Searching isn't a great way of actually retaining information. You get a very shallow understanding of the topic.

Reading books cover to cover, at least when they're well written and not full of padding, is time much better spent. And when doing so, I too prefer the ergonomics of printed books.

Pretty crazy how not everyone seems to understand this.

The idea is that you are gradually building Brain-tree indexes in your grey matter as you read it cover to cover. Whenever you need to look up something again you kinda have a vague idea where to look.

Impossible is a bit of a stretch - that both search engines and books contain an index isn't a coincidence.

Databases too have indexes! Almost as if that makes it easier to search for both machines and humans!

Read book, take notes in your fav notetaking app (like Obsidian for exmaple) - now you have both knowledge and search.

Also the book in question is not really a manual or documentation of some sort.

In the ancient texts, there was a section called an "index" which mapped keywords to numbered pages in the text.