Although I fully recognize the power of blogs, I’m still internally calibrated to the steadiness of books. My typical blog experience involves bursts of distracted and anxious skimming, during which I worry that I’m reading the wrong sites, and that the real pith and energy of the Web is happening a few clicks away; at the end of each day a line of grimly unread tabs stretches across my screen like a prison lineup, sad proof that the great rushing stream of life has, once again, passed me by.
Sam Anderson, New York Magazine
This is exactly why I've come to re-appreciate my love of books. Reading something printed on paper, in a book or a magazine, forces me to concentrate on that one story, that one topic. I don't just see it and read it, I absorb it. Although lately I don't always remember what I read two minutes after reading it, I feel like it's stored away in my brain, ready to be called up if I really need it. Reading something in print makes me feel smart. And I feel like I've accomplished something when I'm done.
On the contrary, when I read something on the internet, I feel like it ends up in some temporary storage area of my brain, like the email trash folder that gets periodically flushed and returned to it's empty state.
Don't get me wrong, I love blogs. I'm addicted to them in fact. But I love to look at them more than actually read them. And my experience reading them is exactly the same as Anderson's. It's like being on some weird drug trip. By the time I'm able to pull myself away from the computer, I feel totally drained and not at all better for the experience.
And I can't wait to do it all over again.
