Reading vs. experience: which one is better?

Many of my skills came from reading, so why does this activity have such a bad reputation as not being “the right way” to learn a skill?

A book is condensed experience – basically a conventional name we give to our past mistakes. Any skill is learnt by daily practicing it – and as long as one has the equipment, one can learn literally anything from books.

Reading is not something completely different from life – writing was actually one of the earliest ways our ancestors preserved their experiences, thoughts, fears and dreams. One can learn a lot both from fiction and non-fiction books.

So here are my skills that I’ve learnt (mainly) from books:

–English – this is not my mother tongue and with the exception of several months spent abroad, I never ever had the opportunity to talk with English-speaking people; but once I needed it, I just started using it; all this massive reading in English changed my brain forever and now this language comes as second nature to me. I didn’t have money to travel abroad, but I did have a library card and Internet access – and these were priceless. (If only I could say the same about my German in a couple of years!)

–crafts – whenever I was in a creative mood, I would just pick up an inspiring book and learnt a new craft – like knitting, crocheting, cross-stitch, origami, felting, embroidery, painting and many others

–robotics – first of all, I learnt about the basic equipment needed and how to choose it by reading robotics books for beginners; further on, I learnt from books about software recommendations regarding computer-aided design, programming languages and electronic circuits design. Hundreds of examples followed for using the equipment + the software in order to develop this knowledge – things that were better understood than the engineering school could ever teach me!

–cooking – there comes a moment in every student’s life when this skill just needs to be learnt – and when that happens, you are far away from mom – so I took on reading…and practicing…and reading again… until I learnt to cook good food (both in terms of taste and nutrients)

–microscopy – some years ago I owned a basic microscope for fun – so I learnt cell staining techniques from books – the histology, zoology and botanical atlases were also invaluable for making sense of what I saw through the microscope’s lenses

Do you think skills can be learnt from books just as well as from a real person?

(Image courtesy of Flickr user Peter-Trimming)