Why books don't work (2019)

However, I'm not sure I fully agree with with this essay, specifically the definition of what it means for a book to "work".

Is it necessary to be able to recall a book or a talk? I mean, it is good if you can, but is it a failure if you don't? Perhaps it isn't the fault of the medium. It may be the way our brains are structured. Maybe reading a book changes something subtly, not enough for recall, but a change nevertheless. Like training a neural net with one training example. I know that when I dig out a book that I have put aside several years ago, it seems much more approachable.

I think that reading a book increases your _capacity to receive_, and the more you read similar stuff (or the same thing over again), the more you are able to absorb. There comes a tipping point where you are able to see connections to other things you have read.

I approach books and articles like I approach music: I don't expect to recall much. If I want to recall it, I expect to revisit the material. Either way, the hours spent on it have not been fruitless.

I feel like he's looking at this through the prism of his speciality (producing interactive learning materials), and by doing that has missed the point a little bit. He's looking a genre of books at if they're a different thing to what they actually are, it's the wrong level.

I get reading a book once doesn't translate directly to "facts retained in memory" whereas his idealised new form of media does. But as you say, his examples are edutainment. I feel like what he's suggesting only usefully applies to either textbooks (which he's separated off into a different category anyway) or to a situation where the aim is to memorise as much as possible in a single reading. Which is fine! But it doesn't really need to happen for pop science -- just getting the general gist of an idea across in an entertaining package is okay.

I often find this sort of approach to be rather counter-productive. If I am learning something, I'd be happy with my local part of the graph, the things that I specifically care about. It is much easier to make multi-hop connections in knowledge when one is really familiar with their local knowledge cluster. I, for one, find an absolute knowledge graph of everything quite intimidating and feel lost in the sea.

LearnAwesome looks interesting. Good luck!

There is an excellent book (as it happens) called How To Read A Book by Mortimer J. Adler. The focus is on how to read for improved understanding rather than pleasure. There are many great ideas and tactics in the book but these are the ones that jump out for me:

- Not all books or even pages deserve to be read at the same speed or with the same care. Being able to identify which is which is a mark of a good reader

- If you don't understand a word or passage, continue through it. Perhaps you will understand it with greater context. Even if you don't, if the book as a whole turns out to be great then you should reread it, and if it doesn't you can cast it aside with little harm.

- An "inspectional reading" (a.k.a. skimming) is a useful tool for understanding what a book is about without dedicating a lot of time.

- Write in the margins. This helps to make a book your own.

That last point has really been a game changer for me. I've generally tried to keep my books "clean" but writing in the margins, underling, etc. incredibly improves 2nd, 3rd, and so-on readings.

In general you can tell if you've properly read a book by seeing if you can answer the the following questions:

-What is the book about?

-What is being said in detail?

-Is it true?

-What of it?

I think it's a neat idea to ask how we could improve books, but the assertion that books don't work remains unproven to me after reading this book (and after my own experience).

Lastly, I think of books as a necessary but inadequate component of much learning. I think Montaigne put it well (btw i read this in a book :)):

> To know by rote, is no knowledge, and signifies no more but only to retain what one has intrusted to our memory. That which a man rightly knows and understands, he is the free disposer of at his own full liberty, without any regard to the author from whence he had it, or fumbling over the leaves of his book. A mere bookish learning is a poor, paltry learning; it may serve for ornament, but there is yet no foundation for any superstructure to be built upon it...