With an analog system like Zettelkasten, a single index card is used to scrawl brief notes for a book. Ideas are expanded in separate index cards, the ends of which are to publish new, synthesized works.<p>I'm not certain a single index card could fit the entire length of <i>Capital,</i> or even every command from <i>Absolute OpenBSD.</i> So, there has to be some compromise over what notes to take and how much. That depends on the person's existing background and goals.<p>So we have that a book must be approached with an end, and not only to be finished; and that it may be something to explore again in a different expedition, as life and circumstances warrant.<p>And not even the book, but procedural acts like programs and surgery are not absorbed by scanning the text, but direct application in something: not so much of immediacy like surgery (!), but still practicable. (Deliberate) practice, practice, practice.<p>After that, if we are to share some useful measure, we may publish in a book or video course, but still we have source code or supplemental <i>textual</i> material, or even a novel or screenplay.<p>Doesn't that make a book a <i>work</i> too? It has a thesis, a central argument, page after page of support, scaffolding, references, an index; an appendix, selected answers, a dust jacket.<p>Reading a book is also an experience. The play of pages, the fiddling of corners, the closing after constant tiny interruptions. The opening again.<p>But we are left to our own devices, in the end: review, self-study, quizzing, writing about it, rebuilding the world manifest, finding time to consume again.