I've read over 500 fiction books and 2000+ non-fiction. I've read many of the big thick classics like Moby Dick, War & Peace, Infinite Jest. I've kept a spreadsheet of all the books I've read somewhat like Art Garfunkel[1] (of Simon & Garfunkel music duo).
I've also read Nick Carr's "The Shallows"[2] and other authors about about the web's effect on attention span, distractions, etc.
With all that said, I'm not convinced that people "should" read long form books. I read all those books because I personally enjoyed it. I just can't say with confidence that others should do the same or they will be "missing out" on some unquantifiable intellectual nirvana.
I also enjoy getting lost in Wikipedia articles and jumping around hyperlinks without fully finishing the wiki article I was reading. (Wiki articles are not ever "finished" anyway so there's no guilt trip in leaving the page to head down another rabbit hole.)
15 years ago, I read a dozen of C++ books cover-to-cover. Can someone today get similar levels of knowledge jumping around quality blog posts and watching youtube videos? I think so. I don't hold my traditional reading method for C++ to be superior; it's simply what I did before the internet was available in 1995. I certainly did not learn Golang by reading a book cover-to-cover.
Books certainly have benefits but I think they are overstated in relation to non-book forms of consuming words.
[1]http://www.artgarfunkel.com/library/list1.html
[2]http://www.amazon.com/Shallows-What-Internet-Doing-Brains/dp...
I've also read Nick Carr's "The Shallows"[2] and other authors about about the web's effect on attention span, distractions, etc.
With all that said, I'm not convinced that people "should" read long form books. I read all those books because I personally enjoyed it. I just can't say with confidence that others should do the same or they will be "missing out" on some unquantifiable intellectual nirvana.
I also enjoy getting lost in Wikipedia articles and jumping around hyperlinks without fully finishing the wiki article I was reading. (Wiki articles are not ever "finished" anyway so there's no guilt trip in leaving the page to head down another rabbit hole.)
15 years ago, I read a dozen of C++ books cover-to-cover. Can someone today get similar levels of knowledge jumping around quality blog posts and watching youtube videos? I think so. I don't hold my traditional reading method for C++ to be superior; it's simply what I did before the internet was available in 1995. I certainly did not learn Golang by reading a book cover-to-cover.
Books certainly have benefits but I think they are overstated in relation to non-book forms of consuming words.
[1]http://www.artgarfunkel.com/library/list1.html
[2]http://www.amazon.com/Shallows-What-Internet-Doing-Brains/dp...