Why We Read Books: The Value of Long Form Content in a Sound Bite Era
Books are taken a beating. In 2023, 767 million printed books were sold in the United States, down 2.7% from 2022 and 9% from a record 843 million in 2021. Only 43% of Americans read books regularly, a decline of 7% in the past decade. Caught in the political maelstrom, books have a black eye as communities across America purge disagreeable books from their libraries.
Adults consume ever more information, yet books are often crowded out by dwindling leisure time and attention spans in the sound bite era. Youths spend over 9 hours daily online but devote more time to grooming than reading. About 57% of adults rely on online sources for news, and podcasts have a 50% higher following than printed news. Consumers are watching more video proving a picture is indeed worth a thousand words. Audiobooks have grown 500% in the past decade by educating and entertaining us while doing mundane tasks.
Why read (or listen to) books? Why devote time to long form content in a fast-paced world governed by sound bites?
Great books are timeless. Great books entertain, inspire and educate us. They distill the best thinking of their authors, often accumulated over many years, even decades, of research. Books can go deeper and broader than other media content. While the shelf life of online media, newspapers and magazines is typically measured in days or weeks, the half-lives of good books are often measured in decades. As history does not repeat itself but it rhymes, great books are the past rolled up for our understanding and action.
Reading Books: The Main Course in an Omnivorous Content Diet
Entrepreneurs, innovators and investors are omnivorous consumers of content. Habits differ as people learn differently. Presidents Wilson and Kennedy were voracious readers while Franklin Roosevelt and Reagan drew information conversationally. Today’s youths raised on digital media are wired differently and tend to consume information visually or in shorter form content.
Yet reading remains the best medium for learning new, complex information. Reading is a source of new ideas, a catalyst for innovation. Reading excels at the top of Bloom’s Taxonomy for higher cognitive tasks such as analyzing, evaluating and creative activities. Reading and listening perform equally well for remembering and understanding basic information, yet the average adult reads 70–100% faster than recommended talking speed for high comprehension (250–300 words per minute reading compared with 150 on audio). Visual media best conveys ideas involving illustrations, comparisons, classifications and designs.
Many leading entrepreneurs are voracious readers. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates reads 50 books per year, mostly non-fiction works on technology, business and history. Elon Musk founded Tesla and SpaceX based on first principle thinking inspired by reading. Apple co-founder Steve Jobs attributed many new product ideas to his readings in psychology, science fiction, business and design. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg are also avid readers.
Information is the daily bread for investors. As sharks swim to survive, investors digest content in large bites seeking new market opportunities. David Rubenstein, head of The Carlyle Group, reportedly reads three books weekly. Warren Buffett reads about 500 pages a day on investing, business, economics, and biographies. His partner Charlie Munger said, “In my whole life, I have known no wise people (over a broad subject area) who didn’t read all the time — none, zero. … My children … think I’m a book with a couple of legs sticking out.”
Books provide a foundation for creativity and insight by offering both depth and breadth of perspective. Peter Drucker, the foremost business thinker of the 20th century, claimed his management insight came from reading broadly beyond business. Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman warned that experts can become so entrenched in their views they get worse with experience, even while becoming more confident — a dangerous combination. By contrast, Philip Tetlock found during his three decades of research on the Good Judgment Project that analysts who continuously updated forecasts based on new information consistently outperformed experts on political, economic and business predictions.
Augmented Intelligence: The Quest to Discover Great Books
Journalists say their hardest job is coaxing readers past the headline. The bar is even higher for books. Journalists and speakers have a captive audience and simply must engage their audience in the first sentence or two. Many published authors languish without being found. Amidst a million new English book titles annually, authors strive for visibility in a sea of books. Once found, authors must convince readers to pay for books, often sight unseen. Most readers do not get beyond the introduction as is evident by the sharp drop in frequently highlighted text before reaching the first chapter of a digital book.
Even for avid readers, book options can be overwhelming. Yet fulsome online reviews from Goodreads and Amazon ensure booklists rarely disappoint much as Vivino has largely eliminated bad bottles from wine cellars. Amazon and Audible go further by curating book recommendations based on prior reading habits.
Have automated recommendations crowded out handmade book lists? To test this question, I asked a group of well-read friends for books that most impacted them. Their response was overwhelming. I received over 100 book recommendations ranging from novels to history, biography, philosophy, business, sports and technology. Amazingly, only five book recommendations duplicated those from other friends. Clearly, there are many great books and tastes vary widely even among like-minded peers.
I then asked ChatGPT for recommendations of the top ten books on business, technology, innovation and entrepreneurship. ChatGPT produced four top-ten lists with just two overlaps with books recommended by friends.
The results of this experiment were both encouraging and daunting. My expanded inventory of recommended books is daunting and will take at least a year to read. Yet my friends’ booklists are encouraging as they have uncovered books that neither I nor my personalized search engine would likely have found. Automated booklists complement, not supplant personal recommendations from friends.
In the same spirit, I have assembled four draft “Top Ten” booklists relevant to entrepreneurs, innovators and venture investors from the 1000+ books I have read over the past two decades. The four booklists cover (1) leadership classics; (2) self-management; (3) innovation and (4) investment. In the spirit of Peter Drucker who sought wisdom from fields well beyond business, these booklists draw eclectically from many fields, including history, literature, sports, business, science and psychology.
The first booklist on self-management is self-published. The others are forthcoming. No promises on timeline. Ultimately, I hope these booklists unearth a few books you may not have otherwise considered and that you enjoy them as much as I have.
In the meantime, I welcome your recommendations for books that have influenced you as an entrepreneur, innovator or investor. Feel free to send me a note or share your recommendations with this reading group. Additions to my inventory of good books are always appreciated!
