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

358 pointsby sasha_fishterover 2 years ago
I noticed that I&#x27;m no longer reading an article, blog post, etc. I just scroll through it and close the page. It&#x27; really very rare that I spend time on some blog post, but I do read books, and I do it more than ever.<p>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?

95 comments

runjakeover 2 years ago
I feel the opposite. I&#x27;m reading fewer non-fiction books and more articles and blog posts.<p>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.<p>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.
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sibeliussover 2 years ago
For me its easy: Sitting on the computer reading makes me feel depressed. Reading books makes me feel happy. And so I&#x27;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&#x27;s working.<p>Sometimes I&#x27;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.
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chairmanwow1over 2 years ago
I have been in a recent period of intense non-fiction book reading recently (6 &#x2F; month for past 3 months) and I realized a couple of things:<p>1. High-quality writing relaxes me to the point that I can enjoy learning at a much deeper level<p>2. It’s extremely arduous to keep my BS filter constantly deployed, which it is 95% of the time I&#x27;m reading unfiltered content (blogs, Twitter, news etc)<p>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&#x27;t know well.<p>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 &#x2F; 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)
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topaz0over 2 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&#x27;t think the quality of the links has changed that much -- indeed, many of the links are reruns that I&#x27;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.
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a13oover 2 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&#x27;s what makes their business model make sense.<p>I haven&#x27;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&#x27;m reading content marketing and not an actual blog post.<p>Tutorials are probably the most information dense things these days. Followed by podcasts, although the content marketers are actively trying to corrupt that medium.
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elias94over 2 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.<p>Articles are easy to produce and publish, there&#x27;s no review and often are just another way to do self&#x2F;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.<p>So to give a time-quality ratio; socials &lt; blogs&#x2F;articles &lt; books
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woolionover 2 years ago
I think formats are better suited to express certain types of ideas than others (&quot;the medium is the message&quot;). 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.<p>Compared to a few years ago, I don&#x27;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&#x27;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.<p>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.
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rlgthover 2 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.<p>Employee blog posts from Big Tech now push the corporate agenda. Stepping out of line &quot;has consequences&quot;, so no one speaks freely any more.<p>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.<p>Purely technical blogs got unfocused in presentation, are largely self-promotional and rarely address interesting subjects.
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NikolaNovakover 2 years ago
Depends how you define &quot;Blog Post&quot;. There are web pages &#x2F; articles I still read - I&#x27;ll check out things by Derek Sivers, Patrick McKenzie&#x2F;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&#x27;s blogs&#x2F;posts are interesting enough, as well as other more &quot;traditional&quot; science &#x2F; astronomy bloggers.<p>I actually read a lot LESS books than I used to. I was an <i>avid</i> book reader; but several things happened: 1. My time is significantly reduced by being a 43year old with kids, work, house, mortgage 2. I&#x27;ve read a lot, so it&#x27;s.... harder to find a new idea in a book, that interests me, especially one that&#x27;s worth a few hundred pages or rather has hundreds of pages of (to me) new&#x2F;interesting stuff. Basically, my attention span &#x2F; my ability to devote dozen hours &#x2F; the value I need to extract out of each our has changed.<p>I agree that there&#x27;s a lot of useless posts; they&#x27;ve been increasing in ratio for years; and now with AI I&#x27;m sure they&#x27;ll increase that much more. But individuals (and even teams) who produce quality content still exist. Heck, it&#x27;s not a blog, but I&#x27;ve literally just discovered Tom Scott on Youtube - how did I miss that for the last 5-8 years?? I&#x27;m sure there are equally great bloggers out there I&#x27;ve clueless of. There&#x27;s definitely opportunities in helping us identify them.
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Baxxterover 2 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...<p>What I don&#x27;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&#x27;re easy to find now, they&#x27;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&#x27;s because I&#x27;ve gotten better at avoiding them.
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gherkinnnover 2 years ago
It is a question of quality. I&#x27;ll take anything that is well written and insightful.<p>Posts like the Expert Beginner series [0] and anything ACOUP [1] I&#x27;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.<p>0 - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;daedtech.com&#x2F;how-developers-stop-learning-rise-of-the-expert-beginner&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;daedtech.com&#x2F;how-developers-stop-learning-rise-of-th...</a><p>1 - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;acoup.blog&#x2F;2022&#x2F;12&#x2F;02&#x2F;collections-why-roman-egypt-was-such-a-strange-province&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;acoup.blog&#x2F;2022&#x2F;12&#x2F;02&#x2F;collections-why-roman-egypt-wa...</a>
JohnBootyover 2 years ago
<p><pre><code> Are we slowly losing a joy of reading blog post because there are so many? </code></pre> Yes, but...<p><pre><code> What are your thoughts? </code></pre> I think it&#x27;s inarguable: 99.x% of blog posts are trash, and a lot of that trash is specifically SEO-bait trash where the author wasn&#x27;t even <i>trying</i> to produce something of value.<p>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.<p>Practically speaking, my solution is to only read things that have been (1) shared by people I trust and&#x2F;or (2) upvoted by a community like HN.
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fullsharkover 2 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&#x27;s self image, the company they run, etc) just means you are very likely reading something that&#x27;s a waste of time. I&#x27;ve adapted and find books to be more likely valuable information if not particularly fresh information.
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ploumover 2 years ago
That’s why I used Pocket and now Offpunk (disclaimer: it’s my own project).<p>When I find something that looks interesting, I place it in my &quot;toread&quot; list in offpunk. Then I go through that list, picking random articles and reading them… in less (the terminal pager).<p>It means no scrolling (hit space to display next page), no images, no cruft. Only text. I really read. And a majority of &quot;looks interesting enough to read until the end&quot; 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).<p>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).<p>For those interested: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;sr.ht&#x2F;~lioploum&#x2F;offpunk&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;sr.ht&#x2F;~lioploum&#x2F;offpunk&#x2F;</a>
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LunarAuroraover 2 years ago
It is not just about the numbers. There are more books produced than ever.<p>For me, it is the ease of finding the &quot;best&quot; on a certain topic (by rating...). This is because books are more &quot;centralized&quot; (Amazon, goodreads...) and identifiable (isbn). Web Articles, on the contrary, are more often like an ever receding stream: blogs, monthly magazines, Hacker news feed...<p>Concerning centralization, I wish sites like longreads [1] and Lindy Hacker News [2] were more popular, wide-ranging and organized (tags, ratings...)<p>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)<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;longreads.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;longreads.com&#x2F;</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hn.lindylearn.io&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hn.lindylearn.io&#x2F;</a>
bamboozledover 2 years ago
I&#x27;ve got this new strategy where I just leave a few books around the house and I&#x27;ve building a habit where I just reach for a book instead of my phone.<p>It&#x27;s personally been quite effective, albeit very simple.<p>Funnily enough, I just finished a book without replacing it and I&#x27;m straight back on the phone :)<p>Anyone else try this?
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digitalsushiover 2 years ago
Didn&#x27;t this sentiment come with hypertext? If books had clickable links we&#x27;d have a difficult time finishing them.<p>It&#x27;s just a different way to read. Both have very obvious, very ancient, strengths and weaknesses.<p>When you get sick of take out, you can go garden. When you get sick of gardening, get take out.
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fedeb95over 2 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&#x27;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&#x27;t just scroll, but I read. When I find myself scrolling the first few lines, I immediately close the link.
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latexrover 2 years ago
&gt; Are we slowly losing a joy of reading blog post because there are so many?<p>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.<p>Years ago I started consuming dozens of books a year. I eventually realised most non-fiction are stretched-out pamphlets: one core idea <i>which could fit into a blog post</i> 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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>(I’ve excluded fiction from the conversation because I imagine you’re not talking about blog posts with short stories.)
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ajsnigrutinover 2 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&#x27;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&#x27;t mean i&#x27;ll personally like the book, and I&#x27;ll still stop reading it.<p>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&#x27;s reposted here or on reddit and you see the upvote ratio... otherwise you never know what you&#x27;ll going to get.<p>So, as with books, you read the first paragraph, sometimes you stop reading there, sometimes you scroll down and &quot;read&quot; vertically while scrolling (just looking at text to see if it contains something interesting) and many times it doesn&#x27;t, so when you scroll to the bottom after 7 seconds of scrolling, you just close it and move on.<p>I don&#x27;t see why this is a bad thing.<p>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&#x2F;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&#x27;d stop reading a lot more books too.
jrm4over 2 years ago
Nassim Nicholas Taleb&#x27;s &quot;Lindy&quot; filter is instructive here. Age is a pretty good filter, so it&#x27;s just overwhelmingly likely that an old book that&#x27;s stuck around is going to be better than something newer.<p>This is why I say right now books are across the board a better idea than blogposts or videos, but I&#x27;m not 100% certain that can&#x27;t change? Some kind of Wikipedia esque filter could perhaps accelerate this?
naravaraover 2 years ago
&gt; 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?<p>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&#x27;t maintained by a seasoned writer or journalist tends to veer towards being far too wordy and meandering. People don&#x27;t naturally understand how to maintain a reader&#x27;s interest and remain sharply focused on the thesis of their piece. That&#x27;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.<p>There are a lot of posts people make where the central premise is good and I&#x27;m interested to see what they&#x27;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&#x27;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.
winkover 2 years ago
I noticed I&#x27;m no longer reading books. Maybe it&#x27;s just that I haven&#x27;t found anything enticing the last few years but in the same way as I don&#x27;t like watching movies anymore I can&#x27;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.
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golearyover 2 years ago
I listened to a great episode of the Ezra Klein show about &quot;Deep reading&quot;. (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2022&#x2F;11&#x2F;22&#x2F;opinion&#x2F;ezra-klein-podcast-maryanne-wolf.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2022&#x2F;11&#x2F;22&#x2F;opinion&#x2F;ezra-klein-podcas...</a>)<p>They talk about the distinction between reading a book where you have no distractions and no &quot;next&quot; task to move on to and reading on a device - where you are a mere click away from other information &amp; stimulation.<p>In order to spend actual time reading articles you need to get into a state where you aren&#x27;t reading to be done with the article and don&#x27;t care how much time you spend in this state which is pretty hard.<p>Apps like Pocket&#x2F;Upnext&#x2F;Matter&#x2F;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.
tristorover 2 years ago
I only read fiction or low-density non-fiction books now, any of the denser non-fiction books that aren&#x27;t considered classics usually are full of fluff. For that, I heavily rely on Blinkist, which is basically like Cliff Notes as an audiobook.<p>There&#x27;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&#x27;d never make it through without a summarization app.<p>I guess I&#x27;m almost the opposite, I read HN every day, and I usually read the articles, and then that&#x27;s about it. I might check article of the day on Wikipedia. I just don&#x27;t read as much anymore unless it&#x27;s for enjoyment, which is usually fiction.
jklinger410over 2 years ago
The gate-keeping around reading is insane.<p>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.<p>Length can be an important differentiator, for sure. But I don&#x27;t ever see that as the topic of conversation. Only book vs blog vs tweet. Be more specific.<p>Rather than just say &quot;books&quot; you should say which ones.<p>If Alex Jones writes a book, it doesn&#x27;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&#x27;t mean it is better than Chomsky dropping truth bombs inside of 15 seconds.
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jyriandover 2 years ago
&quot;Sturgeon&#x27;s law (or Sturgeon&#x27;s revelation) is an adage stating &quot;ninety percent of everything is crap&quot;. 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.&quot; [0]<p>0 - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Sturgeon%27s_law" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Sturgeon%27s_law</a>
johlitsover 2 years ago
We are searching for quality now in this AI driven age.
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fergieover 2 years ago
Love fiction, love a good blog post, can&#x27;t for the life of me abide self-help nonsense, especially when it&#x27;s dressed up as &quot;management strategy&quot;.
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luis_choover 2 years ago
Try to buy a kobo and connect with your getpocket (firefox read it later).<p>I cannot read blog posts on my computer but I can read this way.<p>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
rodolphoarrudaover 2 years ago
I&#x27;m 70% into the 6th book of Dune Chronicles. I&#x27;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&#x27;t even scroll pages anymore. I do enjoy reading some blogs though, which I visit frequently for new insights. I&#x27;ve learned about most of them via HN.
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cleandreamsover 2 years ago
I feel happier reading a book. I also feel relieved when I open a book. I&#x27;ve been wondering why this is and I have a theory.<p>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&#x27;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.<p>Of course pop ups, ads, the incredible commodification of attention, has made this much worse, but the problem is inherent to the internet.<p>When I open a book, there are two covers, marking beginning and end. It&#x27;s awesome. In between is a place for deep attention.<p>There have been books that have enriched my life. It&#x27;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 &amp; Teams are part of the problem.)
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molly0over 2 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.
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leoplctover 2 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.<p>On the other hand, books are often seen as a more immersive and satisfying reading experience, and it is possible that the perceived &quot;deeper&quot; or &quot;more valuable&quot; 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.
MengerSpongeover 2 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).<p>The only blog posts that I read diligently and thoroughly are Bartosz Ciechanowski&#x27;s masterworks: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ciechanow.ski&#x2F;archives&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ciechanow.ski&#x2F;archives&#x2F;</a>
yannisover 2 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.
powersnailover 2 years ago
My conjecture is two folds:<p>1. There are more well-written books than blogs. 2. New books are more discoverable than new blogs.<p>There are more well-written books, because 1) there&#x27;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?<p>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&#x2F;Meta, to book tubers, and whatever ad platforms out there.<p>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.
epolanskiover 2 years ago
I read the articles and books that interest me.<p>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.<p>The problem with many books is that you realize they are crap halfway through the investment. The investment for blogs is much smaller.
QXASover 2 years ago
I&#x27;d rather be lost in a good book instead of lost in Netflix trying to make a choice out of the endless mediocre options.<p>I&#x27;m sick of social media, Youtubers, influencers, and everyone else proclaiming to be experts with their clickbait titles. I just read books now. It&#x27;s mentality more simulating and healthier.
spaceman_2020over 2 years ago
I&#x27;m just so jaded by articlespam that my brain automatically shuts off when it sees large blocks of text onscreen.<p>What&#x27;s strange is that I&#x27;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.
dredmorbiusover 2 years ago
For those commenting on the number of low-quality books out there, Mortimer J. Adler&#x27;s <i>How to Read a Book</i> is a useful guide to detecting those quickly:<p>&lt;<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;How_to_Read_a_Book" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;How_to_Read_a_Book</a>&gt;<p>This applies mostly to nonfiction, though there are aspects which apply to fiction as well.<p>Adler also addresses the &quot;what books do you recommend&quot; with a list of 137 suggestions which are a good start (though of course, not an exhaustive list):<p>&lt;<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.tosummarise.com&#x2F;2022&#x2F;11&#x2F;26&#x2F;mortimer-adlers-reading-list-from-how-to-read-a-book&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.tosummarise.com&#x2F;2022&#x2F;11&#x2F;26&#x2F;mortimer-adlers-readi...</a>&gt;
mr_gibbinsover 2 years ago
Do you think it&#x27;s something to do with the medium, rather than the content?<p>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.<p>Personally I like the dead-tree feel and heft of a book, and the fact it doesn&#x27;t require a screen or battery. I can curl up with it and I don&#x27;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.<p>I tried the Amazon Fire(?) reader-thingy for fiction books and couldn&#x27;t get on with it at all, despite the paper feel&#x2F;look.
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scaradimover 2 years ago
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.researchgate.net&#x2F;publication&#x2F;269576698_Are_Western_Australian_adolescents_keen_book_readers" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.researchgate.net&#x2F;publication&#x2F;269576698_Are_Weste...</a> <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.tonerbuzz.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;book-and-reading-statistics&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.tonerbuzz.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;book-and-reading-statistics&#x2F;</a> <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.arts.gov&#x2F;sites&#x2F;default&#x2F;files&#x2F;RaRExec.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.arts.gov&#x2F;sites&#x2F;default&#x2F;files&#x2F;RaRExec.pdf</a>
seniorThrowawayover 2 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&#x27;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&#x27;m speaking of topics like gardening, homesteading, military history etc.
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brontosaurusrexover 2 years ago
Some &#x27;latest&#x27; books I actually enjoyed:<p>Based on a True Story: (Not) A Memoir (Norm Macdonald - 2016) - Humor<p>Deadlines Don’t Care if Janet Doesn’t Like Her Photo (David Thorne - 2021) - Humor (And other books by David Thorne)<p>The Man from the Future: The Visionary Life of John von Neumann (Ananyo Bhattacharya - 2022) - Documentary<p>Memory Machines - The Evolution of Hypertext (Belinda Barnet) - Kinda about how the web was born and about interesting dead branches<p>Simple Sabotage Field Manual - really funny <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gutenberg.org&#x2F;ebooks&#x2F;26184" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gutenberg.org&#x2F;ebooks&#x2F;26184</a>
mitjamover 2 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.<p>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.
2devnullover 2 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.
f0e4c2f7over 2 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.<p>Sometimes you&#x27;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.<p>I find other long form content like podcasts or filmed presentations can sometimes hit that quality mark of books too.<p>Articles &#x2F; tweets are good for learning the name of a concept I&#x27;ve never heard of.<p>Books &#x2F; podcasts &#x2F; YouTube are a good way to deep dive on the actual concept itself.
mancerayderover 2 years ago
I find it difficult to read online in depth.<p>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&#x27;s brutal.<p>News articles seem purposely long in words, but thin in information.<p>Hacker news posts are one of my favorite go-tos, but admittedly I find myself embroiled in the back and forth of people&#x27;s comments, like I&#x27;m seeking out a deep argument I can glean information from in a sort of Socratic-method-by-voyeurism.
jackschultzover 2 years ago
I&#x27;ve made a change recently, where if there&#x27;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&#x27;s a single sentence or two. It&#x27;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&#x27;ve read.
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atomicnatureover 2 years ago
I&#x27;d like to highlight a key idea for pack rats of knowledge&#x2F;scholarship.<p>Life is too short for content that&#x27;s not worthwhile (seriously).<p>If you&#x27;re a serious reader, and you live upto 70+ year old, maybe you can finish off 15k books on various topics.<p>Library of congress alone has 38 million books. That&#x27;s a meagre 0.04% of the content available at the great library.<p>Thus, the key skill seems not to be reading, but skipping the non relevant stuff. Get better at skipping stuff that&#x27;s not worth it given our short lives!
dieselgateover 2 years ago
Interesting to see this on HN as we&#x27;re all encouraged to read the post before commenting here but it&#x27;s certainly relevant. Some articles are so fascinating I can&#x27;t help but read them - for example discoveries that push back the &quot;known date of human arrival to ${location}&quot; 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!
MisterTeaover 2 years ago
Are the books you read similar in subject to the blog posts you read? I bet they are not.<p>To me it sounds like you are bored or tired of reading about the same material. It&#x27;s burnout really. It might be the simple that there isn&#x27;t much new or interesting material in your area of interest and most blog posts are rehashing the same info you already know.<p>Taking a break is fine. Maybe its time to explore hobbies you&#x27;ve been interested in perusing but have not yet had the time.
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brunojppbover 2 years ago
&gt; Are we slowly losing a joy of reading blog post because there are so many?<p>Interesting perspective. My experience so far is that I&#x27;ve come across very few blog posts, at least good-quality ones. I do agree that it&#x27;s hard to find the good ones tho.<p>I also have this feeling that books are becoming stronger somehow. I&#x27;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.
surumeover 2 years ago
Honestly, I wish I could side with books for this for non-fiction (I&#x27;m old school), but often I find that much of it is filler. E.g. Wim Hof&#x27;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.
caromover 2 years ago
I&#x27;m taking a break from a few social media sites right now (not hn). I&#x27;ve noticed I suddenly have time to listen to books, read my email, text my friends. When you don&#x27;t have a dumping ground for every thought you have a lot more to say. Similarly when you aren&#x27;t reading other people&#x27;s thoughts or ads constantly you seek out things to read. Only a few days in but it is nice.
antegamisouover 2 years ago
Bluntly put; the <i>vast majority</i> of blog posts, no matter what the subject is about, are low quality platitudes. This has been the norm ever since Blogger&#x2F;Wordpress emerged.<p>Books on the other hand, especially literature, are <i>usually</i> the exact opposite. Money-grubbing self-help&#x2F;how-to-become-world&#x27;s-greatest-entrepreneur&#x2F;Paulo Coelho tier prints are excluded.
deephdaveover 2 years ago
Thanks to Readup[1], Matter[2] and Campfire reads reading club[3], I still read a few articles.<p>[1]<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;readup.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;readup.org&#x2F;</a><p>[2]<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.getmatter.app&#x2F;">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.getmatter.app&#x2F;</a><p>[3]<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;t.me&#x2F;campfire_reads" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;t.me&#x2F;campfire_reads</a>
escapedmooseover 2 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.
nerdfaceover 2 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.
atmb4uover 2 years ago
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;lostgarden.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;lostgarden.com</a> <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;fs.blog" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;fs.blog</a><p>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.
cainxinthover 2 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.
LAC-Techover 2 years ago
I&#x27;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.
readonthegoappover 2 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.<p>in theory a site like HN should pre-filter them for me so that i&#x27;ll only see stuff i&#x27;m likely to like, but mostly does not work.<p>i generally like professional, paid work that has been edited -- fact-checked, etc. -- it&#x27;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.<p>i&#x27;d guess the solution is manifold, but prob includes publicly-funded authorship.
yogthosover 2 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&#x27;s become a habit.
ivan_burazinover 2 years ago
Agreed. Most blogs are now created solely for the point of generating content, in the hopes of generating leads&#x2F;clicks.<p>If you want actual insight you need deep research which is most often found in books.
desdo88over 2 years ago
Quite the opposite, I at least enjoy reading both books and blogs. But I will agree that I&#x27;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.
parasecover 2 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&#x27;m reducing my internet-dopamine time more now.
ryzvonusefover 2 years ago
Articles&#x2F;blogs are hampered by SEO requirements, and padding to induce scrolling to display ads, IMHO.<p>Also, Books have chapter breaks and flow based on that, which &quot;long-reads&quot; articles don&#x27;t match.<p>OP, do share which books you have been reading.
steve_slamminover 2 years ago
As somebody in Data Science&#x2F;Predictive Modeling, it&#x27;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 &#x27;Towards Data Science&#x27; posts from kids who learned maybe 30% of what they&#x27;re talking about over the course of writing the article. Books for me, thanks.
z3t4over 2 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.
agrimonyhalover 2 years ago
Non-fiction books are a great way to “catch up” on a mature topic (Chinese history, physics).<p>Blogs are better than ever for learning about topics that are still developing (LLMs, startups).<p>I vacillate between the two as I get into different topics.
IcyHordrover 2 years ago
Couldn&#x27;t one argue that a book would likely have better writing in it as opposed to a blog post? Maybe what you&#x27;re really saying is you like good writing now, and you used not like it as much?
francisofasciiover 2 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.
wtf77over 2 years ago
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Availability_heuristic" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Availability_heuristic</a>
FpUserover 2 years ago
I read an awful lot of books. Blogs - rarely, mostly glance over.
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syl_sauover 2 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&#x27;t opt out easily, and that means you ought to be <i>focused</i>. And that&#x27;s incredibly important, because quality almost always mean quantity. Not only the amount of knowledge in the average book far surpasses 90% of what&#x27;s on the web, but more importantly information does not come easy, and never has. If it&#x27;s easy to digest, you most likely won&#x27;t remember it, which essentially makes the whole thing a loss of time. Learning takes time and reflection. If you don&#x27;t do either of these you&#x27;re just consuming things on a surface level: you&#x27;re losing the attention war waged against your brain.
kobarokoover 2 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.
GulpGulpover 2 years ago
I think for me there is just so much garbage out there that it&#x27;s not worth it to me to even read enough to find out if it&#x27;s any good.
saalweachterover 2 years ago
You can write one good book, and it&#x27;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.<p>You need to write one blog post a week, minimum. Three a week, daily even. For years and decades. If you don&#x27;t regularly publish a new post, your blog withers, and if you stop entirely, your blog dies.<p>It&#x27;s hard to have that many new things to say, let alone things of value.
rr888over 2 years ago
I wish I could do this, as books are far more rewarding. However I keep getting distracted by regular browsing &amp; SM.
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Paraestheticover 2 years ago
What are books? I haven&#x27;t read them since I was a child - now I only read blog posts and articles.
Lapsaover 2 years ago
maybe I&#x27;ve seen too much or have grown old and grumpy - but I just can&#x27;t find any mind blowing articles anymore. most of the stuff I find somewhat boring and&#x2F;or irrelevant. also reading books more than ever (brb finishing up last couple chapters of &#x27;War of the Worlds&#x27;).
coldteaover 2 years ago
&gt;<i>Are we slowly losing a joy of reading blog post because there are so many?</i><p>Also because they are so shallow...
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anotheraccount9over 2 years ago
I suspect you will maintain your IQ longer by reading books instead of online articles.
rayusherover 2 years ago
Most content creators are moving to video because they can monetize the information.
beardywover 2 years ago
With a no phones in the bedroom policy there are always one or two books by my bed.
master_yoda_1over 2 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).
jasonladuke0311over 2 years ago
Same here. I don’t have the patience any longer.
rchaudover 2 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.<p>The solution to this was to save the article as a PDF and drop it in a &#x27;read later&#x27; 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&#x27;re narrower and more phone friendly.
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ergonaughtover 2 years ago
I’ve simply grown impatient (intolerant really) with people who appear to lack respect for my time (and perhaps their own).<p>That impacts videos, books, articles, blogs, emails, conversations, and so on.<p>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.
ultrablackover 2 years ago
Im reading this… :&#x2F;
niemandhierover 2 years ago
Some topics move to fast. Until someone wrote a book, blogs sometimes are the only source of insight.<p>The day after stable diffusion appeared people were already blogging about it, long form writing can never be that fast…<p>Even worse, blogs often are the only free source of insight, with books and papers locked behind paywalls.
georgex7over 2 years ago
Same
null_objectover 2 years ago
I find that some days, when I&#x27;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&#x27;m definitely finding that the RSS-feed has thinned-out, and on HN there&#x27;s more often repetition of posts I&#x27;ve seen before or lynchmob ranting about Apple which I find unnerving.<p>So I&#x27;m also reading more books - both digitally and on paper. I find the &#x27;non-fiction could be a blog-post&#x27; attitude just baffling for the sort of books I&#x27;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).<p>There&#x27;s so much more a sense of &#x27;mental nourishment&#x27; and intentionality from reading a book, than if I&#x27;m mindlessly clicking through a sequence of links.<p>btw the RSS reader really gives a sense of the &#x27;abandonment&#x27; of blogs: hundreds of blogs on my list haven&#x27;t published anything for years.
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