I will not pretend that reading is easy. I cannot appreciate your difficulty. I am eager to read. I read voraciously. What number you've read in your life, I consume in a year. I should, perhaps, regard you as a marathon runner would regard a couch potato looking to get into the sport of running.
I have this to say: I will _never_ reach the bottom of books' wellspring of value. I have not, yet reached diminishing marginal returns. Every book I read makes the next one more valuable.
You don't, however, have to read as much as I do to gain the benefit. My whole life, every year has brought me a handful of life-altering, mind-blowing new books.
That being said, I have put down many bad ones. Do not be afraid to quit a boring book. There are too many to read. There are so many more out there. Skip to the next one.
> I assume that the best part of the best books will surface in daily conversations.
I don't.
> I even find myself reading the comments and not reading the article most of the time.
Me, too. Books are way different, however. Articles too often, in my experience, couch the _news_ in many paragraphs of exposition, and background context. I skim them looking for the _novel_ information. Not so, with books, which I read in order to _augment_ my contextual, background understanding.
Time spent absorbed in a book allows for deeper re-wiring of one's basic precepts. An article may help you navigate your current mental models with agility, but only a book offers us the substantial choice of retaining or replacing them.
> Life-transforming ideas have always come to me through books.
-- bell hooks
Novels, likewise, afford a world-altering subsumption of reality. Our imaginations are massively powerful--or else, to put it another way, our connection to material reality is tenuous, and can be all-too-easily shifted to project ourselves into fantasies. A visit to alternate realms--even as mundane as contemporary fiction set in a different town--grants us opportunities that short forms don't. I have only rarely been swept away by a reddit comment, and felt myself to have visited another place. (One example might be the roadside in "Today You, Tomorrow me.")
I think you're reading in the wrong genre. There are dozens, and truly their boundaries are fluid, but self-help is perhaps the most vapid.
You are missing out.
I would recommend Bujold's "The Curse of Chalion" as a fantastic, mature novel with fantasy elements, or Stephenson's "Snowcrash" for a colorful adventure not without gravitas. If you're trying to gain non-fiction information, I would recommend Galeano's "Open Veins of Latin America," CrimethInc's "No Wall They Can Build," or Ehrenreich's "Dancing in the Streets."
In the realm of pure intellectual pursuit, Sacks' "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat" will not disappoint.
I have this to say: I will _never_ reach the bottom of books' wellspring of value. I have not, yet reached diminishing marginal returns. Every book I read makes the next one more valuable.
You don't, however, have to read as much as I do to gain the benefit. My whole life, every year has brought me a handful of life-altering, mind-blowing new books.
That being said, I have put down many bad ones. Do not be afraid to quit a boring book. There are too many to read. There are so many more out there. Skip to the next one.
> I assume that the best part of the best books will surface in daily conversations.
I don't.
> I even find myself reading the comments and not reading the article most of the time.
Me, too. Books are way different, however. Articles too often, in my experience, couch the _news_ in many paragraphs of exposition, and background context. I skim them looking for the _novel_ information. Not so, with books, which I read in order to _augment_ my contextual, background understanding.
Time spent absorbed in a book allows for deeper re-wiring of one's basic precepts. An article may help you navigate your current mental models with agility, but only a book offers us the substantial choice of retaining or replacing them.
> Life-transforming ideas have always come to me through books. -- bell hooks
Novels, likewise, afford a world-altering subsumption of reality. Our imaginations are massively powerful--or else, to put it another way, our connection to material reality is tenuous, and can be all-too-easily shifted to project ourselves into fantasies. A visit to alternate realms--even as mundane as contemporary fiction set in a different town--grants us opportunities that short forms don't. I have only rarely been swept away by a reddit comment, and felt myself to have visited another place. (One example might be the roadside in "Today You, Tomorrow me.")
I think you're reading in the wrong genre. There are dozens, and truly their boundaries are fluid, but self-help is perhaps the most vapid.
You are missing out.
I would recommend Bujold's "The Curse of Chalion" as a fantastic, mature novel with fantasy elements, or Stephenson's "Snowcrash" for a colorful adventure not without gravitas. If you're trying to gain non-fiction information, I would recommend Galeano's "Open Veins of Latin America," CrimethInc's "No Wall They Can Build," or Ehrenreich's "Dancing in the Streets."
In the realm of pure intellectual pursuit, Sacks' "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat" will not disappoint.