tl;dr: yes First let me address the time investment angle. Not every hour is the same. There are active hours when I'm creating something, having conversations

tl;dr: yes First let me address the time investment angle. Not every hour is the same. There are active hours when I'm creating something, having conversations, actively learning. There are passive hours when I'm consuming content - watching movies or YouTube videos, listening to podcasts, reading books. An hour spent reading a book is not an hour not spent learning a new ML technique. It's an hour not spent watching TV. Once you realize that, you stop feeling guilty. Now back to the main subject. Reading Cliff's notes and comments will give you some idea of what's in a book, but it will be by definition incomplete, and likely biased. A good example is George Orwell's 1984. You need to read the entire book to understand the very last sentence. It is very powerful, but if you skip the book and just read it out of context it won't have the same effect. You may think you understand what the book is about, but that understanding will be rather shallow. The biggest problem with books is that, like everywhere else, 90+% is crap and it's not easy to tell which books you'll like. Recommendations don't work well because they depend on people. You won't necessarily like a book I liked. So effectively you're on your own as far as discovery goes.