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Ask HN: Are books worth it?

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Re: Ask HN: Are books worth it?

#11

Post by pubby »

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

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

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

Re: Ask HN: Are books worth it?

#14

Post by ivansavz »

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

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

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

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

Re: Ask HN: Are books worth it?

#15

Post by kwiromeo »

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

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

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

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

Re: Ask HN: Are books worth it?

#16

Post by ritchiea »

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

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

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

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

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

Re: Ask HN: Are books worth it?

#17

Post by anta40 »

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

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

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

Re: Ask HN: Are books worth it?

#19

Post by tiniuclx »

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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