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Comment by TTPrograms | Hacker News Reader

This may be an unusual opinion, but I read a lot, and I've found non-fiction books to just not be efficient means of educating myself anymore. Most topics can be illustrated and described in far fewer words than a book takes. I get about a third of the way through a lot of books and say "ok I get it", as the author basically just continues to say the same thing in different ways. I'm sure this is incentivized by current publishing structure.

Not only that, but figures and plots provide far more information density than words, and books don't frequently include them in large quantity. I've found scientific literature and a number of very high quality bloggers to be a much more efficient source of reading material.

That's not to say this is always true - biographies in particular seem to have the most consistently large content / page count.

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Reminds me of Naval Ravikant who suggested reading books more like blogs - you shouldn't feel some social pressure to "finish a book" but rather skip the parts you don't enjoy and drop it whenever you feel like you've gotten the main point. I've been doing this more recently and found that I don't get stuck on books anymore, no longer bottlenecked by certain parts which are boring and redundant.

This works for me too. I will regularly check a book out of the library, read three chapters, and then return it to get another. I realized that I wasn't finishing books because doing so was not a good use of my time.

Somewhat related is that I'll read chapters out of order. Many books follow an approach of "laying the foundation" before making the point. 40 pages of laying the foundation is a logical step but unfortunately is not done well in most cases.

TL;DR Treat non-fiction books more like textbooks (possibly without as extensive indexing).

I largely agree with you on efficiency. For topics you're familiar with, papers and high-quality blogs are more efficient. Still, I like nonfiction books for a few reasons: (1) Audiobooks. Sure, I definitely don't retain as much as reading a paper book. And many books are poorly suited for audio (books with lots of foreign proper nouns, books with tables and figures, etc). But I take time that would otherwise not be productive and turn it into learning time. Walking, working out at the gym, and cleaning house become a classroom. (2) Books provide context. Wikipedia works too, but a book is usually more detailed. I have a degree in economics, so it's usually more efficient for me to read papers than to read popular economic books. But when I want to learn about theoretical physics, I'll read The Universe in a Nutshell, not the most recent paper. (3) Books force you to meditate on a topic. Certainly, not everyone requires such concentration. For me, I remember more if I spend a few hours reading a book rather than < an hour reading a paper.

When you say non-fiction, do you mean pop science books? I'd be very surprised if you grokked a math, hard science or programming book after just reading the first third introducing the subject.

Pop science, business books, political books, that sort of thing - proper graduate-level math and science textbooks definitely have plenty of content. Sometimes those can even be on the opposite side of the spectrum, where the focus is too much on the equations and not enough on the conceptual.

I get that. Books that are written or edited with a view to maximizing sales rather than reader satisfaction are going to go for the lowest common denominator, and if you're a quick study then over time you'll find more and more books beneath your comprehensive capability and then your boredom threshold. Unfortunately the best books on a given may be too difficult for the general reader, and a bimodal distribution emerges in which the gap between the popular and the expert levels of understanding becomes increasingly difficult to traverse.

Depending on your subject of study, you might find older books written for a smaller but more discriminating historical audience worth your while. Of course you'll miss on innovation and critical thought since the date of original publication, but Sturgeon's law suggests that much of that may be dispensable depending on the historical scope of the subject. Dover Books specializes in affordable reproductions of obscure or neglected works on a wide variety of topics.

Do you have a list of favorite blogs? Need just to mention the top ones (great would be google+ blogs, so I can register them there, or how do you manage them, if more than a couple?)

Are you sure you addressed your question to the right person? I didn't mention blogs and do not read any consistently, they bore me more often than not. I prefer my social media feed.

> I get about a third of the way through a lot of books and say "ok I get it", as the author basically just continues to say the same thing in different ways.

With you here, I thought the same with "Quiet" and "Scarcity". It's not even about arrogance, more like time economy - I can move on and do other things, while those newly learnt principles stew away in the mind shed.

  >I've found scientific literature and a number of very high quality bloggers to be a much more efficient source of reading material.

I have same sentiment as well. For me most books are of very low information density, and simply are not interesting. Even books that meant to appeal to emotional side -- seem to be doing that very slowly ....

That's because you should get to fiction more. Education is not about acquiring more knowledge. It's also about acquiring experience, emotions, etc. Thus fiction have a lot to bring to you, and probably more than nonfiction ones.

Try the Count of Monte Cristo for example :)

It kind of depends on what books you read and what the academic culture is. E.g. in mathematics, it seems books and lecture notes are the main way knowledge is transmitted, and articles are more of an afterthought.

I have the exact same feeling about Films. I wonder if there is a specific name for this? I always say I seen every film combination possible before I was 14. People will say of course I haven't, but they are talking about the fluff. I know what the film is going to be instantly, and if it doesn't turn out like I planned, it isn't enough of a difference to care.

Your aesthetic affiliation is Formalism. Try some Peter Greenaway to revive your jaded palate. Not fluffy; I've worked in film for >a decade and other branches of the arts for about as long, and wallow deeply in aesthetic theory. Greenaway trained as a painter before getting into film and it shows.

Much that is written on film theory is a doomed attempt to reconcile aesthetic practice to Marx, Freud or other critical thinkers, but you may enjoy the Lacanian musings of Slavoj Zizek or Joan Copjec, especially this anthology: https://www.amazon.com/Shades-Noir-Haymarket-Joan-Copjec/dp/...

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