Ask HN: Are books worth it?

Growing up with the Internet, I always assumed that everything could be found for free online.

I spend most of my day reading online articles/conversations, watching videos, and listening to podcasts. I have thousands of non-fiction (mostly self-improvement) books in my reading list on GoodReads, but almost never bother to read any. I assume that the best part of the best books will surface in daily conversations, YouTube videos, CliffsNotes, podcasts, Reddit posts/comments, blog articles, etc. I even find myself reading the comments and not reading the article most of the time. I'm fine with bullet point style summaries and don't care much about the fluff that fills most books I've read in the past.

Up until recently, I didn't think I was missing out. I thought that online content was roughly equivalent to 80% of what I'd get from reading actual books for 20% of the effort. I also thought that most books probably don't age very well and that most of the bleeding edge stuff could only be found online. But I'm starting to wonder if that's true. I'm starting to see people online mention that books are infinitely better than online content. I read that millionaires and billionaires read tons of books. I wonder if I'm missing out?

One issue for me is that books are a very big time investment. I read very slowly and I don't remember everything I read either. The last few books I read were mostly filled with fluff, anecdotes, stories, jokes, and trivialities. Even if I wanted to read books, I just don't know which ones I should start with, out of the 1000 "must-read" books in my reading list.

Are books worth it? Is it more true for some fields than others? Is it more true for older books? Isn't most of the information from books freely available online? Am I missing out?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For one about Physics read Our Mathematical Universe.

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

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

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