4 ms·

I don't read less, but I do read fewer books. It is hard to find a book that is the best source for what I want know about, and that changes too frequently now

I don't read less, but I do read fewer books. It is hard to find a book that is the best source for what I want know about, and that changes too frequently now to outlive the time it takes to read a book. This is what you'd expect in a world where the sheer volume of things that are important to know about has grown beyond a sustainable capacity. What has taken their place, for better or for worse, are various information feeds with blog posts, news articles, and projects relevant to my interests and the moment. I've come to prefer a more raw exposition of other people's thoughts. It seems partly in the interest of credibility; more spontaneous writing offers a richer surface area to judge the quality of thought. And finding it in a place where other people are free to critique and engage with those thoughts means that I'm not locked into just one voice. I also have the opportunity to engage myself which fundamentally changes how actively I think about it. I'm open to the idea that the shift has come at a cost. There is value to reading something that someone has put a lot of work into and in large quantities. But the days when I felt it was enough to just passively let information flow over me seem to be over; it is a luxury I can't afford.

sdf4j 25d ago
If something changes frequently, is it important to know? is the change inevitable or artificial? I’ve learned to appreciate lasting things and ideas.
tripleee 25d ago
AI has come for those blog posts and news articles. There's very little incentive for people to invest in quality content anymore - I'm seeing things like this more with many others just quietly stopping: https://exploringjs.com/ https://exploringjs.com/
Sharlin 25d ago
Fiction doesn’t age in the same way.
- warmwaffles 25d ago
  My biggest problem with fiction books is that it is hard to build suspense when I can clearly see I have another 100 pages to go or if I know that it's a series. After I realized that in my late teens fiction was very difficult to keep at consistently.
  - Sharlin 25d ago
    Hmm. I can't say it's ever been a problem for me. Especially it shouldn't matter much if it's a series or not. Depending on the author, the main characters may not even have a plot armor.
  - stevenwoo 25d ago
    Some books I read to step foot into the life and head of some other person, to know what it is to be another gender or age or in a different culture and time period. We can only experience a small slice of what it is to be human in one lifetime. I guess one might get some of this from documentary work or autobiography. And sometimes it’s just affirming to read an author describe a character thinking the same thoughts one has or the same situation one finds oneself in.
  - kwarcode 25d ago
    2 episodes left before next season!
  - tomjen3 25d ago
    I think modern series tend to be better at that. Lots of author kill people you wouldn't expect them to kill early on so that you know that this is a universe where even if the protagonists must survive for plot reasons, there is still plenty of suspension about who else survives. I will also say that to me there is a massive difference between how much effort it takes to read one type of fiction versus another. I was reading Master and Margarita and I stopped because they simply kept introducing new characters and doing jumps for no reason. I'm sure I will get a bunch of well-read people telling me it's because I'm a poor reader or whatever, but I think that's bad writing.
  - mrweasel 25d ago
    Interesting, I have the "reverse" problem. Mostly I read older books, random books and I've noticed a pattern in less known and maybe less skilled authors. Sometimes, especially in the books from the 1970s, the story just sort of stops. You're running out of pages, no resolution in sight and then the book stops. I mean there is a ending, but it feels short, half measured and not in tune with the rest of the book in some sense. Maybe this was just the writing style at the time. 200 pages of storytelling, world building, details and plot development and then 20 pages to resolve and finish up. Frequently it doesn't even feel rushed, it is just less clear cut ending than newer books. Most recent example I came across is Kramer vs Kramer. It's a short book overall, but the main plot is no more than 10% of the book and the resolution is two or three pages and then it just stops.
omraty999 25d ago
I can understand how this makes sense for javascript frameworks and linux distributions but as an advid reader of non-fiction, I can't think of how this applies to almost anything else as it relates to books. For most subjects, the deeper you go means you need to read more books if you are really learning something new. Even arvix papers eventually lead me to a book I am not familiar with.
tomjen3 25d ago
What is a book? I mean, I spent some time over the last couple of days reading parts of the PostgreSQL manual — if you printed it it would be a gigantic book but it's online and linked. Does that make it not a book? Half a book? Still a book? A blog post can be a few hundred words or a hundred thousand. It can even be a series of blog posts. Is that now a book?
- tripleee 25d ago
  I do think the publishing medium is relevant and not just word count. Books tend to be better researched, edited, triple checked and well planned out to convey the full information they want to. This isn't always the case but there's an inherent push in this direction when you're publishing a book under your name that you want it to be good. On the other end of the spectrum we have social media posts which are anything but.
  - tomjen3 25d ago
    That is correct and important, but does any part of that not apply to the only manual?
    - tripleee 25d ago
      It does apply there. Probably because a manual is such an important part of the product it's attached to there's a high bar most people want to meet. I don't think it applies to a series of blog posts even if they reach book length, though.
- elliotto 25d ago
  David Foster Wallace talks about reading as being an activity that requires you to sit quietly alone in a room and engage with a piece of writing. I think the act of doing this is quite different to reading the postgres manual, despite both of these tasks requiring ingestion of text.
talon8635 25d ago
What is it you want to know?
- pessimizer 25d ago
  Yes. That was the weird claim. I find hundreds of books about each thing I want to know about, and don't have the time in my life to read even a tiny fraction of them. What are these interests that fall entirely outside of the range of things that people have written about? To be clear and honest: I don't think it's really true in the way it's meant. I think people have gotten in this mode where they're only interested in the things that are being pushed in front of them by a feed, whether that's advertising or social media. It isn't that they lack books about things they are interested in, it's that they lack interests unless they think that following that interest could result in social capital. Seeing somebody getting those updoots on the feed creates the interest.
  - MarkusQ 24d ago
    Not the OP, but I'd disagree. It's pretty easy to find the edge of what's been written about, even starting from "the feed" (but this works with pretty much anything). Start with some topic that people are posting about, a book you are reading, or even just something you overhear. Pick a claim that's being made, and ask your self: where does this claim come from? is this true? how do they know this? Don't stop until you find a solid answer or the trail goes cold. Amazingly often, the trail goes cold, and you find no one has written anything definitive on the question you've been asking. This bubble we've created has disturbingly thin walls, and only our herd mentality is holding us back from popping our heads out.

sdf4j 25d ago

If something changes frequently, is it important to know? is the change inevitable or artificial? I’ve learned to appreciate lasting things and ideas.

tripleee 25d ago

AI has come for those blog posts and news articles. There's very little incentive for people to invest in quality content anymore - I'm seeing things like this more with many others just quietly stopping: https://exploringjs.com/ https://exploringjs.com/

Sharlin 25d ago

Fiction doesn’t age in the same way.

warmwaffles 25d ago
My biggest problem with fiction books is that it is hard to build suspense when I can clearly see I have another 100 pages to go or if I know that it's a series. After I realized that in my late teens fiction was very difficult to keep at consistently.
- Sharlin 25d ago
  Hmm. I can't say it's ever been a problem for me. Especially it shouldn't matter much if it's a series or not. Depending on the author, the main characters may not even have a plot armor.
- stevenwoo 25d ago
  Some books I read to step foot into the life and head of some other person, to know what it is to be another gender or age or in a different culture and time period. We can only experience a small slice of what it is to be human in one lifetime. I guess one might get some of this from documentary work or autobiography. And sometimes it’s just affirming to read an author describe a character thinking the same thoughts one has or the same situation one finds oneself in.
- kwarcode 25d ago
  2 episodes left before next season!
- tomjen3 25d ago
  I think modern series tend to be better at that. Lots of author kill people you wouldn't expect them to kill early on so that you know that this is a universe where even if the protagonists must survive for plot reasons, there is still plenty of suspension about who else survives. I will also say that to me there is a massive difference between how much effort it takes to read one type of fiction versus another. I was reading Master and Margarita and I stopped because they simply kept introducing new characters and doing jumps for no reason. I'm sure I will get a bunch of well-read people telling me it's because I'm a poor reader or whatever, but I think that's bad writing.
- mrweasel 25d ago
  Interesting, I have the "reverse" problem. Mostly I read older books, random books and I've noticed a pattern in less known and maybe less skilled authors. Sometimes, especially in the books from the 1970s, the story just sort of stops. You're running out of pages, no resolution in sight and then the book stops. I mean there is a ending, but it feels short, half measured and not in tune with the rest of the book in some sense. Maybe this was just the writing style at the time. 200 pages of storytelling, world building, details and plot development and then 20 pages to resolve and finish up. Frequently it doesn't even feel rushed, it is just less clear cut ending than newer books. Most recent example I came across is Kramer vs Kramer. It's a short book overall, but the main plot is no more than 10% of the book and the resolution is two or three pages and then it just stops.

omraty999 25d ago

I can understand how this makes sense for javascript frameworks and linux distributions but as an advid reader of non-fiction, I can't think of how this applies to almost anything else as it relates to books. For most subjects, the deeper you go means you need to read more books if you are really learning something new. Even arvix papers eventually lead me to a book I am not familiar with.

tomjen3 25d ago

What is a book? I mean, I spent some time over the last couple of days reading parts of the PostgreSQL manual — if you printed it it would be a gigantic book but it's online and linked. Does that make it not a book? Half a book? Still a book? A blog post can be a few hundred words or a hundred thousand. It can even be a series of blog posts. Is that now a book?

tripleee 25d ago
I do think the publishing medium is relevant and not just word count. Books tend to be better researched, edited, triple checked and well planned out to convey the full information they want to. This isn't always the case but there's an inherent push in this direction when you're publishing a book under your name that you want it to be good. On the other end of the spectrum we have social media posts which are anything but.
- tomjen3 25d ago
  That is correct and important, but does any part of that not apply to the only manual?
  - tripleee 25d ago
    It does apply there. Probably because a manual is such an important part of the product it's attached to there's a high bar most people want to meet. I don't think it applies to a series of blog posts even if they reach book length, though.
elliotto 25d ago
David Foster Wallace talks about reading as being an activity that requires you to sit quietly alone in a room and engage with a piece of writing. I think the act of doing this is quite different to reading the postgres manual, despite both of these tasks requiring ingestion of text.

talon8635 25d ago

What is it you want to know?

pessimizer 25d ago
Yes. That was the weird claim. I find hundreds of books about each thing I want to know about, and don't have the time in my life to read even a tiny fraction of them. What are these interests that fall entirely outside of the range of things that people have written about? To be clear and honest: I don't think it's really true in the way it's meant. I think people have gotten in this mode where they're only interested in the things that are being pushed in front of them by a feed, whether that's advertising or social media. It isn't that they lack books about things they are interested in, it's that they lack interests unless they think that following that interest could result in social capital. Seeing somebody getting those updoots on the feed creates the interest.
- MarkusQ 24d ago
  Not the OP, but I'd disagree. It's pretty easy to find the edge of what's been written about, even starting from "the feed" (but this works with pretty much anything). Start with some topic that people are posting about, a book you are reading, or even just something you overhear. Pick a claim that's being made, and ask your self: where does this claim come from? is this true? how do they know this? Don't stop until you find a solid answer or the trail goes cold. Amazingly often, the trail goes cold, and you find no one has written anything definitive on the question you've been asking. This bubble we've created has disturbingly thin walls, and only our herd mentality is holding us back from popping our heads out.