I do wonder if, in the case of non-fiction at least, the drive to write a book where an article would do is part of the problem.

There are now articles about how to approach books to extract the maxmum value for the minimum time. Usually a mix, of interrogating the contents, skim-reading the first and last paragraphs of interesting chapters and then engaging in successively deeper reads of those chapters that pass muster.

If, in our increasingly compressed 'spare' time, we need to read 250 pages to extract 2-3 good ideas (and that's after having researched which books on a given topic to go to), it's all rather self-fulfilling, no?