What reading means to me

 Wordle 283 5/6

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We drove the kid to school yesterday because it was so cold. Today we're really going to try to do so earlier in hopes that it helps with traffic, because it has just been terrible for a while.

Work was slow yesterday. Can't complain. I had two meetings, but one was relatively simple, just us meeting with a team about getting some documents started, and the other was more simple than that, at least from my perspective. In my free time I wrote a lot of the post below.

The kids with the nanny came over to our house after school while waiting for the other parents to pick them up. Listening to them play was hilarious at one point. Background: we've recently let our daughter play with an old iPod. Its battery is dead, it only works when plugged in, and only has the games on it that T. downloaded 5+ years ago, but she has fun with those games. Yesterday afternoon she was bragging to her friends. "Want to see my phone? I have a real phone!" she said.

"How do you have a phone? You're not even 16!" was the reply. 

That was an impressive amount of wrongness in 20 words.

Musing

Well, isn't that a pretentious title...

Inspired by this little sitcom event, and reading this FAQ by/about an author I've enjoyed in the past, and nearing the end of my reading list, have all got me thinking about what books and reading mean to me. 

Reading was my biggest single hobby until I was 19, probably. For most of the following 20 years, computer games and/or Magic: the Gathering replaced it. I'd read when the latest installment of a series I liked came out, or when stuck commuting by bus, and entertain myself by playing games otherwise. About 10 weeks ago I quit a computer game without an adequate replacement. Since then I've been reading more. What am I getting out of it? 

As for the books themselves, since the new year I've read Sixth Watch, Project Hail Mary, The Good, the Bad, and the Smug, Old Man's War, and books six through nine of Transmetropolitan. Plus most of WoT, although those were a lot faster to reread than they were to read. I'm currently halfway through A Deadly Education. (I'm loving it so far.) All the Marvels is waiting for me, the only nonfiction book on the list. Since starting this effort I've bought The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and The Lightning Rod. I think the last will be the only one I don't finish by April 19, and I wouldn't count it anyway under the circumstances.

But other than specific books checked off a list, what am I getting out of it?

Honestly, not all that much. I enjoyed the books I'm reading/have read, but so what? There are lots of ways to pass the time. I enjoyed browsing the bookstore. It's fun to play free-association with tomes, find something that carries the promise of novelty, and leave with one book or six purely at random. For me it's a lot more fun to get books that way than by downloading them. I don't like trying to figure out which ads can be ignored and which are helpful, or dealing with decision paralysis because there's too much information online about any book, or using the finicky interface of an e-reader. Unfortunately I don't like clutter, which paper books contribute to and e-readers don't. If I keep reading at this pace after I finish my current list, I'll have to dust off my Kindle, or start going to the library a lot, or start giving books away aggressively. 

Also, I'm taking stuff in, but I'm not creating anything, not putting anything out there. (I'm writing here and doing a little elsewhere but it's stuff that's definitely not for publication.) What I'm reading is entertaining, but it's not edifying, thought-provoking, etc. Nor even an exercise of creativity or mental challenge on my part. Maybe I should try books like that a bit but I know what I like. I read The Big Sort with a book club in 2018 and it was a struggle. I don't exactly feel bad about not reading stuff like that, I have a job and a family and don't see anything wrong with a hobby that's merely fun... but it does mean I'd feel less bad going back to Warcraft. If reading is essentially just a waste of time, why not waste time in a different way? 

Maybe I should be writing more, or writing things of more general interest? I'm definitely not trying to make a career of it, but it's possible to do creative stuff for fun.