Why can’t we read anymore?

I think the changes are inherent to interactivity and the infinite volume of the internet. These change everything. Once you can respond, you are a part of the fray and your thinking changes.

When you read an interesting nonfiction book today, you can also check wikipedia, listen to podcasts, watch the author giving a Ted talk and jump into the infinite sea of informal online commentary.

IE, reading on HN is not reading in the sense that reading some book in 1991 was. It's being in a conversation, for better and worse. Your mind is operating in a different context.

I also think that writing is adapting more slowly than reading. Many nonfiction books I find interesting are 250-400 pages when they could be under 100 and just as effective. I think that's some side effect of paperback books published by the publishing industry, the medium and its economic ecosystem.

In any case, if you want to maintain reading of that kind as a habit or pursuit, you need to create an environment for it. Have a reading room in your house, go to a cafe or park or your garden and read there. Set and setting. You also need to be somewhat honest about what you like and how. Are you so engrossed that you read for 3hrs when you meant to read for 30min? Are you doing something that you need to discipline yourself into doing?

Many years ago (10+), back when printed media was still relevant in IT, I used to work for a local computer magazine whose senior editor was this witty, funny guy with a sharp mind - an unlikely case of a bohemian, post-modernist poet actually managing to do serious journalism. On tech topics no less.

With this being printed media, "long-form" was more or less the norm for the more in-depth article, and space requirements were very strenuous: you had exactly this much space to fill, no more, no less [1].

But we were explicitly encouraged to choose topics for which "this much space" was meaningful (for those of my colleagues who didn't get to choose their topics, like the hardware folks who had to write about whatever was happening, the choice of topic and assigned space went hand in hand). Sometimes, I'd choose to cover two or three things in the space that was given to me in order to avoid writing pretentious equivalents to Lorem ipsum so as to fill in the page.

I fondly remember the stern, to-the-point feedback that we'd get from our senior editor. A draft of this article would have probably received a feedback like "twice longer than it needs to be. Make it shorter, send me pics."

The gist was that there was no such thing as "long-" or "shortform". What you wanted was exactly-as-long-as-it-needs-to-be-form. Some points require many words to convey. Some don't. It's being selective in your verbalization that draws the line between eloquence and hypergraphia. The entire "I am an optimist" section is an unfortunate example of that.

1. Most of us weren't exactly experienced journalists though, so filling "this much space" was often achieved with a lot of help from the heroic DTP team, which basically survived on coffee during the last week of an edition.

It is quite possible to read 500 books over 100 days as a secluded teenager if one is reading mostly 200-300 page books and most of the books do not require perfect attention to detail.

A proficient reader can easily read 2 pages a minute, so lets say 1200 pages/2=600 minutes, so 10 hours a day. Seems quite doable for a bored teenager without a computer/tablet/phone/outside activity.

I don't think I ever did more than 3 books a day, but still possible to do what OP said.

I think many/most of us has have read a page turner in one late night session.

I disagree. If there is one thing that is effectively endless is books to read. If you read one book per week for you entire life you would barely scratch the surface. This means that there is an incredible variety of books ranging from the fun entertaining page-turners those books that you "need a degree" to understand.

The thing is, just because a book has a higher entry barrier (and a higher payoff) doesn't mean that it is objectively bad because it doesn't appeal to everyone. Maybe it's not for you, but it can certainly be appealing to many people who enjoy delving into a book and analysing if and so on. I don't have an English degree so I probably won't be arsed to put it the effort to read Finnegans Wake or whatever. But I certainly enjoy reading and analysing boss with more depth than DaVinci's Code.

The same thing happens with games. Maybe you have no interest learning chess, and prefer to play Angry Birds because it gives instant payoff with little effort. And that's fine. But it doesn't mean that chess is "objectively inferior" because there is depth to it enough to study full-time for a lifetime. Same thing happens with music, and any art form, I guess.

This is interesting, and I have been thinking about this quite a lot recently.

I used to read books by the dozen. Sometimes literally, in about 2006 I discovered Gollancz/Orion's "Sci-Fi Masterworks" series and was getting through more than one per week, in addition to holding down a job and having a pretty active social life.

Now I don't think I've read a book since I motored through my second reading of the "Song of Ice and Fire" stuff last year.

I, like the author, also find myself putting on some of the best TV there has ever been, and then doing something else while it's on, like checking email or facebook, or reading HN. So I don't really absorb it.

I don't want to cut out tv, but I do want to be able to concentrate on it, and I do want to read more books again. And get control of my sleeping patterns which have always, always been up the wazoo anyway.

So perhaps I shall join in and try to do as the author of this post has - start reading, deny the instant-gratification urges and reclaim my brain and my attention span.