[Broken_Hippo]

Books don't let you know that genocide is happening at the time, that the bars have been closed yet again, nor that you should probably postpone that trip due to bad weather.

Books might capture the feelings of now: 1984 wasn't making predictions, but illustrated the concerns of the current time. Same for the things in "A Brave new World".

Reading books about the history of cooking isn't going to give you much of a worldview, nor is it going to prepare you for a government restricting your ability to get birth control, abortion, or sterilization surgeries. Books also aren't worth much if you don't reflect on them - but once you do reflect, they aren't realistically all that much better or worse than other artistic mediums and you don't even have to read the books to get advantages (some visual adaptations are good, and there are always audiobooks too).

It isn't to say that you cannot learn from them, but it isn't the same sort of information.