The fact it's not great information vs what you might find in a well-thought out book is a different question.

Is there research that explains what the economics looks like between these two ends of the quality spectrum? How do the highbrow and lowbrow sources work in the marketplace?

The self help genre

I’m not going to pretend that it has somehow rocked my world to spend an hour or so a day reading novels, but... it has forced me to slooooooooow doooooown. A novel comes at you relatively slow compared to reading 15 news articles, Reddit threads, my twitter feed, et al.

It has been a peaceful experience to have a slowform entertainment medium take a chunk of my day.

And I always feel this is worth repeating, but after ~25% of a book if you’re not enjoying it, put it back on the shelf and try something else. We’re (most of us) not in high school anymore, nobody is forcing us to finish a novel. Read something because you want to.

Last note: if you’re having trouble staying focused on a book, put your phone in another room while you read. Game changer wrt the temptation of checking notifications.

Like you mentioned this is the opposite of “online reading”, where the point of reading often is to consume the content and move on.

>Once I’m actually enjoying a book, it really does feel as if the pages are turning themselves; [...] And pleasure is, after all [...] the reason that I read.

Many proponents of reading (like Ben Dolink) don't seem to accept that some people just don't like to read for pleasure the same way they do. People are different.

I love reading and I've read a hundred of the well-known classics including the thick tomes of Moby Dick, War & Peace, and Les Miserables. But 99% of my friends do not read books for fun. I totally understand that because not every brain derives the same pleasure from reading. Therefore, I'm not going to "advise" them that they should be reading more.

On another note, I still heavily read non-fiction tech books but I've stopped reading all fiction more than 5 years ago. I found out quitting fiction isn't that strange as even famous novelists like Philip Roth and Larry McMurtry also quit reading fiction.[1][2]

Sometimes people just quit getting the dopamine hit from fiction -- or never really got it in the first place. They just read whatever was required in high-school and college to pass some tests and that's it.

I know there will still be some confident folks that are sure that anyone can be "taught" to love fiction. My personal experiences make me doubt that. To me, it's like the fitness enthusiasts claiming you'll get "runner's high" and exercise will feel good. But I've been running regularly for decades and I've never had runner's high; running is always a chore. Certain people get a dopamine hit from workouts but I never did. I think people are just different in what activities bring genuine pleasure.

If you read Mr. Dolnick's self-reported joy of consuming fiction and for some reason, it doesn't inspire you to do the same, there's nothing wrong with you.

[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=philip+roth+quit+reading+fic...

[2] https://www.google.com/search?q=Larry+McMurtry+"lost+interes...

However, considering a lot of people like fiction in most their other forms, except books, we have to be careful not to overcompensate in the other direction. From the 99% person you know that don't like reading, I'm convinced a significant number would actually love it, if introduced to it properly.

Like, I agree that a lot people will never get the runner high from cycling. But the crowd that gets it from hitting the gym should be prime material to convert to cycling.

I blame school. I never got any love of sport from PE. I didn't get the love of reading from reading assignments either (), but society is telling me that not loving sport is weird so I tried again, while not loving reading is expected.

() Up until the day a teacher just had a list that wasn't just all classic and you were not expected to use the reading as a basis for a disertation on some historical or social quirk, or extract profound philosophical meaning about the human nature. I picked a book with a story I liked, first time ever since childhood.

Mainly they ruined reading for me with an intense over analysis that I could never get to grips with.

That wasn’t the only thing though. We used to go around the room with one person reading a page at a time, some people could barely read and it was absolute agony because it would take months to get through a book.

On the other hand a documentary I invest no effort into watching it and thus can remain relatively unbiased.

I thought E-books and Audible would change the game and make it easier to consume books, but it still requires a lot of mental and physical bandwidth to consume a book. It's very active and requires a 'reading muscle' to get good at reading, or even listening to one (on Audible).

I've tried various tools like Kindle and speed-reading apps, but they fail horribly in that they still require that reading muscle. There is no way out of this; you have to put in the work of reading a book, and the time investment (alongside cashflow to bring in steady streams of curated books for consuming).

[Standing in his home library / office space]

INTERVIEWER: Did you read these?

DERRIDA: No, I haven't read these. I haven't read all the books that are here.

INTERVIEWER: But you've read most of them?

DERRIDA: No, no. Three or four. But I read those four really, really well.

> Reading without reflecting has been compared to eating without digesting. ‘Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested’, Francis Bacon put it more accurately. One page or even one paragraph properly digested will be more fruitful than a whole volume hurriedly read. Or, as the film mogul, Sam Goldwyn, said to a hopeful author, ‘I have read part of your book all the way though.’ When you come across significant parts – the passages that speak to you – it is worth remem- bering the counsel of the Book of Common Prayer: ‘Read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest.’

I have also been binge writing on a new book project, a three hour writing sprint each morning this week.

There is something satisfying about spending at least a couple of hours in an activity without jumping to something else, like reading email for a few minutes. Concentration is a great thing.

Fortunately the rest of my family all loves to read thanks to my wife’s amazing consistency in getting our girls into it and inspiring them to keep going.

(Edit: I have had a bit of success with audio books as long as the narrator isn’t distracting)

There is, and it's called an editor. This is especially why a lot of bestselling non-fiction reads so smoothly. I always have a bunch of these lying around for when I want something easy to get into.

Mark the content that is novel to you, that is beyond your understanding, that you disagree with, that challenges your thinking, that makes you reflect or reevaluate, sparks your imagination.

And so conversely avoid reading further things well known to you, that only confirm your thinking, that you agree with, that is spoon-fed to you, that doesn't demand of you to apply its capital even after the cover is closed.

It's the deliberate practice of synthesis, analysis, and evaluation of reading that is the heart of all creativity.

One doesn’t discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time. - Gidé

With fiction I want to take my time, so no books can wait.

Netflix to me is this generation's radio, its background noise. It produces some good content but we only truly tune in for that release. On most days it's old episodes of the office, fraiser and the west wing.

Some gold ones: -The Stranger, Camus. Bring the book to life -Nabokov novel

Sometimes I buy something, sometimes I don't. But it's always fun looking through the titles for treasures.

The remaining dross goes onto the shelves for 'five books for a pound'.

It's profitable for them now but in the long term I think itis counterproductive since it removes a lure that used to encourage people to enter the shops.

As with everything, the hardest step is the first one, then each successive one gets easier; and similarly, some things simply aren't enjoyable in bite-sized ADHD-addled portions.

FWIW I have subscribed to O'Reilly Safari for years: it gives you essentially unrestricted access to approximately all computer science and programming books. I've found it to be invaluable. I haven't bought a book for work in years. Something similar for all books would be great.

Also, "approximately all computer science and programming books"? Approximately all? Just how good an approximation is that? I can't help but think a pretty bad one. Maybe "a few books on approximately most of the top fifty or so languages and a bunch of books on fairly common techniques, tools and systems"? Sure, if you just need any book on something, it's going to be something fairly common and they've probably got one.