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I don't read web articles anymore, but I read books

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Re: I don't read web articles anymore, but I read books

#21

I've got this new strategy where I just leave a few books around the house and I've building a habit where I just reach for a book instead of my phone. It's personally been quite effective, albeit very simple. Funnily enough, I just finished a book without replacing it and I'm straight back on the phone :) Anyone else try this?

Interesting idea. I usually have books on the shelf that can be easily reached. Also I read every day, and after a few months it is just a habit. I like the feeling when I focus only on the book. Even though I don't have distraction from tech and other stuff, I have my mind to conquer. So it's easier just to fight with you mind than with mind and tech and all other distractions.

I think I’ve unconsciously started to “plant” books around the house and it works as a primer like - oh that book was interesting I should read it again/something similar.

Re: I don't read web articles anymore, but I read books

#22
There are good books and there are bad books... both subjectively and objectively. If a book is still bad (for me) after a few chapters of reading it, it stop reading it, because it's a waste of time. Usually I do atleast some research before starting reading a book, but sometimes even really high goodreads scores and recommendations from friends don't mean i'll personally like the book, and I'll still stop reading it.

Blog posts are another thing where there are many, many, many of them available, but basically zero reviews and recomendations from friends, and maybe, sometimes you get some quality-indicator if it's reposted here or on reddit and you see the upvote ratio... otherwise you never know what you'll going to get.

So, as with books, you read the first paragraph, sometimes you stop reading there, sometimes you scroll down and "read" vertically while scrolling (just looking at text to see if it contains something interesting) and many times it doesn't, so when you scroll to the bottom after 7 seconds of scrolling, you just close it and move on.

I don't see why this is a bad thing.

Some bloggers have gone to SEO optizimation schemes (as with recipes, where instead of a recipe, you get the authors childhood story first, then his family situation, what s/he likes to do on saturdays, etc..), some keep it short, some insert unneeded politcs everywhere, and some also manage to write something interesting and readable to the end. If you started reading books so often and unselectively as you do blogposts, you'd stop reading a lot more books too.

Re: I don't read web articles anymore, but I read books

#24
post #19

I no longer read blog posts because they got worse. There are no longer any active quality bloggers like Steve Yegge or Joel Spolsky. Employee blog posts from Big Tech now push the corporate agenda. Stepping out of line "has consequences", so no one speaks freely any more. Self employed people are afraid of being crushed by Big Tech if they dissent. The result are blogs that are as interesting as reading the Pravda.…

They might even exist but are so much harder to find nowadays that I ended up on the same spot. I haven't read or followed blogs of anyone for the past 10 years at least.

I've definitely migrated back to reading mostly books and long-form articles. I'm even considering, for the first time in my life, on paying for subscriptions of reputable newspapers and cut that off from my internet usage. It's getting too far into overwhelming territory to keep up, maybe it's my age showing making me very tired of the pull-model for consumption of news/content... I want something curated, well written and with interesting points, anything else feels like a waste of time.

Re: I don't read web articles anymore, but I read books

#25
post #19

I no longer read blog posts because they got worse. There are no longer any active quality bloggers like Steve Yegge or Joel Spolsky. Employee blog posts from Big Tech now push the corporate agenda. Stepping out of line "has consequences", so no one speaks freely any more. Self employed people are afraid of being crushed by Big Tech if they dissent. The result are blogs that are as interesting as reading the Pravda.…

Agree! That is why I did an Ask HN sometime back:

"Ask HN: Relatively less known but good blogs?"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34258458 (6 points, 5 comments)

It did not get the number of responses I hoped for. But as a rule I avoid anything coming from mass blogging platforms like medium, substack, devto and similar sites. They may occasionally have good articles but most of the articles from these sites are poor and self-promotional. I would love to find a directory or search engine where I can search for good blogs maintained on independent websites by independent people.

I did another Ask HN now to collect links to some good articles: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34310222

Re: I don't read web articles anymore, but I read books

#26
As others have said, books and articles have a different purpose and audience. I enjoy reading books. But there are many, many good blogs and online periodicals that offer quality that you would not want to find in a book. For instance...

What I don't enjoy - and have quickly learned to avoid - is this certain type of non-fiction book that ought to be an article or blog post. They're easy to find now, they're usually just shy of or right at 300 pages, they have a catchy core idea and they tend to expound on that idea about as much as a blog post would. The rest is just there to service the notion of having a book. Ugh. They were I think a bigger problem 3-4 years ago, but maybe that's because I've gotten better at avoiding them.

Re: I don't read web articles anymore, but I read books

#28
Are the books you read similar in subject to the blog posts you read? I bet they are not.

To me it sounds like you are bored or tired of reading about the same material. It's burnout really. It might be the simple that there isn't much new or interesting material in your area of interest and most blog posts are rehashing the same info you already know.

Taking a break is fine. Maybe its time to explore hobbies you've been interested in perusing but have not yet had the time.

Re: I don't read web articles anymore, but I read books

#29
Some topics move to fast. Until someone wrote a book, blogs sometimes are the only source of insight.

The day after stable diffusion appeared people were already blogging about it, long form writing can never be that fast…

Even worse, blogs often are the only free source of insight, with books and papers locked behind paywalls.

Re: I don't read web articles anymore, but I read books

#30
You can write one good book, and it's fine. Sure, people may ask you to write another, and one book is not a career as a writer, but if the book is good it can stand on its own and be read and enjoyed and learned from for decades.

You need to write one blog post a week, minimum. Three a week, daily even. For years and decades. If you don't regularly publish a new post, your blog withers, and if you stop entirely, your blog dies.

It's hard to have that many new things to say, let alone things of value.

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