Less online reading, more book reading (2026)
Back to Dave’s book pages.
The problem is that I have a web surfing habit. The wiktionary.org entry for habit has three noun definitions:
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An action performed on a regular basis.
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An action performed repeatedly and automatically, usually without awareness.
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An addiction.
I think my compulsive reading of fediverse posts and blogs on the web fits a little of all three of those definitions. It’s something I do mindlessly without even thinking about it. If I’m waiting for the computer to do something, I automatically open a tab with a bookmark with something to read. Or I’ll check RSS or the fediverse for something new. If I’m honest, I’m mostly looking for something new. If I have any idle time, I get that itch to see if there’s something new.
Update 2026-08-21: I’m now going even more Offline and I think it’s been incredibly good for me! Being online in 2026 makes me feel bad. Reading a book makes me feel good. I’ve also been getting more things done off the screen!
I don’t actually watch a lot of video or scroll feeds most of the time. Most of the time, I am actually reading stuff, including long-form content. But it’s not always the most nutritious stuff. Often it’s just "other people’s opinions" about various subjects I’m interested in. I don’t learn much and if the opinion doesn’t match mine, it can leave me unsettled in a way that is hard to justify or explain.
I end up reading what must be tens of thousands of words every day that could have been words in a book or long-form magazine article. Instead, what I’ve read is compulsively chosen on the spur of the moment.
Why paper (or a dedicated e-reader) matters
Something written on paper has one very special property that is not found on the Web: It ends! The Web has no end. Writing on the web also hyperlinks to other interesting things, so I end up with 40 tabs open before I even realize what I’ve done. I’m not actually going to learn 40 things. But my brain tricks me into thinking I will.
In the last two years, I’ve discovered that "doom scrolling" isn’t the only reason I’m unhappy when I’m online too long. It’s even the blogs and the long-form writing. I wrote about that in the "social media" section of this card about tech addiction and burnout.
Here’s something else I don’t see mentioned a lot as a benefit of actually reading something: It pauses the instant your mind wanders. So when the book sparks an idea, you just start having the idea. There’s no need to hit a stop button or rewind.
A wandering mind is a wonderful thing, especially when it has been inspired by the knowledge contained in a book.
A paper book will never, ever show you a flashing banner or unskippable advertisement. A book is a calm object that is always ready to serve up any of its pages in any order for as long or little as you want.
As the Oompa Loompa song from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971) clearly states:
What do you get from a glut of TV? A pain in the neck and an IQ of three Why don't you try simply reading a book? Or can you just not bear to look? *You'll get no commercials.*
(Emphasis mine.)
Also no hyperlinks! Viktor Löfgren wrote a really compelling post explaining why reading with hyperlinks can be so distracting (and tiring).
"When reading the text, we must make a decision when arriving at each link what to make of it. Should we click it? No, continue. Should we click it? No, continue. We don’t make these decisions consciously for the most part, but we still need to make them. We are further pummeled by links to the sides that clamor for our attention."
It’s for this reason that I swear by using the Unhook browser extension to remove all recommendations from YouTube. I find myself completely unable to ignore the compelling thumbnail suggestions on the side of the page. I would often open up about 30 browser tabs with videos I thought looked interesting. I would also often skip from video to video, like channel surfing in the old television days. (I was never a channel surfer myself, but I saw people do it.)
The point is, it’s nearly impossible to concentrate on something (even a video!) when there’s a dozen REALLY EXCITING things vying for your attention right there on the same page.
As an office worker, I sit waaaaay too long at my computer already. I do a lot of my paper book and magazine reading lying on the couch or standing up. Every little bit helps.
Why books are better
A lot of this applies to print magazines as well.
I love the following quote from Mark Slutsky on "good-handedness" (via Austin Kleon).
"I’ve come to trust a certain feeling that comes over me when I first make contact with a piece of art. The opening lines of a book; the first 30 seconds or so of a movie; bars of a song, etc. It is a feeling of being in good hands, an intuitive sense that the author knows what they are doing and that the experience will be worth my time."
Whether it’s fiction or non-fiction, that feeling of being in the hands of a competent, knowledgable guide is one of the things I love about a good book. When I am confident that I’m reading the work of someone who knows what they’re talking about, I can use the entirety of my brain getting lost in the words and thinking about the idea.
Energy spent on wondering if I’m in good hands or if anyone even wrote what I’m reading at all (is there anything more exhausting than playing slop detective all day long?) is wasted energy I could have spent diving into the subject.
Books go deeper and go harder. Of course there are amazing deep-dives on the Web. And of course there are shallow books that aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on. But generally speaking, the book is going to win nine times out of ten.
I think this is the reason that books tend to give me insights and inspire me to think about things from a different viewpoint in a way that "microblogs" almost never do. In turn, the insights and inspiration from a book will often lead me creating my own creative work. Again, I’m seldom inspired to actually do something from reading pithy comments online.
The original source is probably in a book. David Cain has some choice thoughts about experiencing original sources for yourself.
"If you focus on the original, almost always you will find something profound, and it’s never quite what you’d guess. There’s a reason every great original has moved so many human hearts: it’s so good that pundits can’t convey its magic to you."
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