Books are awesome. Really.

But reading is the first step. You never learn only by reading. You have to relate the ideas with your prior knowledge and practice it or apply it somewhere.

You also have to get a nice book. And have to practice reading. Reading is a skill, it's an extension of imagination. You have to practice that, and reading is an awesome way.

This depends a lot on the person. I do not retain information that I read very well. I know this about myself so I try to ensure if I need to learn something I'm using other methods as my primarily way of learning.

My brother, and many others, have the ability to read something from a book and retain that information fairly well and without using some other method of learning or reinforcing it.

It's unfortunately that I didnt realize this until I was done with my schooling but its been really valuable to know this during my career.