I have tried fixing the brake cable on my bike (and other bike repair tasks), by using the myriad of youtube videos assigned for the task. It's actually quite difficult to hold a brake cable in tension, while forcing an old school front derailleur not meant for the bike into millimeter perfect position and at the same time pause/unpause/rewind a youtube video.

It is honestly easier to put a book down open to the right page, in line of sight. It requires no interaction and book authors are forced to write instructions that can be understood primarily without pictures, so there's no pause/unpause/rewind mentality. Books engage the mental tools to infer what happens next from textual description, an ability videos degrade in the viewer. The implications of that effects decision making subtly.

Books are also a welcome release from the trance-like state induced in consumers by most electronic displays.

I agree most books are garbage (like most of everything), the filtering of low quality books has failed. In my limited understanding most of the great literature was written between the 1700s and 1900s anyway. Recent literature does not grant the broad understanding and height over the subject matter.