Books are so poorly written that they are only useful because of the exercises, table of contents and as a consulting guide to see relevant equations and images

Books are so poorly written that they are only useful because of the exercises, table of contents and as a consulting guide to see relevant equations and images. They could easily be 1/3 the size and have the same impact. For concepts, I only use AI. And probably openstax.org is enough anyway, in terms of books. They do a better job for free that most publishers with lots of recommendations that charge hundreds. Then you have a lot of exercises provided by some american colleges that I assume will also be enough.