hey friends welcome back to the channel
now reading is one of the things that i
love and that i'm sure you love as well
but life is really hard for us these
days here
in 2021 because we've got way too many
methods of reading books we've got
kindle
ipad physical books god forbid we've got
audiobooks and so in this video i'm
going to try and answer a question
that's been plaguing philosophers since
the dawn of time
what is the best way to read books so
for each of these different ways of
reading we're going to be comparing them
against one another and we're going to
talk about the cost and affordability
we're going to talk about the
convenience
the aesthetics of reading the ease of
note-taking and the durability of the
reading method of choice
and for each one i'm going to share my
personal thoughts on which of these four
methods i use in different circumstances
in my life
let's get into it alright method number
one for reading is the one that's been
around since the prehistoric era and
that is the method of physical books now
in terms of price physical books are
pretty reasonable you can get a book for
between five dollars and twenty dollars
and
if you go to a secondhand bookstore or a
public library you can get them for
cheap or virtually free convenience wise
though we're gonna give books a one out
of five the problem with books compared
to devices is that you have to carry a
physical book around
and so if you're the sort of person who
carries a book around with them and
that's totally cool
but every time i've tried to carry books
with me it ends up getting like smushed
in my bag and i end up never really
taking it up but the place that physical
books really shine is in the aesthetics
of the reading like
a lot of the anti-kindle people say that
oh there's something something nice
about reading a physical book and i
would agree i think
in terms of reading aesthetics physical
books are going to get a five-star
rating from me because with kindle ipad
audio books you just don't get that nice
feeling
feeling of the book and you know when
you're reading a book you feel you know
what i'm going to sit down and read a
book
i don't really think that when it comes
to sitting down with a kindle or sitting
down with the ipad that's probably the
single best thing about the physical
books um in terms of their ease of
note-taking we're gonna give this a
three out of five star
it is possible to take notes from books
while you're reading but usually you
have to have a pencil on you taking
notes in the margin or like i do you can
use these physical book tag things to
kind of create bookmarks
and then theoretically at some point i'm
gonna go over my bookmarks for this and
actually type them up
so ease of note-taking we're going to
give a three-star rating and then in
terms of durability we're going to give
these a three out of five because
you can toss books onto the floor and
it's like totally fine
but for example this is a book i had in
my backpack and it just got squished
amongst everything else amongst all the
tekken devices and things so this is not
very good
and also if you pour water on books
they don't do particularly well i
remember i used to spill water on my
harry potter books when i used to sit
and read them in the toilet
and they would just end up dying so
durability gets a three out of five now
overall
physical books are still kind of nice i
do have quite a few physical books
around the house
i don't read them very often but i will
admit it is nicer
like if i'm winding down for the evening
it's it feels nicer to sit down and read
a physical book than just to sit down
and read the kindle so that would be
probably the best thing about them
now we're moving into the 21st century
and we have here the kindle i have here
the kindle oasis the kindle oasis is
probably a little bit overkill you could
do with the kindle paperwhite and out of
everything i've ever bought i would say
the kindle is one of my top three most
life-changing pieces of tech because
the thing with a kindle is once you have
a kindle it does cost a bit of money to
buy like 69 to 99 pounds on amazon
whatever
but once you have a kindle suddenly the
friction to buying and
getting and reading new books just gets
reduced basically down to zero it like
i've read so many more books
over the last 10 years since i've used
the kindle than i would have done if i
had to
wait for physical books to arrive any
time someone recommends me a book i can
literally hop onto amazon and just buy
it immediately on the kindle store and
start reading it there and then
that is the sort of thing you just don't
get from a physical book let's talk
about cost now so a kindle
i think is a pretty high return on
investment purchase 69 pounds for the
cheapest kindle
that's not too bad i'd basically
recommend a kindle for everyone our
kindle books
are not that much cheaper than
traditional physical books
these books are probably the same price
on kindle as they are in physical
version
but the nice thing about kindle is that
often amazon does run sales on them so
you can often get books for 99p
or less than a dollar or even a few
cents and that's pretty good for even
for ebooks you don't really get that
with physical books
so overall i think if you have a kindle
you would save more money
in the long run than if you bought
physical books but i think
the real benefit of getting a kindle is
in terms of the convenience and we're
gonna give this a five star rating
because it's just so convenient you
carry kindle around everywhere well i
don't personally i have my kindle on my
bedside and so whenever i wanna read at
night time i just
get into bed and read on my kindle
that's ridiculously convenient if i'm
going traveling i always take the kindle
with me because i know that if i'm on a
beach
or if i'm chilling in a coffee shop or
if i'm in bed i can always just read
whatever i want on the kindle the
aesthetics of reading though are not
that great like it's quite a functional
utilitarian device
it doesn't feel good to be reading a
book on the kindle which is why i'm only
going to give it a two out of five star
rating for this but even though the
aesthetics of the kindle are only two
out of five the ease of note taking on a
kindle is great because
the really great thing about kindle is
you can highlight anything and if you
can
you can highlight anything and then you
can export your highlights to whatever
you want so i use a service called read
wise affiliate link in the video
description if you want to check it out
i use a service called read wise which
automatically collects all of my
highlights from kindle and insta paper
for articles and air
audio for podcasts and it puts them all
together and then it sends those
highlights into notion and into rome
which are the two note taking apps that
i care about this is absolutely game
changing um i really wish
i had highlighted more books when i was
younger can you read them but not really
highlight them but now i just highlight
the hell out of all the books that i
read
whenever i come across something that
resonates with me and i know it's going
to end up in my note-taking system if i
need to use it at some point in the
future so
for ease of note-taking on a kindle
we're going to give this a 4 out of 5.
the reason it's not a five out of five
is because it's actually quite hard to
type things like
it does have a keyboard on it and a
touch screen but it's like really slow
and annoying to actually type stuff out
if i wanted to expand on a highlight so
mostly because of the highlighting
we're gonna give this a four out of five
and finally when it comes to durability
not particularly durable i've dropped
lots of kindles i have had them crushed
in my bag
they do all right let's give it a three
out of five um and the kindle oasis is
waterproof but it's a little bit
overpriced you probably don't need the
kindle oasis
unless you like buy a pool side or a
beach a lot you don't really care about
the well i personally don't really care
about the waterproof nature of it so
personal thoughts on the kindle kindle
is my absolute favorite way to read it's
not as aesthetic as books
but the convenience and the ease of
note-taking and highlighting makes it a
winner in my category and honestly
basically everyone in the world who can
afford it i would recommend a kindle
because i guarantee it will change your
life but let's say
you don't want to get a kindle because
you already have an ipad or a tablet or
even a phone
you can always use the kindle app on
your ipad or on your phone or on your
tablet
and the kindle app is pretty solid um
the kindle app isn't the one you have to
use you can use
ibooks as well or apple books or
whatever it's called and then you can
buy
ebooks from amazon or from apple and you
can read them on your device let's start
by talking about price now obviously
you've got the price of the device but
if you're going to read on your phone
chances are you've got a phone anyway so
the price doesn't really factor into it
and certainly if you if you have an ipad
you're probably not buying an ipad to
read books because that's a weird
use case for an ipad so you probably
have an ipad anyway if that's what
you're concerned about
and then price wise it's exactly the
same price as kindle books because you
can just read them on a different device
instead in terms of convenience we're
going to give this a 5 out of 5 as well
like it
like most of us well we always carry our
phones around right and
it's very convenient to be able to read
a book on your phone in fact i have
kindle on my home screen on my iphone
and for example when i was in japan for
two months and i was taking the train
back and forth into tokyo city center
for two hours each day i was reading a
song of ice and fire the series on my
phone while standing up in a carriage
and that's a lot easier to do on a phone
than it is even on a kindle where you
have a bigger device
obviously i wouldn't be taking an ipad
out and and reading on there so five out
of five full convenience but in terms of
reading aesthetics i'm gonna give this a
one out of five
it is less nice reading books on the
iphone and on the ipad then it is
reading on the kindle
nice thing about the kindle is that it's
got this e-ink screen so it doesn't look
like you're looking at a screen
but whenever i'm reading on my iphone or
my ipad or my macbook on the kindle app
i always feel like i'm looking at a
screen because i've spent i spent all of
my life looking at a screen anyway
it's a bit annoying to have my reading
experience also be based on looking at a
bright led screen but the place where
ipad and iphone and macbook really
outshine everything else
is in terms of their ease of note-taking
now when you're on
the kindle app on the ipad again you can
do the highlight thing as well so i
could just
select some text and highlight it and
then that would automatically
synchronize via read wise into
rom research for my note taking but the
even cooler thing is i can tap on it
and i can add a personal note and if i'm
adding a personal note
that saves to read-wise as well but
obviously it's a lot easier to type
something out on the ipad or on my phone
where i have a decent touch screen a
decent keyboard even on my macbook if
i'm reading on there i can type things
out
that's infinitely easier than trying to
type on the crappy keyboard that they've
got on the kindle
and it's also infinitely easier than
having to find a piece of paper to take
notes on
when reading a physical book so overall
in terms of use case often what i'll do
is that i'll read a book either on
kindle or i listen to the audiobook
but then if i know that it's the sort of
book i really want to take extensive
notes on or i want to write a summary of
i'll often just open it up on my ipad
and then in split screen mode i'd be
i'd be using the magic keyboard and i'd
be taking notes and summarizing the book
while flicking through it on the kindle
app on the ipad that's like a really
really really good user experience that
you don't really get with any other
device
so i'm going to give this a 5 out of 5
for note taking and that's my most
common use case in terms of reading on
the ipad and finally in terms of
durability
this stuff's not particularly durable
probably can't drop it it's not
waterproof
but you know i just shove it in my bag
at all times and i have the paper-like
screen protector on me on the ipad
matte screen protector that makes it
feel like paper when taking notes link
in the video description if you want to
check it out and finally the fourth
method of reading is in fact
audiobooks using audible i'm sure there
are other audiobook services no audible
are not sponsoring this video but
audible is by far the most popular one
it's the one that i've been using for
years at this point i often say even
when they're not sponsoring my videos
i often say that if there was only one
subscription service that i could ever
have in my life
it would be a subscription to audible
which i think is about 15
a month and for that you get one free
audiobook credit each month basically
price-wise
most people don't get through more than
one audiobook a month i get through a
lot of audiobooks a month so i just
spend a lot on audiobooks
if you buy audiobooks individually
they're like ridiculously expensive it's
like 25
on average for an audiobook but if you
get it through the audible subscription
it becomes much more reasonably priced
in terms of convenience listening to
stuff
i'm gonna give it a four out of five
it's not as convenient as just being
able to whip out your phone because you
do generally have to put headphones in
but that's one of the things i love
about the airpods for example that i can
just whack them in and immediately open
up the audible app on my iphone and just
immediately start listening to whatever
i want to listen to so this is what i do
when i'm cycling to my co-working space
these days
it's what i do when i'm doing any chores
around the house it's what i do when i'm
setting up the cameras
basically whenever i've got downtime i'm
always listening to something on audible
and it just makes it so so so convenient
to
listen to a ton of books now in terms of
the reading aesthetics it's not quite
the same as the feeling of reading a
book but like
all your books have like really are a
good user experience if you haven't
tried audiobooks yet i really recommend
it it's fantastic
um because they're like often narrated
either by the author of the book
themselves or by a professional voice
actor narrator type person and the
really cool thing about audiobooks is
you can listen to them at multiple
speeds so for example mostly i listen to
audiobooks at between 1.5 x and 2.5 x
speed
and the moment i'm listening to one
called the millionaire fast lane which
i'm listening to i think two and a half
times speed
that's pretty good it means i can get
through the book in two and a half times
the normal
normal rate and i can do that while
doing other stuff crucially so
absolutely incredible for convenience
and pretty okay for reading aesthetics
four out of five styles on that front
the main issue with audiobooks and this
is why i don't like audiobooks it's like
it's really really really hard to take
notes
while you're listening to an audio book
like yes on audible you can bookmark
sections but there's no real way of
exporting them
it's just an absolute nightmare to take
notes from audiobooks so the way that i
actually do it is
if i like a book so much on audible i
will just buy
it again on kindle and then i'll take
notes on my ipad using a split screen
taking notes on drafts or in notion or
in rome
with the kindle app open on the side and
so i'm afraid notetaking from audible
gets a one out of five in my book
and finally durability pretty hard to
assess but like they always live on the
cloud and we always have phones so
durability let's call it a five out of
five why not now before i tell you about
exactly what my favorite method is and
how these different methods fit into my
life
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so overall thoughts about these four
different methods of note-taking
if i could only choose one it would be
the kindle
and if i could choose two it would be
kindle plus audible but in fact i
actually use all four of these in my
life a different way so
kindle i always have at my bedside i
always read in bed on the kindle
and i like the kindle oasis it's a bit
overpriced but it does have a more of a
warm light and i use it on dark mode
so usually i just lie in bed i get my
kindle out i read and then when i notice
myself starting to fall asleep
i'll just chuck it across the floor on
the bedside table and then i'll fall
asleep so this is how i read the bulk of
the books that i read second most common
is audible i listen to audible when i'm
cycling when i'm driving
basically whenever i have down time and
then as i said if i need to take notes i
would just buy the book on kindle
because it's totally worth it and i will
take the notes
i use the ipad generally only when i
want to take
copious notes from a book that i've read
or when i want to summarize it where
i'll have
split screen open kindle on one side
notion or rome or draft on the other
side i'll be summarizing insights from
the book on the ipad and posting them on
my website so you can check that out at
alibaba.com if you want to see my book
summaries
and finally in terms of physical books i
only really have these around the house
because they look cool and so i can show
them off in videos but
i actually found that if i want to relax
for the evening and i'm not
in bed if i if it gets to like 9 pm and
i think you know what i'm not going to
play world of warcraft tonight i'm going
to read a book
then usually i'll pick up a physical
book and sit on the couch and just read
a physical book
so in a way all these four methods of
reading fit into my life but if i had to
choose the absolute best it would be the
kindle
followed by audible followed by physical
books followed by the ipad so hopefully
you guys found this video useful
if you want to learn more ways of
reading you can check out this video
over here which talks about
exactly how i read 100 books every year
so thank you for watching and i'll catch
you in the next video bye