> Are we slowly losing a joy of reading blog post because there are so many?
There are a lot of books, too. More than one could read in a lifetime, even if new ones stopped being released. Thus it doesn’t follow that quantity is the problem, or that if it is you’ll eventually be bored by books too.
Years ago I started consuming dozens of books a year. I eventually realised most non-fiction are stretched-out pamphlets: one core idea which could fit into a blog post padded with anecdotes until it reaches book length. The overwhelming majority of productivity books—including the ones typically favoured by HN—fall into this category. A better use of time is to look for an online talk the author has given; you’ll get all the book’s important information faster without the fluff.
Books get boring too. Until you start to develop an eye for quickly identifying the duds so you can abandon them early (or not get them at all). When in doubt, the 2-star GoodReads reviews will typically spell out if a book suffers from too much fluff.
All this to say I don’t think it’s a “books VS blog posts” matter, there’s a ton of garbage in both mediums. Perhaps you’ve just read fewer books than blog posts. If you’re happier with books now, enjoy it.
(I’ve excluded fiction from the conversation because I imagine you’re not talking about blog posts with short stories.)
I've started reading a lot more, again. I just read 10-15 years "in arrears". There's so much highly-produced crap, out there, it boggles the mind. The immediate last two books I read that violated this rule (both fantasy; both "top shelf") should've been novellas, but were made novel-length. The authors' writing skills were insufficient to carry the length; as a result I just gave up on what were, otherwise, good stories (and good authors). Personally, I think this is an editor/publisher thing.
(The books were: "The House in the Cerulean Sea" and "The Bear and the Nightingale".)
Sometimes those anecdotes make those points engaging and I sometimes find myself re-telling them when having conversations about these topics with others. If information density is all you are after then I would agree, but argue that reading can be much more than that.
And when it comes to non-fiction books on stem topics I found the vast majority I have read are usually really dense.
There are a lot of books, too. More than one could read in a lifetime, even if new ones stopped being released. Thus it doesn’t follow that quantity is the problem, or that if it is you’ll eventually be bored by books too.
Years ago I started consuming dozens of books a year. I eventually realised most non-fiction are stretched-out pamphlets: one core idea which could fit into a blog post padded with anecdotes until it reaches book length. The overwhelming majority of productivity books—including the ones typically favoured by HN—fall into this category. A better use of time is to look for an online talk the author has given; you’ll get all the book’s important information faster without the fluff.
Books get boring too. Until you start to develop an eye for quickly identifying the duds so you can abandon them early (or not get them at all). When in doubt, the 2-star GoodReads reviews will typically spell out if a book suffers from too much fluff.
All this to say I don’t think it’s a “books VS blog posts” matter, there’s a ton of garbage in both mediums. Perhaps you’ve just read fewer books than blog posts. If you’re happier with books now, enjoy it.
(I’ve excluded fiction from the conversation because I imagine you’re not talking about blog posts with short stories.)