Monday, March 13, 2023

eBooks, it's been a while


Did you know the last time I finished reading an ebook was in 2020? It was the book Toddlers Are Assholes: It's Not Your Fault by Bunmi Laditan. I'm sure the fact that I was dealing with my own toddler while in COVID confinement had nothing to do with that selection

Anyway, April of 2020 was my last ebook. Before that things were trailing off a bit. The ebook before that was December of 2019 (Fleishman Is In Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner).

I didn't make a conscious decision to not read ebooks. It's just that once the little monster showed up and then I changed jobs to one that didn't require hours per day on public transportation in favor of one that required about an hour a day in the car, my reading switched over to audiobooks. In 2018, 50% of the books I read were ebooks. In 2019, that dropped to 12%. In 2020, it was just 2%. And then nothing. Not a single ebook in all of 2021 and 2022.

Why do I bring this up? Because, as I mentioned recently, I'm trying to do more non-audiobook reading in the evenings whenever I can grab a few minutes. It's an effort to go back to something I enjoy and spend less time scrolling through social media. So I've been reading the various books I have strewn around the living room and it's been mostly working out. But here's the thing. 99% of my books are packed away in boxes because we're only in this place temporarily. I do have a paperback book sitting in front of me I haven't read yet (American Dirt) but I'm not really in the mood for it. So I was trying to figure out what do I want to read? Do I dig through all of the boxes (so many boxes) to try to find a book I feel like reading?

Then I found my Kindle. The battery had long since died but I managed to find a charger that fit it and lo and behold, the thing turns on. And it turns out, I've downloaded books on there that I never read. Books that look interesting and that I would like to read. Good job, past me. 

Now I have some more books to read that won't require me to unpack a bunch of boxes and I can continue to read in the evening.