Books vs. Blogs

It’s funny, while my TV, radio (music) and newspaper consumption have gone down, I still love books. I just finished Rob Walker’s Buying In this morning – it’s a good read, worth picking up.

Books (and magazines to some degree) are both mobile and time-agnostic, and more crucially, they haven’t been replaced by something else that works as well (at least for me). I think the book has a longer shelf life (pun intended!) than network TV or newspapers.

@Rick: I still love books too. This may just be a phase for me – I have over 6 books waiting to be read this summer. Books do have a longer life than some of the other media but as reader devices for e-books get better I think we will start to see some shift.

@Ben: Good point Ben. Almost every book dealing with time-sensitive or evolving content does seem to incorporate a blog. Some authors are doing a much better job of blogging alongside their product than others. I recently began reading a book that has this accompanying blog…for a book on new media…the blog needs work!
http://www.themediarules.com/

@Darren
I agree with you about the different roles of books and blogs. The blurring comes a lot more with non-fiction. Fiction is clearly book-territory for me. Non-fiction is a bit trikier.

Books are a great way to look at one topic and work through it in a logical way. You can have a lot more continuity with a physical book. Blogs are about tapping into topics for short “sound bites”. Are they like the television of literature?

@Darren: Thanks for the “tweet” and your comments. I haven’t read a novel in ages…maybe I should do that on my vacation this summer. I agree that a book will certainly present a more systematic flow to the subject coverage.

@drcris good point on the “sound-bites” theory. You are right on, as I typically get frustrated with excessively long blog posts…maybe I have a short attention span!

@martin english: Yes, marking up and annotating a book can’t be beat!

@ Pam Hoffman: there is indeed something special about curling up with a book that a laptop just can’t touch…especially in front of the fire on a cold Canadian winter’s night (glad spring is here now)!

I still love reading a newspaper (I did last night). I hope that never ends, although I rarely buy them these days and choose to read online.
I love the world of writing that blogs has opened up for me and can get lost for hours reading the ramblings – inspiring or otherwise – of so many people.
But give me a good book any day. One of the very few downsides of working from home most of the time these days is that I no longer have my 45-minute train commute to an office which was prime book reading time.

@ Sam Stevens: I sold and marketed textbooks for 18 years…you couldn’t get me to read one now for anything! Your observation is correct, there will be a havy say towards the blog side in this discussion since most of those reading it are web-savvy, Twitter talkin’, and blog readin’ folks.

@Paul Groves: Your newspaper example is exactly in line with the trend Rick at EyeCube brought to light. We all still enjoy the opportunity to read a physical newspaper but we are not limited to waiting for it to get the information we are interested in…online sources rule in that collection of information these days.

@vimoh: I think we all get a little more from blogs in their “snap-shot” or “sound-bite” approach to focusing in on one particular issue or concept and giving us a nugget of knowledge or something to walk away with to think about or apply to our lives.

I think the major issue is that books and blogs accomplish two separate things and function in very different ways. Blogging tends to lend itself more to short narrative over a long period of time–one blog might, say, concentrate on a certain topic, and, over the course of a year, concentrate on various subtopics individually.

A book, on the other hand, tends to be a longer narrative consumed over a shorter period of time (say, a week, and I think that’s more time than it takes the average reader to consume a given book). It often allows greater focus/concentration on a particular topic, rather than a number of topics in a meta-topic.

It’s a bit like the difference between the old serials and an actual movie. The serials were shorter, perhaps more concise, and often more widely consumed/known; movies, on the other hand, told their stories all in one go and have usually been self-contained (sequels notwithstanding).

I read a lot of blogs, but I also read a lot of books. One will never supplant the other, because I read both for different reasons.

I also think this is why e-books haven’t blossomed yet; Kindle is a good first step, because I think e-books require a dedicated, wifi-capable device, because people will read on a screen, so long as it will fit in their pockets.