Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 300 posts

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

#111

Post by null_object »

I find that some days, when I'm tired at the end of the day or drained by work, I crave some simple entertainment and come to HN or my RSS reader looking for articles or blog-posts to read, but I'm definitely finding that the RSS-feed has thinned-out, and on HN there's more often repetition of posts I've seen before or lynchmob ranting about Apple which I find unnerving.

So I'm also reading more books - both digitally and on paper. I find the 'non-fiction could be a blog-post' attitude just baffling for the sort of books I've been reading lately - including a biography of Napolean, another book about his Russian campaign, and a really fascinating biography of Casanova that was linked from HN (the type of post that brings me back here, in spite of the tribal nonsense).

There's so much more a sense of 'mental nourishment' and intentionality from reading a book, than if I'm mindlessly clicking through a sequence of links.

btw the RSS reader really gives a sense of the 'abandonment' of blogs: hundreds of blogs on my list haven't published anything for years.

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

#112

Post by Escapado »

latexr wrote: post #49

> Are we slowly losing a joy of reading blog post because there are so many? There are a lot of books, too. More than one could read in a lifetime, even if new ones stopped being released. Thus it doesn’t follow that quantity is the problem, or that if it is you’ll eventually be bored by books too. Years ago I started consuming dozens of books a year. I eventually realised most non-fiction are stretched-out pamphlets…

Sometimes those anecdotes make those points engaging and I sometimes find myself re-telling them when having conversations about these topics with others. If information density is all you are after then I would agree, but argue that reading can be much more than that. And when it comes to non-fiction books on stem topics I found the vast majority I have read are usually really dense.

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

#113

Post by QXAS »

I'd rather be lost in a good book instead of lost in Netflix trying to make a choice out of the endless mediocre options.

I'm sick of social media, Youtubers, influencers, and everyone else proclaiming to be experts with their clickbait titles. I just read books now. It's mentality more simulating and healthier.

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

#115

Post by fedeb95 »

input_sh wrote: post #81
fedeb95 wrote: post #33

I have noticed the same, however my conclusion is different. Typically when you read a book, your average book has more signal than your average web article or blog post. That's because more filtering has happened, like time, editors, etc. sometimes I find good web content (mostly from the top HN posts) and I don't just scroll, but I read. When I find myself scrolling the first few lines, I immediately close the link…

My experience is completely opposite. There's a lot of incentive to bump up the number of pages, so most of the time when I pick up a non-fiction book I end up regretting it and shouting into the void this could've been a blog post . Even in decently edited books I always feel like they could've been cut by at least 50 pages without losing any of the substance, but I guess nobody wants to publish a book under 200 pag…

Sorry, I haven't mentioned that I mostly read old books (at least 100 years old usually) and very rarely new things. I think the only living author I've read is Taleb. History is a powerful filter.

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

#116

Post by dredmorbius »

digitalsushi wrote: post #57

Didn't this sentiment come with hypertext? If books had clickable links we'd have a difficult time finishing them. It's just a different way to read. Both have very obvious, very ancient, strengths and weaknesses. When you get sick of take out, you can go garden. When you get sick of gardening, get take out.

Academic and some nonacademic books have citations and/or footnotes. Those can be followed, though with somewhat more effort than simply clicking a link. As a positive, however, proper citations rarely suffer linkrot, though some references are obscure, and if you're looking at ancient works, there may well be entirely lost works.

What I've found over the past decade or so as more books are available online (with varying levels of copyright compliance), it's possible to hit a reference and trace it often within a minute or so of searching. That's both delightful and something of a tarpit, reading lists can grow with amazing rapidity.

One of the first times I realised this was when reading through James Burke's Connections (companion book to the 1970s television series), and seeing a reference to Agricola's De re Metallica, a Renaissance-era text on mining and metallurgy still used as a reference through the 19th century.

Within a few minutes I located it (English translation, by an American couple, Lou Henry and Herbert Hoover) on the Internet Archive:

https://archive.org/details/georgiusagricola00agri/page/n3/m...>

There's also a Project Gutenberg version: https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/38015>

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

#117

Post by vorpalhex »

chairmanwow1 wrote: post #109

I have been in a recent period of intense non-fiction book reading recently (6 / month for past 3 months) and I realized a couple of things: 1. High-quality writing relaxes me to the point that I can enjoy learning at a much deeper level 2. It’s extremely arduous to keep my BS filter constantly deployed, which it is 95% of the time I'm reading unfiltered content (blogs, Twitter, news etc) A well-written book is a lar…

I've been on a kick of reading parenting books. I do a thing when I read where I fact check books when I read them (only things which are claims, usually only if cited or very specific).

Out of 7 or 8 books, only a minority have passed without deep deep factual errors. One specific one comes to mind - a book on "Danish Parenting" that cited a monkey study about kids and peer groups. I looked up the original study and the study author had specifically said not to cite the study on young primate behaviors in his disclaimers - he had used zoo raised primates.

Usually books are either generally pretty factual, or just repeated outright lies. "Hunt. Gather. Parent." was one I caught in multiple just plain falsehoods (and they didn't even need the cites! Just state it as an opinion!)

Obviously that is just parenting books which is a tiny niche, but I encourage you to do the same before taking a book as the gospel truth.

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

#118

Post by trgn »

FpUser wrote: post #27

I read an awful lot of books. Blogs - rarely, mostly glance over.

Same here. Thanks OP for bringing this up, I wondered about this too. I lost attention span for online content, and reading a lot more books (fiction and non-fiction) than I used to instead. Change was fairly abrupt.

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

#119

Post by newaccount2021 »

wellanyway wrote: post #73
a13o wrote: post #34

I stopped reading non-fiction books. Most of them have about a blog post worth of ideas, but the publisher had the author pad it out to X00 pages because that's what makes their business model make sense. I haven't fully sworn off blogs, but I will skim anything brought to my attention on Medium, a corporate site, or from search results. My default assumption for these is that I'm reading content marketing and not an…

> most information dense things these days. Followed by podcasts Funny you should say that. I can't bring myself to listen to any because of all of the filler and gimmicks.

[dead]

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

#120

Post by vippy »

a13o wrote: post #34

I stopped reading non-fiction books. Most of them have about a blog post worth of ideas, but the publisher had the author pad it out to X00 pages because that's what makes their business model make sense. I haven't fully sworn off blogs, but I will skim anything brought to my attention on Medium, a corporate site, or from search results. My default assumption for these is that I'm reading content marketing and not an…

I also found this to be true. "Thought leaders", individual personalities as experts, etc. However: there are mountains of really good non-fiction books if you're willing to get a little boring. I've started digging heavily into mathematics and philosophy, and found Walter Rudin, Richard McElreath, and Nancy Cartwright. I read Bree Fram's With Honor and Integrity: Transgender Troops in their Own Words. I basically survive by a few curated Twitter accounts, the Washington Post and AP, and good books these days. The web today feels like too much content, too much manipulation, too little value, too little time.
Post reply on HN