On Reading
“I’m reading The Stranger by Albert Camus right now. It’s boring the shit out of me, but I imagine at some point I’ll gain some kind of knowledge that I didn’t know before….I don’t know, it’s like torture, reading, but I do it and then eventually I think that it’s good.”
That’s a quote by George Lewis, Jr., singer of a cool new band called Twin Shadow. It’s a really horrible thing to say. It resonates with me, though, and I think I know why.
Reading has become an obsolete practice for the born-digital generation. Given that the time we spend between the time we spend with our devices in front of us—from smartphone to iPad to laptop to TV and around again—continues to shrink, reading for education’s sake has begun to feel more and more like a misappropriation of the few precious hours we have to consume content every day.
I, for one, spend so little time reading for pleasure that when I do pick up a book, it serves more as a surefire sleep aid than anything else. It makes me sad.
I think I’m going to try and read more books starting now. But I’m no fool and I care about the environment, so I’m going to do all my reading on the iPad.
1 year ago