I'm learning how to read books all over again

Tsundoku, the attention economy, and online culture that makes reading a competition.

It’s not that I failed so spectacularly. I actually read more books in 2024 than I had in the past few years. But by internet standards where reading can sometime feel like a competition, six books is an absolute failure. As I type this, I physically recoil at how depressing that sounds. What does it even say about me when I confess to you that reading has been a struggle and it takes me forever to finish a book?

This isn’t a new year’s resolution because I don’t really believe in making them, but after failing to read as many books as I had intended in 2024, I’m trying again in 2025.

With renewed resolve I walk into two bookstores—one that is new-ish to my neighborhood and one that’s been in business for as long as I’ve been alive. We used to go in and pass the time there on rainy days when the kids were little. Their memory of it is far better than mine because they remember a shop cat that I have no memory of. I’m guessing that was the last time I was there, probably 13 years or more. The community bookstore that survived rising rents, that survived the pandemic, that continues to survive and beat the odds against Amazon and polls that show we read less and less every year. It welcomes me back, even if I don’t deserve it after such a long neglected absence.

Books don’t cast judgment, however. They just want you to read them.