I think for a lot of people I know the real tradeoff is between reading books vs reading articles online.

We did the math!

Most people read 50 pages an hour. If you read 10 hours a week, you'll read 26,000 pages a year. Let's say the average book you read is 250 pages: In this scenario, you'll read 104 books in a year.

Call me a snob but I have always found it distasteful to see books treated as a quantity thing rather than a quality thing. Books are rich multidimensional experiences -- like fine meals or love affairs! Would you judge yourself as a lover only by how many partners you had? Would you rate them with 1 - 5 stars? Would you set numerical goals for the upcoming year? It's just as uncouth to treat books like that!

But also... who over the age of 16 reads nothing but 250 page books? Not that I fetishize tomes, but unless you love poetry you are not going to find too many good books under 250 pages, while MANY of them exist above 500 pages... so I'd estimate a more realistic average per book about be about 350 pages, which would put you at about 74 books.

It's not snobbish to emphasize quality over quantity.

It does make you want to make sure every book you read is worth reading.

So stop a book if you're not enjoying it. 

I don't like the advice to buy books in advance. Instead, use a library!

I genuinely don't think this strategy is possible if you use a library. For me a "read during every second of dead time" technique is only possible if you read on your smartphone.