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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

#131

Post by mongol »

xiphias2 wrote: post #126
runjake wrote: post #125

I feel the opposite. I'm reading fewer non-fiction books and more articles and blog posts. Non-fiction books are bloated with fluff to increase the page count to increase the perceived marketability of the book. A lot of the ideas presented in those books could be adequately presented in a 10th of the number of pages. A huge time-saver has been reading the article versions of stuff that has been turned into a book. Y…

I love to see presentations of people on youtube who write non-fiction books. It gives back their personality as well and it's a great middle ground between articles and books.

Searching for "topic + lecture" on Youtube gives me the best hits. I rather hear a knowledgable person just talk about a topic, than some poorly animated storytelling about the same thing, done by a Youtuber with shallow knowledge

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

#132

Post by icepat »

mongol wrote: post #131
xiphias2 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love to see presentations of people on youtube who write non-fiction books. It gives back their personality as well and it's a great middle ground between articles and books.

Searching for "topic + lecture" on Youtube gives me the best hits. I rather hear a knowledgable person just talk about a topic, than some poorly animated storytelling about the same thing, done by a Youtuber with shallow knowledge

It's the YouTube equivalent of hitting up Google Scholar, rather than regular google for information. I also really recommend using Google Scholar for anything technical. You skip blog spam, and end up with better and more informative stuff.

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

#133

Post by peepee1982 »

runjake wrote: post #125

I feel the opposite. I'm reading fewer non-fiction books and more articles and blog posts. Non-fiction books are bloated with fluff to increase the page count to increase the perceived marketability of the book. A lot of the ideas presented in those books could be adequately presented in a 10th of the number of pages. A huge time-saver has been reading the article versions of stuff that has been turned into a book. Y…

I feel like this really depends on the topic.

When I see a 1000 page tome about every single feature of Photoshop, then nope. I'll google it thanks.

History is non-fiction, too. And I'd definitely rather read a book than some blog, because there will be a long thread of things that build up on each other, and I think books are just better suited for that.

So, things that require prolonged attention because of an overarching concept I'd rather read about in a book.

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

#135

Post by LunarAurora »

It is not just about the numbers. There are more books produced than ever.

For me, it is the ease of finding the "best" on a certain topic (by rating...). This is because books are more "centralized" (Amazon, goodreads...) and identifiable (isbn). Web Articles, on the contrary, are more often like an ever receding stream: blogs, monthly magazines, Hacker news feed...

Concerning centralization, I wish sites like longreads [1] and Lindy Hacker News [2] were more popular, wide-ranging and organized (tags, ratings...)

And with respect to identification, I wish there was the equivalent of DOI for web articles : You can easily find that influential scholarly paper from the 60s, but you may never recover that brilliant magazine article from the 2000s (and search is getting worse)

[1] https://longreads.com/

[2] https://hn.lindylearn.io/

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

#136

Post by yannis »

Looking back in my life, very few habits stayed with me over the years. One is to wake up early in the morning; read non-fiction books; Use TeX\LaTeX for writing. I read on average a book every 3-5 days. I read mostly during the early morning or late evening. I occasionally read the odd blog post. They serve different purpose.

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

#137

Post by brontosaurusrex »

Some 'latest' books I actually enjoyed:

Based on a True Story: (Not) A Memoir (Norm Macdonald - 2016) - Humor

Deadlines Don’t Care if Janet Doesn’t Like Her Photo (David Thorne - 2021) - Humor (And other books by David Thorne)

The Man from the Future: The Visionary Life of John von Neumann (Ananyo Bhattacharya - 2022) - Documentary

Memory Machines - The Evolution of Hypertext (Belinda Barnet) - Kinda about how the web was born and about interesting dead branches

Simple Sabotage Field Manual - really funny https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/26184

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

#138

Post by robjan »

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…

It depends on the type of book. Tutorials are more like recipes from a recipe book, they help you achieve a specific outcome but don't necessarily teach the underlying reason or background information.

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

#139

Post by nullsense »

wintermutestwin wrote: post #76
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…

>the publisher had the author pad it out to X00 pages because that's what makes their business model make sense. I got a subscription to Blinkist this year and use these ~20min audio summaries to determine if I think it is worth slogging through the whole book for more detail. It rarely is with modern non-fiction. I read most non-fiction to absorb information and learn new ideas, not for the joy of reading - that's w…

I tried blinkist but it never stuck. I think long-form stuff is better for developing semantic memory. Sure you can get to the point quicker with shorter form content, but tends to be less sticky.

I haven't gone back to blinkist to try this but I think a way to build up semantic memory with blinkist would be listening to every single title in a specific category to go really deep on that one category. At that point you're doing the equivalent of reading a full length non-fiction book anyway, so you haven't saved time, but at least you could triangulate what the core ideas / themes are through the entire category and really get the lay of the land whilst also getting the core messages deeply ingrained.

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

#140

Post by xtracto »

wintermutestwin wrote: post #76
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…

>the publisher had the author pad it out to X00 pages because that's what makes their business model make sense. I got a subscription to Blinkist this year and use these ~20min audio summaries to determine if I think it is worth slogging through the whole book for more detail. It rarely is with modern non-fiction. I read most non-fiction to absorb information and learn new ideas, not for the joy of reading - that's w…

I've found that ChatGPT makes outstanding summaries of famous self-help/non-fiction books. Particularly if you ask it to give you a 100 word summary of each chapter.
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