Why Don’t We Read Books Anymore?

When I was a child I used to read a lot. I was no fast reader but a book usually took me just a few days to finish. Each month I read a few books, I either got for my birthday or borrowed at the local library.

But that time seems to be gone. I have quite a few books on my reading list for too long now. It’s already some months since I finished my last one. The rate of books per year decreased a lot.

One of the reasons is probably the increased time I spent with other things, mainly my laptop and smartphone. After I turn them off in the evening I’m just to tired to read a few pages. Or I lack the motivation that’s needed to do so, because watching videos on YouTube is so much easier.

I tried to overcome this lack of reading books by buying a Kindle Fire 7 to be able to read some ebooks on the go, but that didn’t work too. The selection of free ebooks just didn’t fit my interest and I’m too stingy to pay for them.

Just recently I started reading a paper book again, because I had to go on a 6 hours train trip, wasn’t able to bring my laptop with me and the suggested articles I usually read on Medium were too much of the usual “become successful with this 7 habits” stuff.

As I now think about it, the one online publishing platform (Medium) seems to be one of the most important reasons why I read less paper books. Articles are shorter than whole books, you learn more in a shorter time and it’s on your phone.

But I think that’s a bad thing. Because articles are shorter that only requires a short attention span and makes you unlearn focusing on something better. Real books with “stories” are (im my opinion) also better because they require more creativity too.

I hope / I want to finish that book, that I just started reading and make reading a book a habit again. I probably have to schedule some reading time everyday, so that I won’t postpone it everytime.

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