Ask HN: Are books worth it?

i. Try short books at first.

ii. Take frequent breaks (short and sometimes device-free days) from glowing screens to reduce dopamine dependency.

iii. Listen to audio book versions.

iv. Read to understand, not to get to the end by skimming.

v. Try epaper ebook readers that are less stimulating and more like books. This can be an easier way to make books portable and compact.

Here’s a short one, read or listen to Smedley Butler’s book [0, 1].

0. ebook version: https://books.google.com/books?id=trl4DwAAQBAJ&printsec=fron...

1. audio book version: https://archive.org/details/war_is_a_racket_1903_librivox/wa...

Another book I would recommend is Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias (1542) which has been translated into English as A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies. It’s a must read to know the scale of the Spanish rape, pillaging and genocide of native American and imported African slaves.

I also go to libraries to see what they have for physical and electronic checkout. And, frequent the torrent sites to look for video courses and good book / audiobook packs. It also takes curiosity and critical thinking to actively seek out, discover and evaluate works of others.

I would also recommend reading important and banned books like Mein Kampf, Das Kapital, The Bible, The Quran, The Communist Manifesto, Heart of Darkness, Brave New World, Catch-22, Crime and Punishment, Howl, Fahrenheit 451, The Satanic Verses, Ulysses, Uncle Tom’s Cabin and so on. Especially important is to re-read them every 10-20 years, because your outlook on life will change with the seasons of life, you will find these works appear different than you remembered and you will get more out of them because you have more life experiences.

It's also a decent way of exploring something without distraction and to a guided level of depth. Usually by the end of it you have a feel on how deep you want to continue and what aspects you don't understand. Depth vs breadth is usually more easily traded off each other after you've read one or more books on the subject.

Philosophy and mathematics books, for example, tend to exist outside time because they are dealing with fundamental unanswerables and constructions of assumption, not "extent of our knowledge" empirical observations as with science. If their thinking is robust, they never go out of date.

History books likewise indulge in rich storytelling about what happened and why. The story is assembled with fact, but filtered through the historiographical lens of the author. There are many niches of history that can only be studied in books. History is easily revised, but each telling can uncover a more "complete" truth.

And fiction, of course, captures the world as a non-factual experience and therefore says the things that can't be said(no words for them, little concept or attention given to them). As a storytelling medium, writing is not everyone's preference, but it is the singular most productive form we have, and so a lot of fiction books express forgotten corners and small whispers of thought.

Given that you have a serious temperament I would recommend starting with very old books from ancient times, since those are the ones least likely to be "obsolete" - power laws being what they are.

For example, I ran across this gem recently:

"In the same way as people who've been to a concert carry about with them the melody and haunting quality of pieces they've just heard, interfering with their thinking and preventing them from concentrating on anything serious, so the talk of snobs and parasites sticks in our ears long after we've heard it. And it's far from easy to eradicate these haunting notes from the memory; they stay with us, lasting on and on, coming back to us every so often."

I would never connect those two ideas. It's beautiful. The writer is Seneca, a Roman who was born around the time of Christ. He was idealistic yet street-smart, lofty though sometimes petty, and very opinionated. I enjoyed walking a mile in his sandals.