A friend of mine used to be a voracious reader of nonfiction books. Now, he says he hasn’t read a book in a year. Instead, he uploads books to AI and interacts with the book more dynamically.
When he told me, I think even he was a bit shocked when he realized how long it had been since he’d read a book “the old way.” I know I was. To be fair, my friend is an AI master. He really knows how to create prompts, so perhaps he can truly get everything he needs from his robot librarian. And if he likes this experience better, more power to him!
Personally, I can’t imagine not going through some books page by page. If I want to spend time with the author, I don’t want a third party telling me about their work. I want to hear everything firsthand. Plus, immersing myself in a book, spending time with it week by week, feels more durable than scanning AI output for the right lesson or interesting tidbits.
But perhaps the most salient reason to read your favorite books cover to cover is as benign as it is true: If you haven’t gone through every bit of information yourself, how can you know you haven’t missed anything?
I gave my friend an example. I’m writing a book inspired by Bruce Lee’s philosophy. As a result, I want to read everything related to the man that I can get my hands on, but at the very least the most relevant books from and about him.
One of those books compiles many of his interviews in contemporary magazines during his time. Since journalists were rather creative in their attempts to get eyeballs even back in the 60s and 70s, it’s not the best book. Plenty of the interviews contain false information, so I regularly have to turn to the long footnotes section to read the editor’s rebuttals. Still, I’m happy to learn whatever I can, and so I enjoy going through the whole thing with a fine-tooth comb.
The other day, my friend who now reads “AI-first” and I were talking about impostor syndrome. About how hard it is to demand a high price for your work, even when you feel you’ve more than earned it. Just then, a story came to my mind.
One of Bruce Lee’s early breaks in TV was The Green Hornet, a superhero show in which he played the Hornet’s sidekick Kato. Unfortunately, the show didn’t do well and was canceled after one season. Upon finding out, Lee was worried. He had a wife, a son, and rent to pay. He considered going back to teaching Kung Fu, which he had previously done for $25-$30 an hour. But then Lee spoke to an assistant from the show. The man told him he needed to charge at least twice as much. He even made a mockup of a business card on which he suggested Lee should ask for $1,000 for a “professional consultation” as a Kung Fu master, which he was. “You’re out of your mind,” Lee said. But eventually, those business cards landed at a barbershop of a hairdresser to the stars. And once those stars picked them up, they were happy to pay Lee’s new fees.
“Wow, that’s such a great story,” my friend said. “Thank you for sharing it!” It was highly relevant to our conversation—but the only reason I could share that story was because I read the whole book, footnotes and all.
It was one of those little pieces of information you won’t know you’ll need until you do. So not only might AI have never found it even if I had asked for something along its lines, I likely never could have prompted AI to give me such a story in the first place—and that’s why reading, slow, old-school reading, page by page, word by word, still has value in an AI-powered world.
Reading was never solely about that, but it’s becoming less and less about acquiring specific information. The better technology gets at filtering, processing, and presenting data to us on a silver platter, the more intangible the benefits of reading will become. Spending time with the author, absorbing ideas, and finding the kind of story AI could never dig up, let alone manufacture for you. That’s why I still read books in the 21st century. I hope you’ll choose to do the same.
