Books have taken a beating in recent decades. 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. In the decade before COVID, reading books in any format declined from 79% to 72% among U.S. adults. Sales of printed book sales in the U.S. are flat compared to two decades ago. Even more alarming, many communities across America have sought to purge disagreeable books from their libraries.
Why do we read? Why devote time to long form content in a fast-paced world governed by sound bites?
Reading is a source of entertainment. For many it is a way to relax and unwind while staying informed. Yet reading for entertainment is flagging in opinion polls. Only 43% of Americans read regularly. Teenagers enjoy nearly six hours of leisure time daily of which they devote 53% to screen time, including online games, social media and TV. Youths spend more time grooming than reading.
Reading: The Main Course in an Omnivorous Content Diet
Consumers now have many ways to sate their curiosity with the rise of digital content, including video, audio and social media. About 57% get news from online sources, and podcasts have a 50% higher following than printed news. Video is best for short-form content and applied knowledge. YouTube has shown that a picture is indeed worth a thousand words. Audio activates both brain hemispheres, while reading involves cognitive processes on the left side of the brain. Audiobooks have grown 500% in the past decade by educating and entertaining us while we are busy on mundane tasks.
Yet reading remains the best medium for learning in new, complex domains. 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). As Bloom’s Taxonomy illustrates, reading and listening perform equally well for remembering and understanding basic information. Video or graphical information is particularly good when applying new ideas that involve illustrations, comparisons, classifications and designs. Reading excels in higher cognitive tasks such as analyzing and evaluating information or creative and innovative activities.
Entrepreneurs, innovators and investors are omnivorous consumers of content. People learn differently and alter their information gathering habits based on their predilections and skills. President Woodrow Wilson, for example, communicated best in writing while Presidents Kennedy and Reagan mastered television as a new medium. Today’s youths, who were raised on digital media, have different mental plasticity and are wired differently than their parents.
Yet reading remains a key catalyst for startup innovation and a primary resource for investor diligence. Reading dominates the top of Bloom’s Taxonomy for analyzing, evaluating and creative activities.
Many of our 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 research readings. 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 must swim to survive, investors digest content in large bits to spot 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 offer both depth and breadth of perspective as a foundation for creativity and insight. Peter Drucker, the foremost business thinker of the 20th century, claimed 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. During his three decades of research that culminated in Superforecasters, Philip Tetlock found that analysts who continuously updated forecasts based on new information consistently outperformed experts on political, economic and business predictions.
Great books are timeless. Great books distill the best thinking of their authors, often accumulated over many years, even decades, of research. Books can go deeper and broader than most 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.
Augmented Intelligence: The Quest to Discover Great Books
Amazon and Audible curate book recommendations based on our prior reading. Fulsome reviews from Goodreads and Amazon ensure automated booklists never disappoint much as Vivino has largely eliminated bad bottles from wine cellars. Have machine learning and crowdsourced content crowded out handmade book lists?
To test this question, I recently 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, many great books exist 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 only one duplicate and just two overlaps with book recommendations from friends.
The results of this experiment were both encouraging and daunting. My expanded inventory of recommended books is daunting and would require at least a year to read. Yet the experiment was encouraging as it reinforced a long-held investment thesis: artificial intelligence should augment, not supplant, human intelligence. Opportunities to augment human ingenuity with artificial intelligence remain alive and well.
At NGP Capital, we assembled a list of influential books on entrepreneurship, innovation and investment. We shared this list with new team members and often distributed observations from recently read books among the investment team.
In the same spirit, I have assembled four draft “Top Ten” booklists relevant to entrepreneurs, innovators and venture investors from our NGP booklists and 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, but first I have some recommended readings to review before the other lists are ready. No promises on timeline.
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!
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.