Tedium of Reading Chess Books

People often complain about studying chess books and finding the work boring.  I wonder if this is because every time a principle is introduced, it is followed by countless games working through how it has been applied which you have to study, which takes a long time and only tells you what you already know from having learned the principle.  I realize that these examples to work through give some practice and skill in using the rule that is being taught, but what if you just skipped that work and memorized the principles?  Of course that would not be as good as working through all the examples, but still, it would save a huge amount of time and tedium, and then you'd have more time to learn more rules, which would might be a net gain?

I wanted to be a brain surgeon, but those darn books kept getting in the way...