[ggfgg]

An alternative perspective. The reason we don’t find them engaging and are so easily distracted is because they’re not very good and we didn’t have anything to compare them with until recently. This includes classics as declared by some entirely subjective arbitrary literary authority. It’s no different to wine tasting; status is more important than enjoying the thing. Practicers of Tsundoku are a fine example of the propagandists pushing the literary agenda forwards when in reality they read 5% of every book and are too ashamed to throw it in the paper recycling where it belongs and mistake the physical presence of the book as the value of the words.

For me, peak book-reading was the 80s and involved dragging myself through the local library because the other option was smoking, lurking around in public parks drinking or being a petty criminal. There are better things to do now, like complain about this on HN. There are also far more interactive communication pursuits these days and better story telling mechanisms.

I do still read books. I think I knocked about 15 on the head this year, mostly Pratchett and The Expanse series. But it’s on a Kindle, it’s not a magical romantic experience and I tend to read while pooping, waiting for someone to do the shopping, when picking the kids up from school or stuck on a really long Zoom meeting which I don’t need to speak during.

One notable disaster book this year was The Complete Navigation Manual. I am attempting to relearn map/compass based navigation again after a 25 year hiatus. This entire book could have been condensed down into a single markdown file in github that I could have read and understood the key points in 30 minutes. Such low information density is not something I am used to or like.