Depth Over Downloads: Why Spending Time with Books Still Matters

Everyone wants faster information. But no one asks if faster information leads to better understanding — or a better life.

In the age of AI and tweet-sized wisdom, we’ve confused information with transformation. But there’s a massive difference between knowing what a book says and being changed by it.

The Delusion of Instant Learning

In a recent interview, political journalist Ezra Klein admitted he once believed learning was like a scene out of The Matrix—jam a needle into your brain and voilà, you know kung-fu.

“I thought that what you were doing was downloading information into your brain.”

With the rise of AI, that fantasy feels eerily possible. Tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude have made access to knowledge instant — so instant, in fact, that facts, figures, and data are on the verge of becoming meaningless. When everyone can access the same information in seconds, it’s no longer a competitive edge. But in the rush for speed, something essential gets lost. We’ve flattened our relationship with learning. We’ve removed the friction — and with it, the transformation.

A common (and often valid) gripe is that “most books should be a blog post, and most blog posts should be a tweet.” Trust me, I’ve read plenty of bestsellers packed with fluff — two great chapters stretched into 200 pages. And with AI now able to summarize the key points in seconds, it’s fair to ask: why bother reading the whole thing?

Sure, AI can condense a 400-page book to 12 bullet points. But that doesn’t mean you’ve learned it. That’s like reading a Yelp review of Italy and thinking you’ve been to Florence.

The Value of Friction

Real learning doesn’t happen through extraction. It happens through engagement. It’s not what you read — it’s the time you spend with what you read that changes you. Rereading. Pondering. Journaling. Wrestling with an idea long enough for it to reshape how you see the world.

We often have this misguided metaphor that we’re downloading the information. Sure, part of reading is obviously consuming information, but the other half—the part no AI can replicate—is what happens when you let an idea echo in your brain for hours, days, or years. That slow grind deep in the trenches of a subject is where you make powerful connections that can’t be outsourced or sped up.

I’ve read close to 700 books in the past 20 years. I don’t say that as some sort of vanity metric. Any one book I’ve read isn’t that important. Rather, it’s the cumulative effect — the length of the relationships I’ve had with various subjects that matters most. I can’t quote most of the books I’ve read. But I am them.

Stories Are How We Change

Reading books is not just about deducing the core concepts or summary. Great writers know that raw facts alone don’t stick — stories do.

Imagine skipping the Bible’s parables and asking AI for the summary. Love your neighbor. Seek justice. Care for the poor. Sure, you now “know” the message. But you haven’t felt it. Without the flawed heroes, burning bushes, betrayals, and long silences — those values are just hollow maxims.

It’s not the principles that change you. It’s the experience of wrestling with them through story, tension, and time — when you connect with it, reflect on it, and absorb it into your way of thinking. When you form a relationship through stories, the knowledge is embodied in you; it becomes part of how you speak, write, and see the world. Wisdom doesn’t stick because it’s summarized — it sticks because it’s felt.

The power of long-form content — books, podcasts, essays — is in the time you spend with it. Reading a book is not just about acquiring information — it’s about forming a relationship with an idea. You don’t absorb wisdom like you download an app. You live with it. You marinate in it. And yes, sometimes you have to reread the same sentence three times because your brain took a detour. That’s part of the point. When you spend hours with a subject — be it philosophy, psychology, history, or hobbits — you’re not just collecting facts. You’re reshaping your mind the way a river carves through rock — slowly, but permanently.

Fiction Feed Empathy

I’m not just talking about nonfiction books. As we get older, we naturally drift away from the childlike wonder of fantasy and make-believe that made books so alluring in the first place. Instead, we think we need to become learned scholars — reading books on World War II, politics, and sociology to sound smarter or live up to the reputation of being a “real adult.” Trust me, I fell for that trap in the worst way.

But it’s taken me some time to realize that fiction is just as important. Reading fiction teaches us one of the most important values that’s increasingly lacking in our digital/AI-dominated world: empathy. You find so much empathy in novels. They force you to submit to the make-believe world the writer puts you in; to live in someone else’s head, to feel seen, and to know that you’re not the only one who’s felt that way before. One of my favorite aspects of novels (and good art in general) is their power to elicit in you a response to an emotion that you didn’t even know you had.

I once read a novel where the protagonist — a faithful husband — found himself tempted by a coworker. She slipped him her hotel key. As he sat at the bar, torn between desire and loyalty, I felt his confusion. His shame. His yearning. I’ve never been in that situation — and hope I never am — but for a brief moment, I was him. That’s what great art does. It doesn’t just show you the choice. It makes you feel the dilemma.

Fiction stretches your emotional bandwidth. It lets you experience lives you’ll never lead — lives shaped by war, loss, poverty, infidelity, migration, or joy. Nonfiction sharpens how you think. But fiction stretches how you feel. It stretches your capacity for empathy by letting you live entire lives you’ll never lead — lives filled with choices, contradictions, and consequences. And somewhere in that emotional daydream, you become a little more human.

Books are one of the few places where you can safely confront uncomfortable ideas without immediately needing to defend yourself. They offer a kind of mental rehearsal, a space to try on someone else’s worldview without the real-world cost.

The Growing Divide

Some of the world’s most successful people are obsessive readers. Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffett all credit their success to thousands of hours spent reading dense nonfiction — economics, science, history, etc.

Most of my friends fall into two groups. The first doesn’t read much, or sticks to whatever’s popular in the airport Hudson News. The second group reads everything — across time periods, disciplines, and genres. They’re paradoxes: the MMA fighter who reads poetry. The cop who reads Jane Austen. They’re curious. Optimistic. Constantly evolving.

Now, AI is widening that gap even further. The best learners aren’t choosing between books or AI. They’re combining both — reading deeply, then using AI to summarize, reflect, synthesize, and execute. The rest complain about how “most books are fluff,” or how “AI is flawed,” or how “experts can’t be trusted.” One group builds. The other subsists.

Slow Readers Will Win

So no, not every book should be a blog post. Not every article should be a tweet. And not every idea should be summarized and spoon-fed. Because the value of a book isn’t just in what it says — it’s in who you become while reading it.

We don’t need more summaries. We need more slow readers. More people willing to wrestle with complexity, sit with discomfort, and grow. In a world chasing downloads, the real edge is still depth.

—KB