[romanovtexas]

Probably will get downvoted for this, but I think the halo around reading books is overrated. You can gather ample amount of knowledge just as well via a series of essays online, podcasts, and sometimes even twitter threads.

Most of the books, for example, introduce a radical new idea and then elaborate on that needlessly for 400 pages. I found Sapiens to be one such book.

Even if the idea/premise is insightful, there is often a lot of redundancy in the pages. We should value brevity more.

Of course, this might not apply to all books. Textbooks/Reference books can happily coexist with online tutorials/blogs. Even certain nonfiction books (Thinking Fast and Slow comes to mind) might be best presented in a book format.

[sfotm]

What radical new idea did Sapiens introduce? I ended up not liking it as much as I thought I would because I expected it to be little more concentrated on known factors around human evolution, but it ended up providing a lot of conjecture and best-guesses.

I think some people that see online essays and podcasts as a more efficient way to consume information might ironically be the most "orthodox" sort of readers. Most well-written non-fiction books provide a clear index, a table of contents that makes the process of the book clear, and introductory matter in each chapter that summarizes things for you. If you want a certain piece of information, you can go into the book and get out within 5 minutes. You don't owe every book you pick up a cover-to-cover read.

Highly recommend "How to Read a Book". It calls the author's process of "surgical reading" "syntopical reading", though they might have slightly different meanings in reality.