One nice piece of advice that I received is that books are like RAMs, you do not have to go through them sequentially, but can do random access to the parts of it you need. With this in mind I find it doable to get one the thick books and only read the part that I need for my task.

But, to also be fair, the above random access method does not work when you don't know what you don't know. So I understand why having a light, but good introduction to the topic is important, and I believe that's what the author is pointing out.

Most books have so much nonsense details that I cant help but skip most of it.

On the other hand technical books can be so overwhelmingly difficult that you need to go outside and do hours of learning to understand one tidbit of it

I've seen people suggest that throughout the years, but it's never worked out for me. To get anything meaningful out of a printed book, I've had to read them cover to cover. There used to be worthwhile reference books, but those have moved on to the internet.

A significant fraction of my technical library is used just this way--as a reference, checking out the parts to answer a specific question.