“I [have] the wide world of #books to explore. I [keep] filling the holes in my literary background with what I [see] as important books I [haven’t] yet read, and I religiously [tackle] [books] by the #writers [I’ve] been taught to believe [are] our literary flag bearers.”

“I’m a devoted reader. I want to be a dedicated audience to whatever #book I’m reading. […] I want to commune with a great mind, wordsmith, soul. For the right experience, I submit myself to it willingly.”

“The painful truth of my #reading life is that I read slowly. It’s not uncommon for me to read only 10 or 20 pages per night. […] Over the course of a year, that comes to roughly [ten 370-page-long] books. This isn’t a horribly small number, but […] I have to be selective.”

“The one constant of my #reading life is that I always want to read more.”

“The consolation prize of so much #commuting meant I could [read and] listen to [#podcasts] as much as I wanted.”

“I vividly remember […] from my childhood in the […] ’80s […] that #reading was the best way to acquire knowledge, that it somehow trumped other ways of #learning. As a kid, […] I internalized a belief that reading was the more enriching experience because it was harder.”

“#Audiobooks aren’t like reading the #book. #Reading is a more intimate connection between one person and another. When one reads a book, one communes with the author. Sure, editors and publishers have some say in what goes into a book, but the roles of these people and entities are often transparent compared to the fundamental communication from writer to reader. In the audiobook form, there’s a soul obtrusively in between the writer and reader—the narrator—who takes over the role as central communicator. Even if the text is read word-for-word, the way the narrator’s voice sounds is too present and their inflections too dominant not to be the main influencer of the experience.”

“Think of #audiobooks as entertainment modes in themselves. […] It’s still possible to commune with a great soul in this way, but first and foremost, it’s with the soul of an actor—nothing wrong with that, but not necessarily what I’m looking for.”