Books shouldn't be about absorbing "information." Think of them as intellectual obstacle courses. A good book should challenge you, either with radically new ideas or radically new viewpoints. I basically can't do serious thinking (i.e. not administrative or programming thinking but broader thinking about ideas) without reading.
On the other hand, you're not going to get this experience from "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" or whatever, and if you haven't built these muscles you probably shouldn't be starting with Gulliver's Travels or Walter Ong or some other really challenging thing.
First of all, throw out your self help books and just read Thinking Fast and Slow, which 80% of self-help books have ripped off for the past 20 years. It's more boringer (I have a PhD so I can say things like that), but it at least isn't just a bunch of cute anecdotes for an executive to amuse themselves with while there's no wifi on a plane.
Second, start building those muscles with the few people who are both challenging and accessible. George Orwell is great for this, read Homage to Catalonia and get a collection of his essays. Read a few Beckett plays, try Endgame and scratch your head at that shit. Read some Neil Postman and be like, yeah, he was right about technology.
The idea with books isn't to make yourself know more stuff, though that does happen to some extent. The idea is to improve your character and model the world better. You're increasing WIS, not INT. If you're feeling impatience when you pick up a book, if you get that feeling after three pages that you need to put it down and move on to reading 40 news sites, that's your weak-ass WIS. It basically means your brain is flabby. You're like the person at the gym who hasn't been in 4 years. Just push through, give it a week or two and you won't have that feeling.
P.S. People, stop calling things "content." "Content" is what you put the ads around. Goddamn civilizational collapse.
Thinking Fast and Slow came out in 2011. Also there is recent work showing that some of its conclusions may be flawed due to failure to replicate.
Self help books are not all bad. The early ones around cognitive behavioral therapy have been proven to help in scientific studies. I would look to ones that have scientific basis. That being said the placebo effect is very powerful.
He decided to write a self-help book because every other self-help book draws on his research. And, surprise, it became a best-seller. But yes, sorry, if he'd actually written a bestseller earlier probably fewer Malcom Gladwell knock-offs would have used the research for their bestsellers. The 20 years comment is based on the Nobel prize winning research, not the book itself.
Also, I don't really mean to knock self-help. There are a few actual winners there, especially if you're willing to engage with a book as a process. How to Win Friends and Influence People is kind of dumb and obvious, but it's simultaneously true that a huge number of people would benefit from reading it and actually practicing the advice. For the original poster's question, however, these books tend not to be far higher value than blog posts, etc., and in general I wouldn't hold them up as exemplars of how books are valuable.
There is also “The dialectical behavior therapy skills workbook”.
“Changing for Good” I highly recommend in general. It’s a very straightforward description of a model for behavior change and based on research as to how people quit smoking, both on their own and with the help of some sort of program.
Thought about mentioning this in the above rant. Yes, a lot of that book is debunked. No, that doesn't stop all self-help books from being based on it. It's also still worth reading, just don't take each individual claim as gospel and if you're going to excitedly incorporate any given claim into your model of how things work, have some other evidence for it or read some papers. (Though the papers you read will also be debunked before you can say "priming effect.")
What was debunked? As a primarily "system 1" thinker the book reasonated with me in a profound way. It explained why if I know or Intuit a solution, say in an interview it comes out of me boundlessly like lightning, where if I have to work through a solution I struggle. I have to work back wards from my intuitive answer to explain it.
On the other hand, you're not going to get this experience from "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" or whatever, and if you haven't built these muscles you probably shouldn't be starting with Gulliver's Travels or Walter Ong or some other really challenging thing.
First of all, throw out your self help books and just read Thinking Fast and Slow, which 80% of self-help books have ripped off for the past 20 years. It's more boringer (I have a PhD so I can say things like that), but it at least isn't just a bunch of cute anecdotes for an executive to amuse themselves with while there's no wifi on a plane.
Second, start building those muscles with the few people who are both challenging and accessible. George Orwell is great for this, read Homage to Catalonia and get a collection of his essays. Read a few Beckett plays, try Endgame and scratch your head at that shit. Read some Neil Postman and be like, yeah, he was right about technology.
The idea with books isn't to make yourself know more stuff, though that does happen to some extent. The idea is to improve your character and model the world better. You're increasing WIS, not INT. If you're feeling impatience when you pick up a book, if you get that feeling after three pages that you need to put it down and move on to reading 40 news sites, that's your weak-ass WIS. It basically means your brain is flabby. You're like the person at the gym who hasn't been in 4 years. Just push through, give it a week or two and you won't have that feeling.
P.S. People, stop calling things "content." "Content" is what you put the ads around. Goddamn civilizational collapse.