Reading Books Still Important?

By jeffcWordPress

Daniel Scocco over at Daily Blog Tips has an interesting question worth pondering, one I’ve been thinking about myself lately and that is, is reading books still necessary? Daniel makes the case that even though there are books concentrated on a specific subject, we now have access to wikis, forums, blogs, and social networks which all provide a huge amount of information without having to turn a page.

I think reading books IS still important. Not only from the literacy standpoint, but also as a form of necessary brain food. Reading a physical object such as a book allows your mind to concentrate on one thing while generally, reading stuff on the web is hard due to the large amount of distractions competing for your eyeballs. The problem I have with reading books is that for starters, I never seem to have any time to dedicate to them. Also, I can’t help but think that I would be reading more up to date information about the particular subject if I were reading about it online. I have an entire bookcase that is filled with interesting books where I have yet to read the first page.

How about you though? Is reading books still necessary?

5 thoughts on “Reading Books Still Important?”

  2. I think I probably read more books now, the Internet kind of whets my appetite for a given subject,which leads to me seeking out books on the subject. Although I could probably find the info online I tend to read when doing other things,and its sometimes good to get away from a pc.

  3. These days I find that I prefer blogs and online information when it comes to UX topics and other kinds of information that needs to be up to date due to the evolutionary nature of the field.

    But when it comes to fiction, poetry and history I prefer books because the physical object allows me to immerse into the environment of the words more easily.

  5. I have to agree with you Jeff. I read constantly but don’t have time to read books. I tend to read in the short, cut off data bits that I get on the net now and almost never read whole books.

    But to get a real depth of understanding on any subject, whole books are necessary, not mere sound-bytes and snapshots.

Comments are closed.