Most of my nonfiction I do by audiobook while I walk in the morning. I find anything too strenuous and I can’t concentrate. I do take notes, primarily by voice into Google keep. Though I did recently switch to a git repo tied to the zettel notes app since that’s how I view my notes on android. Usually I process them out by the end of the week or so.

As far as good “hard books”, I could recommend Fantasyland by Kurt Andersen if you’re into a “how did we get here” story about the US, or A Thousand Brains by Jeff Hawkins if you like thinking about how our minds work and have interest in AGI. The last hard one I read was the dawn of everything by David Graeber and I found it to be absolutely fucking terrible for as much as people talk him up, would not recommend. There are some good ideas in it, but stylistically it’s heavy on context and light direct points or logical threads.

Right now I’m mainlining dungeon crawler Carl and it’s pretty entertaining, but weird that I have 2 of 3 books in progress being easy fiction.