Go Deep, Not Broad

I’d read only twenty pages of this rather slim book by Swiss writer Rolf Dobelli, when I thought, “Dobelli, you’re preaching to the converted.” But I still read the book twice in a fortnight.

For over ten years, I’ve avoided televised news, radio news and digital news-feeds. I read an article or two in a newspaper only every couple of weeks if I’m without a book in a cafe and there’s a newspaper available. I can’t claim my decision has made me wiser, but it has certainly made me calmer and more cheerful. My decision to focus on reading books and journal articles while avoiding the news cycle is based on the idea that I need to know what happened in the previous twenty-four centuries; I don’t need to know what happened in the past twenty-four hours. Rolf Dobelli is more succinct. He says, “Go deep, not broad.”

Stop Reading the News is a manifesto, as the subtitle specifies. It isn’t an academic tome and lacks the closing accoutrements of most non-fiction…