I'd ever be tempted to recommend a book I didn't personally love just to create content.

robjan• 4 years ago

It depends on the type of book. Tutorials are more like recipes from a recipe book, they help you achieve a specific outcome but don't necessarily teach the underlying reason or background information.

twapi• 4 years ago

I stopped reading non-fiction books. Most of them have about a blog post worth of ideas

Totally agree with you on this. Best example of this is much hyped "Atomic Habits". I appreciate this book's ideas, and have huge respect for the author.

50yearsold• 4 years ago

Agreed. Recently started reading Radical Candor by Kim Scott and truly - it could be written as (maybe a longish) a blog post than fluff that's been added to the book.

Lapsa2• 4 years ago

maybe I've seen too much or have grown old and grumpy - but I just can't find any mind blowing articles anymore. most of the stuff I find somewhat boring and/or irrelevant. also reading books more than ever (brb finishing up last couple chapters of 'War of the Worlds').

elias94• 4 years ago

Books are curated content that has been reviewed by editors and are usually well written. Better if the books is printed by a relevant publishing company and even better if the book has been translated which usually means is relevant. Also there are so many books and so many topics to read that is impossible to get bored.

Articles are easy to produce and publish, there's no review and often are just another way to do self/brand promoting without real content. Good blogs are difficult to spot and to keep track. At the same time articles can give you the sense of a trend and what people are thinking, and the point of view of a niche of people.

So to give a time-quality ratio; socials < blogs/articles < books

makeitdouble• 4 years ago

Books are curated content that has been reviewed by editor

This is a very low bar. Lower than having a podcast fact checked on NPR or a research paper on peer reviewed publication.

Think business books, biographies, testimonies of popular events, self help and diet books. The bar to pass is not if it´s remotely true or helpful, it will be if it sells. Review and edition will be on the style and writing, not on content.

Sometimes the authorś name or the press campaign surrounding the book will be enough for it to sell, with very few people actually engaging with the book in its details.

There is a funny and absolutely _not_ reviewed podcast on this theme, openly biased and not to take too seriously, but going through widely popular books that are garbage under even the minimum scrutiny: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/if-books-could-kill/id...

aflag2• 4 years ago

It's not a bar. It's a process. Good authors + good editors are a great process to create good content. A single author + no editors is a significantly worse process.

NikolaNovak• 4 years ago

Depends how you define "Blog Post". There are web pages / articles I still read - I'll check out things by Derek Sivers, Patrick McKenzie/Bits About Money, Money Stuff by Matt Levine, all by local HN recommendations. Similarly, I find a lot of good one-off recommendations on HN; is the hit ratio 100%, or even 50%, goodness no. But signal-to-noise ratio is still worth my time. I will read Thom Hogan on photography more than weekly. Science Babe's blogs/posts are interesting enough, as well as other more "traditional" science / astronomy bloggers.

I actually read a lot LESS books than I used to. I was an avid book reader; but several things happened: 1. My time is significantly reduced by being a 43year old with kids, work, house, mortgage 2. I've read a lot, so it's.... harder to find a new idea in a book, that interests me, especially one that's worth a few hundred pages or rather has hundreds of pages of (to me) new/interesting stuff. Basically, my attention span / my ability to devote dozen hours / the value I need to extract out of each our has changed.

I agree that there's a lot of useless posts; they've been increasing in ratio for years; and now with AI I'm sure they'll increase that much more. But individuals (and even teams) who produce quality content still exist. Heck, it's not a blog, but I've literally just discovered Tom Scott on Youtube - how did I miss that for the last 5-8 years?? I'm sure there are equally great bloggers out there I've clueless of. There's definitely opportunities in helping us identify them.

jasonladuke03112• 4 years ago

I actually read a lot LESS books than I used to.

Fewer.

- Stannis Baratheon

(I’m not actually a grammar nazi, I just can’t resist the joke.)

FlyingSnake• 4 years ago

I am still not over how spectacularly that TV series imploded into nothingness.

dasil003• 4 years ago

LOL, I just watched this episode yesterday

butterlesstoast• 4 years ago

Tom Scott is a national treasure

namaria2• 4 years ago

I'd think having less time available to read would make this time more valuable and thus nudge you towards more dense, higher quality long form reading. Seems to be a trap: I have less time so I will read these low effort, short texts instead. So you spend more of a limited resource on a lower yield activity.

fullshark2• 4 years ago

The amount of poor quality blogposts, in particular the volume of poor quality blogposts that are covert advertisements for something (a product, a book, the author's self image, the company they run, etc) just means you are very likely reading something that's a waste of time. I've adapted and find books to be more likely valuable information if not particularly fresh information.

wellanyway2• 4 years ago

But books have the same problem. Ten pages of information spread onto 300 pages to sell the copy.

fullshark2• 4 years ago

Yeah a lot of general business books in particular have this issue. I mostly stopped reading those unless it's business history or biography.

escapedmoose• 4 years ago

I’m having the same experience as you. It’s still a bit difficult to find a good book, but not as difficult as it is to find a single worthwhile blog post. Even the ones I used to enjoy just feel stale now. The blogs section of my bookmarks used to have at least 30 sites that I visited regularly. Now there are 0.

fergie2• 4 years ago

Love fiction, love a good blog post, can't for the life of me abide self-help nonsense, especially when it's dressed up as "management strategy".

sasha_fishter13• 4 years ago

Self help are wrong terminology imo. I'm just listening (I order a physical book), a Dale Carnegie's 'How to win friends and influence people', and I think it's one of the best book I have read. It's full of examples and published in 1936! Still relevant today, lot's of a good advices and things we knew but forgot. Nothing pushy, just logical.

fergie2• 4 years ago

To be fair- that is just about the only good one I have read.

ergonaught• 4 years ago

I’ve simply grown impatient (intolerant really) with people who appear to lack respect for my time (and perhaps their own).

That impacts videos, books, articles, blogs, emails, conversations, and so on.

It’s not “TL;DR” but it’s similar, and is not actually an artifact of ADHD or attention economy gimmickry or anything other than recognizing that my most valuable non-renewable resource deserves better allocation.

atomicnature• 4 years ago

I'd like to highlight a key idea for pack rats of knowledge/scholarship.

Life is too short for content that's not worthwhile (seriously).

If you're a serious reader, and you live upto 70+ year old, maybe you can finish off 15k books on various topics.

Library of congress alone has 38 million books. That's a meagre 0.04% of the content available at the great library.

Thus, the key skill seems not to be reading, but skipping the non relevant stuff. Get better at skipping stuff that's not worth it given our short lives!

latexr• 4 years ago

Are we slowly losing a joy of reading blog post because there are so many?

There are a lot of books, too. More than one could read in a lifetime, even if new ones stopped being released. Thus it doesn’t follow that quantity is the problem, or that if it is you’ll eventually be bored by books too.

Years ago I started consuming dozens of books a year. I eventually realised most non-fiction are stretched-out pamphlets: one core idea which could fit into a blog post padded with anecdotes until it reaches book length. The overwhelming majority of productivity books—including the ones typically favoured by HN—fall into this category. A better use of time is to look for an online talk the author has given; you’ll get all the book’s important information faster without the fluff.

Books get boring too. Until you start to develop an eye for quickly identifying the duds so you can abandon them early (or not get them at all). When in doubt, the 2-star GoodReads reviews will typically spell out if a book suffers from too much fluff.

All this to say I don’t think it’s a “books VS blog posts” matter, there’s a ton of garbage in both mediums. Perhaps you’ve just read fewer books than blog posts. If you’re happier with books now, enjoy it.

(I’ve excluded fiction from the conversation because I imagine you’re not talking about blog posts with short stories.)

thechao• 4 years ago

I've started reading a lot more, again. I just read 10-15 years "in arrears". There's so much highly-produced crap, out there, it boggles the mind. The immediate last two books I read that violated this rule (both fantasy; both "top shelf") should've been novellas, but were made novel-length. The authors' writing skills were insufficient to carry the length; as a result I just gave up on what were, otherwise, good stories (and good authors). Personally, I think this is an editor/publisher thing.

(The books were: "The House in the Cerulean Sea" and "The Bear and the Nightingale".)

Escapado• 4 years ago

Sometimes those anecdotes make those points engaging and I sometimes find myself re-telling them when having conversations about these topics with others. If information density is all you are after then I would agree, but argue that reading can be much more than that. And when it comes to non-fiction books on stem topics I found the vast majority I have read are usually really dense.

francisofascii• 4 years ago

Books are more relaxing. Maybe because blog posts are on a screen, which is associated with work, which is all on a screen. If there was a physical book of good blog posts, I would buy it.

jasonladuke03112• 4 years ago

Same here. I don’t have the patience any longer.

digitalsushi• 4 years ago

Didn't this sentiment come with hypertext? If books had clickable links we'd have a difficult time finishing them.

It's just a different way to read. Both have very obvious, very ancient, strengths and weaknesses.

When you get sick of take out, you can go garden. When you get sick of gardening, get take out.

gorjusborg3• 4 years ago

Didn't this sentiment come with hypertext? If books had clickable links we'd have a difficult time finishing them.

Absolutely!

I think that the hyper-twitch consumption model has become so ubiquitous that some people have forgotten how to slow down, though.

I prefer the slow model, personally, but I was born before the internet went big.

dredmorbius13• 4 years ago

Academic and some nonacademic books have citations and/or footnotes. Those can be followed, though with somewhat more effort than simply clicking a link. As a positive, however, proper citations rarely suffer linkrot, though some references are obscure, and if you're looking at ancient works, there may well be entirely lost works.

What I've found over the past decade or so as more books are available online (with varying levels of copyright compliance), it's possible to hit a reference and trace it often within a minute or so of searching. That's both delightful and something of a tarpit, reading lists can grow with amazing rapidity.

One of the first times I realised this was when reading through James Burke's Connections (companion book to the 1970s television series), and seeing a reference to Agricola's De re Metallica, a Renaissance-era text on mining and metallurgy still used as a reference through the 19th century.

Within a few minutes I located it (English translation, by an American couple, Lou Henry and Herbert Hoover) on the Internet Archive:

<https://archive.org/details/georgiusagricola00agri/page/n3/m...>

There's also a Project Gutenberg version: <https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/38015>

scaradim• 4 years ago

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/269576698_Are_Weste... https://www.tonerbuzz.com/blog/book-and-reading-statistics/ https://www.arts.gov/sites/default/files/RaRExec.pdf

rodolphoarruda• 4 years ago

I'm 70% into the 6th book of Dune Chronicles. I've never read so much literature like now. On the same token, I completely lost passion for non-fiction and mainstream news. The latter became so unbearable to me that I can't even scroll pages anymore. I do enjoy reading some blogs though, which I visit frequently for new insights. I've learned about most of them via HN.

int_19h2• 4 years ago

This service is very nice if you want to still have general awareness of what's going on in the outside world without it dominating your full attention. One text per day, summarizing the most important news in 1-2 informative sentences each.

https://thenewpaper.co/

cainxinth• 4 years ago

I save any article too long to read right away (been using instapaper for like a decade). Then, when I finally have downtime (e.g. sitting on an airplane for hours), I work my way through them. Or, I’ll use the text to speech function and listen to them like podcasts while out and about.

wink• 4 years ago

I noticed I'm no longer reading books. Maybe it's just that I haven't found anything enticing the last few years but in the same way as I don't like watching movies anymore I can't seem to manage to sit down and read a novel. I did read a few technical books, but as someone with 2 kinda full bookcases this is some kind of shock development.

jemmyw• 4 years ago

It comes and goes for me but in recent times I've found it harder and harder to read through a book. Similarly I don't watch movies, I find them very hard to sit through.

I've pondered this recently. On the book front I feel I've read a lot of styles and stories and I now need something a bit different to hold my attention. I've sought interesting and weird books. It's not that the books I'm rejecting are bad or worthless, they just feel like they're treading the same tropes. One thing I don't often find is humourful writing that gives an ordinary story some spark and wit.

rchaud• 4 years ago

I reached a similar point. Articles became an immediate skip because I started expecting the site to show a paywall or a email signup, or a block of links after each paragraph...it was exhausting.

The solution to this was to save the article as a PDF and drop it in a 'read later' folder. The PDFs are synced to my phone via Syncthing Fork, and look great on my foldable phone. You can make PDFs in A5 format so they're narrower and more phone friendly.

dredmorbius13• 4 years ago

EinkBro is a browser aimed at, as the name suggests, e-ink devices. That said, it has some really useful features, including a "save as ePub" option.

This not only solves the "format the document for my device", as ePub is a liquid-layout format, but also allows you to combine a number of articles into a single file (you can add more later), which is useful for organising reading by topic, project, or date. And you can read the articles using dedicated e-book software (Kobo, PocketBook Reader, FBReader, or native e-reader apps). I've found that especially useful.

More: <https://toot.cat/@dredmorbius/107958709435468728>

(For Android only AFAIU.)

<https://f-droid.org/en/packages/info.plateaukao.einkbro/>

jackschultz3• 4 years ago

I've made a change recently, where if there's a blog post, web article, magazine articles, or even watch a video, I need to take notes on it. Obsidian is great for that, where I can put a link in, and it pops out a page for me to write any thoughts that come to mind from it, even if it's a single sentence or two. It's a slight barrier, but makes the feeling of reading something much more worthwhile, and also is interesting to make connections to other things I've read.

lexoj• 4 years ago

Which plugin pops out a page from a link?

jackschultz3• 4 years ago

QuickAdd and Templater. It's a custom macro that takes the url, does a request, pulls the relevant information (site name, title) from the head, and then uses a capture to use the template to put the file in the correct path. Lowers the number of steps required to get a good page to take notes.

sasha_fishter13• 4 years ago

That's a good idea. I've seen Obsidian, but I'm taking notes on notepad, just to be sure I write it with hand. It's so hard for me because I was typing more than writing, so I kinda forget to write :). But I like your approach, notes are great because 5 minutes after reading something you forget almost all of it :)

jackschultz3• 4 years ago

Notepad works too! I think the key is to force yourself to actively think when reading, and if you don't want to do that, then don't bother reading. Obsidian helps because of the ease to linking other notes, and that I think it a big benefit when you start having a bunch of notes.

topaz0• 4 years ago

What you may notice from the other replies is that many of them conflict with each other. The reason is that this has much more to do with the rhythms of your own life and interests than with global trends. When I first started reading HN I would read several links a day. I don't think the quality of the links has changed that much -- indeed, many of the links are reruns that I've seen here 2, 5 or 10 years ago -- instead I have moved on to have more focused interests, and a higher level understanding in those areas, so that fewer of the posts are useful to me. (Meanwhile, I have much less time to read in general at my present stage of life, so I also read fewer books and magazines). I suspect there are also meaningful global trends, but extrapolating from your own experience will lead you astray.

singedproxy• 4 years ago

This is a sensible take that could be applied to almost anything else in life with some exceptions. Do whatever works best for you, but don't generalize much outside of your practical experience.

2devnull• 4 years ago

I read more online, both blogs and books. For what read, a lot of books are available for free online, and much easier to look up words, names, the odd bit of Latin or French etc… I can read much faster when not moving my eyes and flipping pages. The biggest factor is comfort. Books tend to hurt my neck. They’re often heavy to hold. I have to constantly shift around to turn pages. When reading off a large monitor the text is big, and I don’t have to look down, so no neck strain, and I can scroll with my mouse. I still love and buy books but read more online.

surume• 4 years ago

Honestly, I wish I could side with books for this for non-fiction (I'm old school), but often I find that much of it is filler. E.g. Wim Hof's book - as much as I love the WHM, it really could have been done in a chapter or two. The rest was just rehashing the same concepts again and again. That said, I have a real soft spot for College text-books. The newer ones are often beautifully written.

jrm43• 4 years ago

Nassim Nicholas Taleb's "Lindy" filter is instructive here. Age is a pretty good filter, so it's just overwhelmingly likely that an old book that's stuck around is going to be better than something newer.

This is why I say right now books are across the board a better idea than blogposts or videos, but I'm not 100% certain that can't change? Some kind of Wikipedia esque filter could perhaps accelerate this?

brunojppb• 4 years ago

Are we slowly losing a joy of reading blog post because there are so many?

Interesting perspective. My experience so far is that I've come across very few blog posts, at least good-quality ones. I do agree that it's hard to find the good ones tho.

I also have this feeling that books are becoming stronger somehow. I'm big fan of books in general and I tend to read them cover-to-cover as they work best for me compared to video courses and other mediums.

coldtea• 4 years ago

Are we slowly losing a joy of reading blog post because there are so many?

Also because they are so shallow...

dredmorbius13• 4 years ago

On which point, Nicholas Carr's The Shallows is relevant:

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shallows_(book)>

ryzvonusef• 4 years ago

Articles/blogs are hampered by SEO requirements, and padding to induce scrolling to display ads, IMHO.

Also, Books have chapter breaks and flow based on that, which "long-reads" articles don't match.

OP, do share which books you have been reading.

gherkinnn• 4 years ago

It is a question of quality. I'll take anything that is well written and insightful.

Posts like the Expert Beginner series [0] and anything ACOUP [1] I'll read and re-read. I keep a list of articles that have shaped my way of thinking. Most of what is on Medium et al can be discarded. Similarly, large amounts of books, mainly non-fiction, can be lobbed on the same pile. Many of which would have been better off as an article in the first place.

0 - https://daedtech.com/how-developers-stop-learning-rise-of-th...

1 - https://acoup.blog/2022/12/02/collections-why-roman-egypt-wa...

rayusher• 4 years ago

Most content creators are moving to video because they can monetize the information.

chairmanwow12• 4 years ago

I have been in a recent period of intense non-fiction book reading recently (6 / month for past 3 months) and I realized a couple of things:

1. High-quality writing relaxes me to the point that I can enjoy learning at a much deeper level

2. It’s extremely arduous to keep my BS filter constantly deployed, which it is 95% of the time I'm reading unfiltered content (blogs, Twitter, news etc)

A well-written book is a large lake of high-quality information, and so I can generally develop some trust for the author and can relax and think about things I don't know well.

There is a torrent of knowledge, but panning for wisdom is exhausting. So I think for me, rather than the form factor (blog vs book vs podcast), it really comes down to the level of refinement of the information. There are some authors that blog / write newsletters that I have developed a sense of trust for, so I can also enjoy their without the BS filter fully engaged. (Matt Levine, Ben Hunt, Scott Alexander etc)

vorpalhex2• 4 years ago

I've been on a kick of reading parenting books. I do a thing when I read where I fact check books when I read them (only things which are claims, usually only if cited or very specific).

Out of 7 or 8 books, only a minority have passed without deep deep factual errors. One specific one comes to mind - a book on "Danish Parenting" that cited a monkey study about kids and peer groups. I looked up the original study and the study author had specifically said not to cite the study on young primate behaviors in his disclaimers - he had used zoo raised primates.

Usually books are either generally pretty factual, or just repeated outright lies. "Hunt. Gather. Parent." was one I caught in multiple just plain falsehoods (and they didn't even need the cites! Just state it as an opinion!)

Obviously that is just parenting books which is a tiny niche, but I encourage you to do the same before taking a book as the gospel truth.

thumbelina• 4 years ago

Any parenting books you recommend? Thanks!

nineplay• 4 years ago

Parenting books are the worst. I read one of the pro "cry it out" books on the recommendation of friends and at one point the author had a chart of how the rise in juvenile delinquency corresponded to rise in attachment parenting.

The funny thing is that the friends who recommended it to me are both engineers but IME even a lot of smart people don't question "scientific" studies. Parenting books in particular rely on a whole lot of readers willing to take everything at face value.

Aside: I knew a women who had a PhD and studied sleep patterns. Her pediatrician told her she needed let her baby cry it out. When she asked for justification they handed her a study that she had participated in, it was about mama cats and their kitted - completely irrelevant to any sort of human behavior. She was pretty upset by the whole thing. How many parents had been convinced by doctors completely misinterpreting her research?

A lot of justified scorn was thrown at the anti-MMR vax crowd, particularly pre-covid, but I think it's hard to understand how many people just don't have the background to look at a bunch of charts and numbers with a skeptical eye. I don't know how we are going to manage it when these days everyone can find a chart somewhere justifying everything that they already believe.

distortionfield• 4 years ago

Hard agree. Books present a single, complete tour of a concept. More and more lately I find myself just buying the best recommended book on a topic instead of trying to piece together my own journey of understanding. I’m working my way through Programming Rust for this exact reason.

pighive• 4 years ago

Nice, do you have any recommendations for non-fiction? TIA.

chairmanwow12• 4 years ago

Here are 5 I have recently read that I really enjoyed:

1. "When Genius Failed": about the failure of the hedge-fund LTCM

2. "The First Tycoon": Detailing Vanderbilt's life (he was a bad-ass businessman). Far more interesting than I expected.

3. "Made in America": I didn't really care about walmart or Sam Walton before reading this, but he's a man to be admired.

4. "Barbarians at the Gate": Private equity tries the largest hostile takeover ever (dramatic and exciting with a hilarious group of characters).

5. "The Smartest Guys in the Room": Enron was an absurd company run by absurd people. Jeff Skilling claims he didn't do anything wrong.

antegamisou• 4 years ago

Bluntly put; the vast majority of blog posts, no matter what the subject is about, are low quality platitudes. This has been the norm ever since Blogger/Wordpress emerged.

Books on the other hand, especially literature, are usually the exact opposite. Money-grubbing self-help/how-to-become-world's-greatest-entrepreneur/Paulo Coelho tier prints are excluded.

null_object• 4 years ago

I find that some days, when I'm tired at the end of the day or drained by work, I crave some simple entertainment and come to HN or my RSS reader looking for articles or blog-posts to read, but I'm definitely finding that the RSS-feed has thinned-out, and on HN there's more often repetition of posts I've seen before or lynchmob ranting about Apple which I find unnerving.

So I'm also reading more books - both digitally and on paper. I find the 'non-fiction could be a blog-post' attitude just baffling for the sort of books I've been reading lately - including a biography of Napolean, another book about his Russian campaign, and a really fascinating biography of Casanova that was linked from HN (the type of post that brings me back here, in spite of the tribal nonsense).

There's so much more a sense of 'mental nourishment' and intentionality from reading a book, than if I'm mindlessly clicking through a sequence of links.

btw the RSS reader really gives a sense of the 'abandonment' of blogs: hundreds of blogs on my list haven't published anything for years.

tapanjk• 4 years ago

hundreds of blogs on my list haven't published anything for years

I had that feeling too, until I realized that it is just a matter of finding new feeds. Unlike media houses, we cannot expect individuals to continue to produce interesting content, and that is why RSS feeds dry off. However, new ones are popping up all the time and it is just a matter of finding good ones. I think RSS is thriving.

QXAS• 4 years ago

I'd rather be lost in a good book instead of lost in Netflix trying to make a choice out of the endless mediocre options.

I'm sick of social media, Youtubers, influencers, and everyone else proclaiming to be experts with their clickbait titles. I just read books now. It's mentality more simulating and healthier.

z3t4• 4 years ago

Books are the new web. Publishing books have never been easier. Getting people to pay to read is easier - you do not have to rely on ads, there are no popups, or trackers, only cookie crumbs, and maybe some margin notes.

JohnBooty2• 4 years ago

    Are we slowly losing a joy of reading blog post because there are so many?

Yes, but...

    What are your thoughts?

I think it's inarguable: 99.x% of blog posts are trash, and a lot of that trash is specifically SEO-bait trash where the author wasn't even trying to produce something of value.

That said, the remaining 0.x% of blog posts is insanely valuable. The low-stakes environment of blog posts (and tweets, etc) sometimes facilitates great insights you would never find in a book.

Practically speaking, my solution is to only read things that have been (1) shared by people I trust and/or (2) upvoted by a community like HN.

Georgelemental• 4 years ago

If everyone followed your solution, nobody would ever read any interesting blog posts!

qup• 4 years ago

Since that isn't the case, and never will be, the solution is really great.

JohnBooty2• 4 years ago

I guess now that I think about it, there's also a small subset of blogs I actively follow, having previously discovered them via (1) or (2).

naravara• 4 years ago

Are we slowly losing a joy of reading blog post because there are so many? Are the books gaining popularity again? What are your thoughts?

One of the downsides of blogging is that bloggers very often do not have editors. I think just about every substack I see that isn't maintained by a seasoned writer or journalist tends to veer towards being far too wordy and meandering. People don't naturally understand how to maintain a reader's interest and remain sharply focused on the thesis of their piece. That's a skill that needs a lot of honing, and even great writers have a lot of trouble keeping things tight without a good editor to help.

There are a lot of posts people make where the central premise is good and I'm interested to see what they're saying about it, but the journey to get there is too long, involves examples and metaphors that add more confusion than clarity, belabors points that don't need belaboring, involves unnecessary digressions into tangential topics that would have best been saved to develop into a separate piece, and a number of other writing sins. Freelance blog-post editors should be more common.

runjake• 4 years ago

I feel the opposite. I'm reading fewer non-fiction books and more articles and blog posts.

Non-fiction books are bloated with fluff to increase the page count to increase the perceived marketability of the book. A lot of the ideas presented in those books could be adequately presented in a 10th of the number of pages.

A huge time-saver has been reading the article versions of stuff that has been turned into a book. You get the same points, but in minutes instead of hours.

xiphias22• 4 years ago

I love to see presentations of people on youtube who write non-fiction books. It gives back their personality as well and it's a great middle ground between articles and books.

mongol• 4 years ago

Searching for "topic + lecture" on Youtube gives me the best hits. I rather hear a knowledgable person just talk about a topic, than some poorly animated storytelling about the same thing, done by a Youtuber with shallow knowledge

peepee19823• 4 years ago

I feel like this really depends on the topic.

When I see a 1000 page tome about every single feature of Photoshop, then nope. I'll google it thanks.

History is non-fiction, too. And I'd definitely rather read a book than some blog, because there will be a long thread of things that build up on each other, and I think books are just better suited for that.

So, things that require prolonged attention because of an overarching concept I'd rather read about in a book.

CodeIsMyFetish• 4 years ago

Couldn't agree more. And with tools such as Photoshop, it's much more efficient to learn as you go after being able to understand enough to navigate around the tool and its basic associated terminology.

cryptos3• 4 years ago

A good example for such a bloated book is "Clean Architecture" by Robert C. Martin. The ideas of the book are more or less completely explained in a single blog post or one of his talks (about 1 hour), but the book has a few hundred pages (432) where he delves into history and talks to you about how he used archaic computers 40 years ago (to render himself as a veteran and to underline some point in the main text).

Another book on the same topic (https://www.packtpub.com/product/get-your-hands-dirty-on-cle...) has only 156 pages and is far more useful in practice - but you'll learn less about the authors adventures in history.

locofocos• 4 years ago

Is this a good example of one of those talks? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dKZ-dWaCiU&ab_channel=ITkon...

azemetre• 4 years ago

Have you read the packtpub book? I'm very weary on buying from that publisher as I gotten burned too many times. IME they are often both poorly written and horridly incorrect. This was around 2018-ish so maybe they've gotten better but they definitely have the "self publish" stigma with little editorial guidance in my view.

Not saying this is the case here, as the other looks decent and has a history of writing content.

radu_floricica2• 4 years ago

This, 10 times. I have such good blogs in my inbox, with easily the quality of the best books I could read, and I don't even have time to go though them. And I don't see any that I'd like to remove - if anything, I'm sure I could easily add to them if I go through each one's blogroll.

The last non-fiction books on the other hand were huge disappointments. Even Daniel Kahneman, to my surprise: Noise had a good idea and was well written, but could easily have been 1/4 of its size or less. I don't have either the time or patience to go through 75% fluff. It feels more and more like books are written for the less intelligent audience, with the abundance of examples and repetitions.

As for the blogs I read: AstralCodexTen, Zvi, MarginalRevolution, Noahpinion etc. They're obviously not everybody's cup of tea since it's about my tastes and preferences, but I dare anybody to say even above-average non-fiction books are better than that.

wrycoder• 4 years ago

Huh. I can’t take AstralCodexTen, because it’s so long-winded!

vchynarov• 4 years ago

I’m constantly astonished “Thinking Fast and Slow” is so highly recommended - I question if the advocates actually read the book in depth.

I remember reading most of the book and skipping a couple of chapters. While the results and ideas are great, I feel most of the chapter is the historical background, Ie “Tversky and I were doing this in the 60s …” It could be heavily reduced and still get the point across.

itake• 4 years ago

While I agree books have bloat, spending 4 minutes to read a blog article once makes it more difficult for me to retain the information. Books typically discuss ideas (over multiple days of reading) which helps me retain their information better.

Do you have any advice on how to retain blog posts better? Re-read them everyday for a few days?

Sakos• 4 years ago

I consume information in whatever information it's available and whatever way I prefer at any given time. Even a Twitter thread can be a valuable source of information. I'm not going to ignore it just because it's Twitter. Some things I'm only able to find in books. Other things are great as articles because you don't need a book to explain a single concept. Even a book is just a whole made of chapters and indices and some chapters are more useful than others. I haven't read a non-fiction book cover-to-cover in years (or ever?). Sometimes a Reddit post is valuable because of all the information in the comments (eg. "the real TIL is always in the comments"). Sometimes I'll read a handful of notes from somebody's knowledge database and that's all I need. Sometimes I'll read all of them.

I can't imagine limiting myself to a single type of textual presentation.

gonehome• 4 years ago

It really depends - for most crappy non-fiction I'd agree, but the really great ones are different.

The Emperor of All Maladies, The Gene, Our Mathematical Universe are some that are better because of their book format. I'd put Hackers in that category too (along with pretty much all the books by Steven levy).

The phoenix project is a lot more entertaining as a novel too thought that kind of blurs the lines towards fiction.

keiferski2• 4 years ago

I don’t know exactly when it happened, but nonfiction books have become 80% filler with a few dozen pages of worthwhile ideas. This didn’t use to be the case and if you read a popular book from say, 1910, they are often too information sense.

a3w• 4 years ago

American non-fiction books seem to have a third dedicated to "the author is awesome and valid in this field, because he or she did this and that talk for this and that person". Very bloaty, indeed.

operatingthetan• 4 years ago

I agree, but I think some aspect of it is that we are presented the same facts as novel in each genre and if you've read one you've read them all. Whatever the case it's to the point where I quit nonfiction books quickly because I find them boring, where as I used to read them constantly when I was younger.

georgeecollins• 4 years ago

I have heard non-fiction authors comment on this. It is because there is no market for a pamphlet or novella length work. In science, self help and business people often write influential essays or academic papers. It may make sense to print them because want them as a reference, and the author can expand their ideas. But the problem is that in general they don't need to be ~250 pages.

Aaronstotle• 4 years ago

I've been a huge fan of Erik Larson's book because he writes non-fiction in a very exciting ways where it doesn't feel like filler.

The Splendid & the Vile was the most enjoyable book of his imo.

keiferski2• 4 years ago

* dense

allturtles• 4 years ago

Non-fiction books are bloated with fluff to increase the page count to increase the perceived marketability of the book.

This applies to many non-fiction best-sellers in the self-help and pop science categories, but is very unfair as a generalization about non-fiction. (And bloat is not restricted to non-fiction, either: do we really need 10,000 pages of Wheel of Time or Stormlight Archive?).

I'm looking at my bookshelves now and see great books like Ryan's "A Bridge Too Far," Peltzold's "Code", Hodges' "The Enigma," Koestler's "The Sleepwalkers," Churchill's "Marlborough." None of these feel "bloated" or "padded" (okay maybe "Marlborough" is a little bloated). None of them were written to convey a handful of ideas to make you look smart at a cocktail party. Surely the information in these books could be condensed, but that condensed form wouldn't produce the same experience.

ckozlowski• 4 years ago

Incidentally, I was given a copy of Peltzold's "Code", second edition (2022), for Christmas. I'd read the first many, many years ago. I'm looking forward to reading it again.

DoingSomeThings2• 4 years ago

Re "Epic Fantasy"

I'm a recent fan and discovered I enjoy the worlds. I find them engrossing. imo Sanderson could cut down 10-20% (Rhythm of War in particular suffered from length). But, I did appreciate his own defense of length in the genre.

https://www.tor.com/2014/03/04/words-of-radiance-and-the-art...

His insight seems to boil down to

1. Treat it as multiple books if you prefer. 2. "I get the chance to write what I enjoy. I understand it's not for everyone. That doesn't bother me."

briga• 4 years ago

I think you might be reading the wrong books. Admittedly many of the latest nonfiction books (especially tech books) are 90% fluff, but this is hardly universal

distrill• 4 years ago

Books are also stuck in time. I like Ben Thompson's position here (Stratechery) - his ideas are moving so quickly that he doesn't want to have them stuck in time in a book. He publishes a lot of content and regularly goes back and posts updates to his ways of thinking. I guess you can approximate this with new book editions, but there will always be outdated published versions in circulation without updated context. Ben keeps old articles as they are but includes links to updated articles.

camoufleur• 4 years ago

"Stuck in time" is a positive. Why should I pay attention to a writer who's constantly changing their mind and retracting their work?

2OEH8eoCRo0• 4 years ago

Non-fiction books are bloated with fluff to increase the page count to increase the perceived marketability of the book.

Is this really that rampant or different from SEO? Padding a book out with fluff has a cost. What's the cost to pad out an article with keywords or lengthen for SEO?

jtsnow• 4 years ago

"So why is reading books any better than reading tweets or wall posts? Well, sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes, you need to put down your book, if only to think about what you’re reading, what you think about what you’re reading. But a book has two advantages over a tweet. First, the person who wrote it thought about it a lot more carefully. The book is the result of his solitude, his attempt to think for himself.

Second, most books are old. This is not a disadvantage: this is precisely what makes them valuable. They stand against the conventional wisdom of today simply because they’re not from today."

Thank you for reminding me of this excellent essay.

https://theamericanscholar.org/solitude-and-leadership/

ajmurmann• 4 years ago

I'm on the fence about this. For the longest time I'd have 100% agreed with you, but more recently realized that there is value in just having my mind be exposed to the subject for a prolonged amount of time. Sometimes the more interesting insights will be mine, rather than what the content of the book was. It also helps with retention. Of course some books just still aren't worth it. My canonical positive example would be Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance which is a very high bar and obvious example.

dinkleberg• 4 years ago

I completely agree with this.

I’ve started to put more of an emphasis on “active” reading (for lack of a better word) in which I take what I’m reading and think it through for myself, rather than just passively accepting it.

It is certainly slower than passively reading, but the result is that I actually understand the subject much better.

You could read a dictionary definition of the word courage and vaguely understand it. You could read a full page with examples and understand it better. But when you read Socrates’ dialogue Laches on the meaning of courage, your understanding will be far deeper. Even if you don’t agree with the arguments made, the act of thinking through all of the arguments helps you understand what your own views really are.

Obviously most books aren’t written as Socratic dialogues, but if you take the arguments and stories that are presented throughout the book and actively think on each one, your understanding and retention will really improve.

And this is not to say there aren’t bad books and that many aren’t bloated. But providing you with the opportunity to think on a topic from many different angles through the use of different examples can be invaluable.

pnf• 4 years ago

That's true for most nonfiction with the caveat that you miss out on the lingering mood of a full book if all you get are the executive summaries. It is definitely not true for works of genius, which should be ready in full, if possible. Also, textbooks or instructional guides that build over each chapter lose a lot when turned into a series of shorter, discontiguous blog posts

dvirsky• 4 years ago

I feel the same way about a lot of non fiction, but not all.

First, there's entertaining/pop non-fiction, like, say, Malcom Gladwell's stuff, which has a lot of fluff but at least you enjoy the reading.

There are history books and memoirs that are just interesting - for example I've recently went through the entire series of Churchill's WWII memoirs, they're mostly awesome, though I did skip a couple of less interesting chapters. For these I prefer audiobooks while driving, which make it easier for me to focus.

Then there are CS books where you can pick and choose chapters and don't have to read the entire thing; they just go way deeper than blog posts, so if you want to REALLY know a subject, you better buy a book or two. I don't mean books like Clean Code or The Pragmatic Programmer, etc which I almost never read in their entirety and can be summarized in 10% of their length, but more deep guides to things like Information Retrieval, NLP, Database Internals, etc.

groby_b• 4 years ago

TBF, Malcolm Gladwell is more fiction that is "inspired by a true story". It's fun to read only if you aren't familiar with the subject. Otherwise, you just want to yell.

This has soured me on the genre of pop-nonfiction in general, because my trust is absolutely zero at this point (it's not like Gladwell is the only confabulist there) - and if I have to cross-reference every single fact, I might as well just skip to the bibliography section. If there is one.

That has, in fact, become my criterion for most non-fiction I buy directly (without reference/recommendation) - does it have a bibliography section. I recommend it, because at the very least it gives you a great shopping list for round two on the subject :)

Barrin92• 4 years ago

A huge time-saver has been reading the article versions of stuff that has been turned into a book. You get the same points, but in minutes instead of hours.

This culture is hugely detrimental. You simply cannot in-depth absorb knowledge about anything in minutes. This isn't how the brain works. Churning through dozens of articles and spending small amounts of time with each one will leave you with no recollection of any of it in a year. It's not a serious way to learn.

Unless we're talking about promotional campaign books or something of similarly low quality, non-fiction books elaborate on things at length for a reason. Details, motivations and nuances matter. And you don't get that out of a Sparknotes summary. You will not really get what an author wants to say without spending time with his or her work. It takes people years to truly grok and write down what they want to teach, you're not going to learn it in an hour.

opdahl• 4 years ago

I can’t agree more with what you’re describing. Just working over the information over time, poking at the nuances of a way of thinking is almost impossible through a short article.

snidane• 4 years ago

Another trick is to search the book title on youtube. There is a fair chance the author wants to promote the book and delivers the entire message in one hour speech in their own words instead of in hundreds of fluffed pages in the book. You can decide if you would like the buy book after watching the video.

agrimonyhal2• 4 years ago

The quality and quantity of blogs has increased so much that many books seem too cumbersome in comparison.

One thing I like about following good blogs is seeing ideas from authors develop week to week. I think this encourages a deeper understanding of the topic and makes some books seem immediately outdated in comparison.

svillar• 4 years ago

Check out Blinkist.

spaceman_20202• 4 years ago

Non-fiction books that intend to teach something (as opposed to just share something) are a waste of time. This is particularly true for business books where you might get 2 nuggets of wisdom hidden in 300 pages of the same old fluff.

I'm reading more fiction books now. I want to detach the idea of "learning" from my reading habit and read just for the pleasure of it.

There's still something about good prose that connects with you unlike anything else.

nicbou2• 4 years ago

Non-fiction books really shine when it's okay to take it slow.

For example, The Secret Life of Trees or pretty much anything by Bill Bryson or Antony Beevor. The goal is not to pick up a new skill, but to enjoy a few hours with someone who knows a lot of trivia.

jvans• 4 years ago

Non-fiction books are bloated with fluff

You can usually tell in the first few pages if it's written in that cookie cutter "must make it to 350 pages so I'll stuff it with 200 pages of fluff" style. It is really annoying though. I love books but this drives me crazy

aflag2• 4 years ago

That's true of bad books. But bad blog posts are even worse: they are trying to get maximum SEO. Both good posts and books are useful. When I'm getting introduced to a subject, I like books. The slower pace allows me to gradually become more familiar with the ideas and concepts. Also, good authors will put a lot of effort in writing something that's pleasant to read and that still goes through editors so that the end result is pure joy. Blog posts can be good, but I don't think they ever get to the same level of quality of a good book.

However, blog posts often has more up to date information and they are, by necessity, more direct. They are good when you are closer to a master in the subject, I feel like. They are akin to research papers, but for engineers.

muzani• 4 years ago

I'm a compulsive note taker. I find that most practical style books can be shortened into a 10th of the size.

However, some books end up with much longer notes than the books themselves. One of my favorites was actually Aristotle's Poetics. A lot of the classic non-fiction are like that; the article versions are longer.

But what I've learned is avoid most practical books; things that tell you what to do. I think the problem is that the advice is generally weak, and the extra "fluff" is just finding support for this weak advice. An exception is the Pomodoro Technique which works perfectly fine when you don't read the book.

Instead go for the books that study the phenomenon, like The Power of Habit instead of Atomic Habits. Something like 33 Strategies of War is written as a historic book. The summaries tend to be much weaker than the book. Those are the kinds of books you should be reading.

Poetics was actually recommended by a lot of screenwriters, who basically called the rulebook. So you can also go from articles to books when the same books are emerging in multiple sources.

firemelt• 4 years ago

A huge time-saver has been reading the article versions of stuff that has been turned into a book.

like what? any example?

kobaroko• 4 years ago

Books have just problem: time. Tim from the idea until it gets out from the print. A lot of things can happen in meantime that are not reflected in books.

deephdave• 4 years ago

Thanks to Readup[1], Matter[2] and Campfire reads reading club[3], I still read a few articles.

[1]https://readup.org/

[2]https://web.getmatter.app/

[3]https://t.me/campfire_reads

jklinger4104• 4 years ago

The gate-keeping around reading is insane.

A book is just long-form writing. Other than its length, a book is fundamentally no different than any other form of written communication. There are bad books just as there are bad blog posts.

Length can be an important differentiator, for sure. But I don't ever see that as the topic of conversation. Only book vs blog vs tweet. Be more specific.

Rather than just say "books" you should say which ones.

If Alex Jones writes a book, it doesn't suddenly become better than when I see a cut up Noam Chomsky interview on TikTok. Just because Jones has more room to write his nonsense doesn't mean it is better than Chomsky dropping truth bombs inside of 15 seconds.

dredmorbius13• 4 years ago

I'd say that most of the distinction between books and blogs / other online writing is about the process and result rather than of the physical form of the product itself, though that has some bearing (see my recent comments elsewhere in this thread).

If you're familiar with the literature on writing itself --- fiction or nonfiction --- what becomes clear is how books are crafted. There's the idea, often research, organisation of notes and the like, writing itself, and then very often many, many, many rounds of editing and proofing, which go towards a result which ideally reads well, is factually accurate (where such things matter), that educational materials follow good pedagogy, is well cited and referenced, has needless fat trimmed, etc., etc.

Traditional publishing has multiple edit and filter points, from initial acquisition through revisions and translations. The upside is (potentially) well-crafted works, the downside is that many proposals don't get green-lit. The promise of the Web was breaking that editorial chokepoint, which has its own pros and cons.

Yes, of course it's possible to craft bad books, and as The Good Book notes, there is no end.

But blogging and article-writing frequently cuts many of these corners. Yes, a domain-expert can write a good blog, and yes, the process of blogging itself can be part of the process of book-creation, with feedback and corrections to the (error-prone, roughly-hewn) blog posts itself contributing to that finished product.

Books based on dialogues, lectures, commentaries, and essays are also a timeless form (Plato, Sun Tzu, Al-Kindi, Averroes, Smith's The Wealth of Nations, Feynman's Physics, all come to mind), and that's one useful way of coming up with a book-length compendium of material, though the result may lack in an overall coherence. (Overall coherence of course is not the principle goal of such compendia, rather, it is to create a usefully-curated set of realated or interacting works.)

I've been increasingly disappointed in the focus of many early digital-text pioneers on creating an end result that's specific to the domain, rather than on the process of writing works which is afforded by digital tools to increase capability and usefulness of something which, after all, ultimately is read in a linear fashion, if not necessarily how the author or publisher lineralised it. Reading is finding a path through text, the presented structure is itself only one path. We read novels through; we work through textbooks; we consult or query dictionaries, phone directories (if you remember those), and encyclopedias.

Concepts such as Niklas Luhmann's Zettlekasten, whilst analogue and paper-based are far more innovative in the sense of restructuring the authoring process itself. More modern tools would include Zotero and Calibre, perhaps.

<https://zettelkasten.de/introduction/>

jklinger4104• 4 years ago

Many books are written with less care than an investigative journalist writing their big reveal. Many books follow your process as a go-to market strategy, and not crafting a work of art.

Mike Tyson dictated his book. Self help gurus pay editors and writers to spin their 10 steps into a full "book."

Not all books use such a prestigious process. In fact, most don't.

Per my initial comment, it is not books but well crafted literature at any length. Using the term "book" to describe that is lazy and ignores the many excellent short form pieces and overwhelming amount of garbage books that get produced every day.

anotheraccount9• 4 years ago

I suspect you will maintain your IQ longer by reading books instead of online articles.

LunarAurora• 4 years ago

It is not just about the numbers. There are more books produced than ever.

For me, it is the ease of finding the "best" on a certain topic (by rating...). This is because books are more "centralized" (Amazon, goodreads...) and identifiable (isbn). Web Articles, on the contrary, are more often like an ever receding stream: blogs, monthly magazines, Hacker news feed...

Concerning centralization, I wish sites like longreads [1] and Lindy Hacker News [2] were more popular, wide-ranging and organized (tags, ratings...)

And with respect to identification, I wish there was the equivalent of DOI for web articles : You can easily find that influential scholarly paper from the 60s, but you may never recover that brilliant magazine article from the 2000s (and search is getting worse)

[1] https://longreads.com/

[2] https://hn.lindylearn.io/

yannis• 4 years ago

Looking back in my life, very few habits stayed with me over the years. One is to wake up early in the morning; read non-fiction books; Use TeX\LaTeX for writing. I read on average a book every 3-5 days. I read mostly during the early morning or late evening. I occasionally read the odd blog post. They serve different purpose.

brontosaurusrex• 4 years ago

Some 'latest' books I actually enjoyed:

Based on a True Story: (Not) A Memoir (Norm Macdonald - 2016) - Humor

Deadlines Don’t Care if Janet Doesn’t Like Her Photo (David Thorne - 2021) - Humor (And other books by David Thorne)

The Man from the Future: The Visionary Life of John von Neumann (Ananyo Bhattacharya - 2022) - Documentary

Memory Machines - The Evolution of Hypertext (Belinda Barnet) - Kinda about how the web was born and about interesting dead branches

Simple Sabotage Field Manual - really funny https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/26184

syl_sau• 4 years ago

The good things about books is they compel you to truly engage in an argument, an idea, a conception of the world. You can't opt out easily, and that means you ought to be focused. And that's incredibly important, because quality almost always mean quantity. Not only the amount of knowledge in the average book far surpasses 90% of what's on the web, but more importantly information does not come easy, and never has. If it's easy to digest, you most likely won't remember it, which essentially makes the whole thing a loss of time. Learning takes time and reflection. If you don't do either of these you're just consuming things on a surface level: you're losing the attention war waged against your brain.

steve_slammin• 4 years ago

As somebody in Data Science/Predictive Modeling, it's almost entirely useless to read blog posts unless they come from some stellar blogger like say Andrew Gelman. Do a search on any topic, you get a ludicrous list of 'Towards Data Science' posts from kids who learned maybe 30% of what they're talking about over the course of writing the article. Books for me, thanks.

sibeliuss2• 4 years ago

For me its easy: Sitting on the computer reading makes me feel depressed. Reading books makes me feel happy. And so I've gradually reduced my footprint on the internet to basically zero -- no social media, only a few sites (mostly HN) bookmarked -- in an effort to make the internet less of a thing. It's working.

Sometimes I'm staring at my screen and I have no clue what to even do or where to go, and I close it and then pick up a book and instantly feel better.

sasha_fishter13• 4 years ago

Exactly what I've felt. I have started a new project for tennis, and that keeps me going. Reading a book about topics that I need for project, exploring different ideas, etc. What I found most interesting is that reading a book opens up a totally different world of thinking. More ideas, enrichment of creative thinking, clear thinking, focus... I was sitting in front of computer and try to think what to do next, while ending in endless worthless SM scrolling... I can feel you :)

padobson• 4 years ago

+1 for getting away from the screen. I've stopped buying eBooks for exactly this reason. A glass of wine or bourbon and a book with a soft lamp is a much better way to power down at the end of the day then doom scrolling or vegetating to Netflix.

It is a lonely thing though, so YMMV when considering your spouse or roommates.

theonething• 4 years ago

Something I like about ebooks though is the ability to change font size and other things. My eye sight is not that great even with glasses so I've found the ability to change font size to my liking and comfort indispensable.

When I read an ebook, I still feel a marked difference (overall much more relaxing and better) than reading a web page.

DoingSomeThings2• 4 years ago

I've found that Kindle gives me the same effect as physical books. For narrative-driven fiction specifically & light non-fiction. Physical still wins out for reference material and things I need to flip around.

It keeps me away from "screens". My page count skyrocketed this past year when I started checking out ebooks from the library and reading before bed. Works even better with a partner who can go to sleep with lights off while I use the warm backlight.

CadmiumYellow2• 4 years ago

Could not agree more. I also find that I don't retain information that I read on a screen but I retain information from print media quite well. I've started to wonder if memory relies heavily on additional senses, like touch, and sensory experiences that are almost entirely visual don't stick with us the same way. I can remember specific passages from books I read 15 years ago and I can even picture where they are on the page and how far they are into the book, whereas I can barely remember which articles I read on HN during work on Friday, let alone the content.

I become more convinced each day that online life is a shallow substitute for a human existence in so many small ways that will only become clear to us in retrospect.

sibeliuss2• 4 years ago

I think you're totally right that the tactile nature of holding books and flipping through pages reenforces things. I can't prove it, but I can second the observation!

hyperjeff• 4 years ago

Same experience for me. Viewing screens, with their unnatural light and uncanny hyperrealism, rattle my nervous system, and I can feel a subtle internal fight in my brain about what I’m doing. Somehow it’s also easy to get trapped, like you get magnetized. I see this in everyone. It can sometimes cause arguments trying to get someone to break the spell and have them reengage with the world. It’s not just the normal aggravation of context switching, our nervous systems get slightly hijacked.

Starting to read a physical book sometimes is very difficult after spending time on screens, but if I can break thru the first 15 minutes where I can’t get my eyes to track the page effectively and let myself slow down enough to fully pay attention to the words in front of me, with no possibility to click anything, then I find that my mood changes and I feel happy, calm, creative, inspired. After an hour I only reluctantly give up reading the book.

Rinse and repeat everyday. Some days I wish all computers would stop working.

odysseus5• 4 years ago

Agree with your second paragraph, but for some books, I've gotten too used to being able to look up words/topics directly from the ebook. I find myself annoyed I can't long press a word with a physical book.

I then end up grabbing my phone and looking up the word/topic, and then it's back to the electronic device that I was trying to get away from with the paper book.

int_19h2• 4 years ago

I've been "magnetized" by paper books many times as a kid. I also don't observe any difference between the degree of engagement between paper and ebooks.

I do, however, read mostly from devices that I very specifically configure to be optimized for reading - and that includes blocking all notifications.

nicbou2• 4 years ago

This is why I love my iPad Mini so much. I use it to read articles I have saved in Pocket. It's otherwise disconnected from everything else and never recieves notifications.

longnguyen• 4 years ago

I feel the same. I switched to reading articles on my Kindle and now I enjoy reading web content again.

jyriand• 4 years ago

"Sturgeon's law (or Sturgeon's revelation) is an adage stating "ninety percent of everything is crap". It was coined by Theodore Sturgeon, an American science fiction author and critic, and was inspired by his observation that, while science fiction was often derided for its low quality by critics, most work in other fields was low-quality too, and so science fiction was thus no different." [0]

0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law

ploum2• 4 years ago

That’s why I used Pocket and now Offpunk (disclaimer: it’s my own project).

When I find something that looks interesting, I place it in my "toread" list in offpunk. Then I go through that list, picking random articles and reading them… in less (the terminal pager).

It means no scrolling (hit space to display next page), no images, no cruft. Only text. I really read. And a majority of "looks interesting enough to read until the end" are in fact empty or soulless. Thankfully, following blogs through RSS + some gemini capsules, I’m never out of stuff to read. I start to build a relationship with the author, not expecting quick sugar but more a long term understanding of their work and their reflections. (I also read lot of books but I assume we are speaking of computer reading here).

The big takeaway is that, in a browser, I’m not really looking for stuff to read. I’m in fact looking for the dopamine rush of finding something that could be potentially interesting if I take the time to read it. This is frightening: it’s like spending more time watching trailers than watching a good movie (wait… that’s exactly what we are doing with my wife).

For those interested: https://sr.ht/~lioploum/offpunk/

nafizh• 4 years ago

If you can connect it to pinboard, that would be something really big.

ploum2• 4 years ago

If pinboard offers a RSS feed, then it’s already connectable.

seniorThrowaway• 4 years ago

The quality of content on the internet has gone way down in my opinion. There is a proliferation of content that is so adwords optimized as to be useless, AI or cheapest content farm written, an annoying ad filled video, or some combination of all of those. It's still ok for computing and programming topics, but for almost any other non-fiction or reference type material I greatly prefer books, and older books at that. Not antique books, but even those from about 20 years ago still have much more content and better editing. I'm speaking of topics like gardening, homesteading, military history etc.

adql• 4 years ago

Counter-point - it didn't, SEO services quality went up.

Internet was always full of shit but when everything linked to everything else there was a way for search engines to find the valuable posts, with search engine being a gateway to everything that is no longer the case.

mancerayder2• 4 years ago

I find it difficult to read online in depth.

I was trying to force myself to read a book about probability, and I despise math (especially proofs down to first principles) but I made it a duty. However even on Kindle it's brutal.

News articles seem purposely long in words, but thin in information.

Hacker news posts are one of my favorite go-tos, but admittedly I find myself embroiled in the back and forth of people's comments, like I'm seeking out a deep argument I can glean information from in a sort of Socratic-method-by-voyeurism.

IcyHordr• 4 years ago

Couldn't one argue that a book would likely have better writing in it as opposed to a blog post? Maybe what you're really saying is you like good writing now, and you used not like it as much?

yogthos• 4 years ago

I find that I read both. Web articles can be useful for keeping up with recent news or tech developments. However, books are excellent for doing a deep dive into a subject. I started to reserve at least an hour for book reading every day, and now it's become a habit.

mr_gibbins• 4 years ago

Do you think it's something to do with the medium, rather than the content?

I am an avid book-collector and much prefer to pick up a technical manual and find guidance there, but at the same time my job demands fluency with online documentation, plus e.g. Stack Overflow, blog posts, etc.

Personally I like the dead-tree feel and heft of a book, and the fact it doesn't require a screen or battery. I can curl up with it and I don't have a bright square of light blasting into my retinas. I could annotate it (criminal!) if I wanted to, or certainly bookmark it. It has the same features as online material in that regard.

I tried the Amazon Fire(?) reader-thingy for fiction books and couldn't get on with it at all, despite the paper feel/look.

dredmorbius13• 4 years ago

A good e-ink reader ... remains a compromise ... but it is a good compromise in many cases.

The fact that I can carry 100s or 1,000s of references with ease is especially useful.

The display is (mostly) reflective, works under direct sunlight, has exceptional battery life (when used only as an e-book reader, if you're surfing the Web or using apps, with WiFi and frontlighting enabled, it falls precipitously), and is very nearly as crisp as paper (200 DPI vs. 300--600 for most laserprinters).

luis_cho• 4 years ago

Try to buy a kobo and connect with your getpocket (firefox read it later).

I cannot read blog posts on my computer but I can read this way.

It has a very nice feature. You read the articles offline (after you sync the kobo with pocket), and when you click on the blog links, it presents you with the option of connect to the internet or store the link in pocket. That way you can read the link later and focus on the blog post

master_yoda_1• 4 years ago

its depend on what domain you are interested in. for some domain progress is so fast books are lagging 10 years behind so you need to read article (also its tough to find good article).

dieselgate• 4 years ago

Interesting to see this on HN as we're all encouraged to read the post before commenting here but it's certainly relevant. Some articles are so fascinating I can't help but read them - for example discoveries that push back the "known date of human arrival to ${location}" or whatever. Maybe OP is experiencing exhaustion of the screen medium, which if the case hope you are able to do what works best for you reading-wise!

MengerSponge• 4 years ago

I spend a lot of time listening to ebooks on Libby. I also read a lot more with my Kobo (managed via Calibre).

The only blog posts that I read diligently and thoroughly are Bartosz Ciechanowski's masterworks: https://ciechanow.ski/archives/

tristor• 4 years ago

I only read fiction or low-density non-fiction books now, any of the denser non-fiction books that aren't considered classics usually are full of fluff. For that, I heavily rely on Blinkist, which is basically like Cliff Notes as an audiobook.

There's just way too much fluff stuffed into a lot of the books you see marketed for professionals to read, in particular. I definitely enjoy the quality of prose in classic works of non-fiction, especially histories, but most of the new stuff I'd never make it through without a summarization app.

I guess I'm almost the opposite, I read HN every day, and I usually read the articles, and then that's about it. I might check article of the day on Wikipedia. I just don't read as much anymore unless it's for enjoyment, which is usually fiction.

georgex7• 4 years ago

Same

powersnail• 4 years ago

My conjecture is two folds:

1. There are more well-written books than blogs. 2. New books are more discoverable than new blogs.

There are more well-written books, because 1) there's a longer history of books being written, and 2). books bring money. Popular books bring tons of money. Blogs on the other hand, is much less remunerative. As a result, if you are going to write something with a lot of effort and care, something packed with information and backed with research, why not publish it?

Books are more discoverable, in the sense that they are usually much more advertised than blogs. Authors and publishers will want to push and promote their books, to books stores, to Amazon, to Google/Meta, to book tubers, and whatever ad platforms out there.

Blog writers, even the really good ones, are mostly laissez faire about promoting their own website. In fact, blogs with aggressive marketing are usually shit blogs.

LAC-Tech• 4 years ago

I've been foregoing books more and more, and just reading papers. Concept in compsci I want to understand? Why bother with a university text where I can just freely grab the pdf (inevitably from the 70s and 80s) and just dig into that? It has more detail and more context.

agrimonyhal2• 4 years ago

Non-fiction books are a great way to “catch up” on a mature topic (Chinese history, physics).

Blogs are better than ever for learning about topics that are still developing (LLMs, startups).

I vacillate between the two as I get into different topics.

cleandreams• 4 years ago

I feel happier reading a book. I also feel relieved when I open a book. I've been wondering why this is and I have a theory.

The information on the internet is unbounded. You know this, you are aware even if subliminally, no matter how you control your browser by blocking ads, pop ups etc. An unbounded information horizon is destabilizing. There is always more (possibly better) information a click away. It's hard to justify keeping attention on just one article. I even read a paper newspaper article with more attention than the same article online.

Of course pop ups, ads, the incredible commodification of attention, has made this much worse, but the problem is inherent to the internet.

When I open a book, there are two covers, marking beginning and end. It's awesome. In between is a place for deep attention.

There have been books that have enriched my life. It's deep focus, not shallow scanning. I think there is something soul crushing about the shallow attention we are left with after years on the job. (Slack & Teams are part of the problem.)

dredmorbius13• 4 years ago

The number and quality of online distractions is ... increasingly tiresome.

Even with adblock on my principle tablet browser, sites such as the Washington Post leave large whitespace gaps within an article where ad spots have been removed. I've counted through these manually at times and believe that there are frequently around ten, possibly more, ads withing the body of a story with not many more paragraphs than that.

Even before we get to sidebars, pop-ups, and other interstitials, it just makes me tired.

Reader Mode can remove many of these though even then some additional tuning may be required. A further problem is the lack of standardisation in how articles are structured, making assumptions about how to apply formatting also fraught.

(As a concrete example: I'm fond of bolding lead-lines of articles with a drop cap. Normally this can be applied to "p:first-of-type:first-line", except where, say, and article wraps each <p> tag in a <div> or other element. Mind that this is a self-imposed problem. Point is that if document-structure conventions were followed, I'd be able to consistently use a cleaner styling. It isn't, so I cannot.)

desdo88• 4 years ago

Quite the opposite, I at least enjoy reading both books and blogs. But I will agree that I'm starting to notice books getting more popular. My friend has almost ditched her phone and is spending her free time mostly by reading books.

wtf77• 4 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic

spaceman_20202• 4 years ago

I'm just so jaded by articlespam that my brain automatically shuts off when it sees large blocks of text onscreen.

What's strange is that I'm not a very visual learner - I only understand things if I read about them. But even that instinct is now giving way to video content for learning new things now.

atmb4u• 4 years ago

https://lostgarden.com https://fs.blog

I read a book a week. But I could still argue there are more treasures like the 2 above. They are rare, but they do exist.

ultrablack• 4 years ago

Im reading this… :/

nerdface• 4 years ago

Interesting because I’ve been doing the same these last few months; getting back into physical books. I find there’s so much more peace and focus in reading a book vs scrolling the Internet. I don’t think our minds were supposed to have so many distractions communicated through a backlit medium.

goleary• 4 years ago

I listened to a great episode of the Ezra Klein show about "Deep reading". (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/22/opinion/ezra-klein-podcas...)

They talk about the distinction between reading a book where you have no distractions and no "next" task to move on to and reading on a device - where you are a mere click away from other information & stimulation.

In order to spend actual time reading articles you need to get into a state where you aren't reading to be done with the article and don't care how much time you spend in this state which is pretty hard.

Apps like Pocket/Upnext/Matter/Readwise help, but I find that it takes more than this. People often send their articles to a kindle to facilitate this kind of reading.

GulpGulp• 4 years ago

I think for me there is just so much garbage out there that it's not worth it to me to even read enough to find out if it's any good.

dredmorbius13• 4 years ago

For those commenting on the number of low-quality books out there, Mortimer J. Adler's How to Read a Book is a useful guide to detecting those quickly:

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Read_a_Book>

This applies mostly to nonfiction, though there are aspects which apply to fiction as well.

Adler also addresses the "what books do you recommend" with a list of 137 suggestions which are a good start (though of course, not an exhaustive list):

<https://www.tosummarise.com/2022/11/26/mortimer-adlers-readi...>

Paraesthetic• 4 years ago

What are books? I haven't read them since I was a child - now I only read blog posts and articles.

mitjam• 4 years ago

I read more than ever overall - both articles and books. I also dislike fluff-stuffed books and I adjust by skimming over such parts. Although I am never sure if I miss important points, I think it is better than wasting time on non-content. The same is true for online articles.

To me, it feels like we have reached a point where information gathering and learning is getting slower and harder due to filler bloat and other distractions. I recognize this most when I go back to a new book or online text after having read in an old book.

readonthegoapp• 4 years ago

i feel like blog posts, like those on substack, medium, etc., are so low-quality that i barely make it a sentence or two before abandoning them.

in theory a site like HN should pre-filter them for me so that i'll only see stuff i'm likely to like, but mostly does not work.

i generally like professional, paid work that has been edited -- fact-checked, etc. -- it's just a lot more likely i will like that work because the quality is generally much higher. but you sacrifice a lot, namely, instead of getting the raw viewpoint of the author, you get viewpoint of the publication owner.

i'd guess the solution is manifold, but prob includes publicly-funded authorship.

leoplct• 4 years ago

It is certainly possible that the sheer quantity of online content available on the internet today has led to a saturation of information, making it difficult for individuals to find articles and blog posts that are truly worth their time. Additionally, the fast-paced, scrollable format of most online content can make it less engaging and immersive than traditional print reading.

On the other hand, books are often seen as a more immersive and satisfying reading experience, and it is possible that the perceived "deeper" or "more valuable" reading experience that they offer is leading to a resurgence in their popularity. It is also important to note that reading habits are different for people and their preference can change over time and also varied with life stage and personal circumstances.

ivan_burazin• 4 years ago

Agreed. Most blogs are now created solely for the point of generating content, in the hopes of generating leads/clicks.

If you want actual insight you need deep research which is most often found in books.

I don't read web articles anymore, but I read books

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