As I grow older, I spend more and more time thinking about time itself. How it flows (ever faster!), how it feels (slow on a daily basis, while whole months seem to evaporate behind me), and perhaps most importantly: how best to spend it.

Two of my favorite ways to spend time, reading books and watching movies, sometimes compete for my attention. After all, at my age, it’s hard to knock out a few chapters and a whole movie after dinner without dozing off. And to be fair, I’ve already seen a lot of movies and read a lot of books! This means both that a) I’ve already enjoyed so many of the surefire winners, and b) my tastes are pretty refined and probably even a bit jaded. It takes a bit more to impress me after decades of consumption.

With these two competing impulses in mind, I’ve grown a lot more protective of my time, but also a lot more merciless in how I recommend other people spend their time. I may have a pathological need to finish books I start, mainly so I can render a fully informed and absolute verdict on then, but that is only so that I can say with confidence: DON’T BOTHER. For example: I, English teacher that I am, can confidently say that Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment was absolutely not worth the time it took to read. It’s a classic for a reason, with some fascinating moral questions to ponder and a complex central character. It’s also somehow simultaneously dull and melodramatic, and by even century-old standards, needs to be edited by about half. It’s what I’d hold up as a shining example of why we should re-evaluate the canon and find more modern examples of stories that cover similar intellectual ground if we want people to actually embrace and enjoy reading. It’s just… a slog. I’m sorry, Fyodor! I’m not saying your work has no cultural value; just that for 99% of currently living humans, this is a use of time that I simply cannot condone. And honestly, haven’t 99% of previous humans likely lived ok-to-great lives having never read it already? I’m only suggesting we present breathers not feel bad about it.

And yet… I am also reassured that no matter how much time I’ve spent on this earth, there are absolute gems of modern art that I’ve yet to discover. The best, most recent example of which is the film Master and Commander: Far Side of the World. Despite it’s unwieldy title, it is a perfect film. The period-accurate, creaky and grimy production details of this ship at sea are incredible. The cast delivers at every level from Russel Crowe as a charismatic captain down to the little pre-teen aspiring naval officer on his first journey at sea. It swings from tense and explosive action to jovial wartime camaraderie, with time to spare for philosophical asides about discovery, duty, friendship, and more. What a time! And to think, I’d shared a planet with this masterwork (pun) for over two decades and never experienced it. What a world.

I could say similar things about other movies like Charade (Hepburn and Grant?!) or Lone Star (Cooper, wow!), or Richard Powers’ Bewilderment (I could just die after finishing that one) etc., all of which are a hell of a lot more worth your time than trying to check the box on a supposed centuries-old classic. It’s not that old things are not worth our time, it’s that as we get old, our time is worth more than some slightly less wonderful old things! Tough calls have to be made, and sometimes obligations to a cultural canon must be sacrificed in favor of savoring the recently delicious. Bon Appétit!

So…
What’s an example of something you’d neglected for years, but upon finally catching, still took you by surprise with its greatness?

Conversely, what’s something you felt some cultural or peer pressure to appreciate, but upon finally experiencing, you can confidently say live up to its reputation and is better skipped?

In light of these examples, is this a reasonable way to think of using one’s time? Or is this approach a surefire path to cultural bankruptcy where we simply stop trying to appreciate difficult or less enjoyable art while sliding comfortably into brainless bliss?

Yes, the headline question above is an intentionally sarcastic framing in response to this truly idiotic tweet by a garbage human. But apparently, this “men against fiction” phenomenon is a real problem according to recent data, such that Dazed Magazine felt compelled to extrapolate why.

It is a cultural hangover that persists. A “cult of productivity is still imposed more on men than women,” says Dr Alistair Brown, Assistant Professor of Digital Humanities and Modern Literature at Durham University. “[Non-fiction] seems to have more immediate or meaningful returns on the investment of time.” Consequently, men buy more: in 2023, men accounted for 55 per cent of non-fiction book sales, Nielsen BookData tells Dazed.
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Could reading stories offer an alternative route through the masculinity crisis? By creating “a safe space for allowing oneself to feel, with no strings attached,” Professor Keen suggests that reading fiction is the diametric opposite of the stale stoicism of the manosphere.

Now, I’m sure entire research papers, books, college courses, self-help courses and more have been written by other professionals about the benefits of reading. Several are linked in the article above. But the way in which this New Toxic Caveman Masculinity sets itself against reading (and thereby, women, as in so many other ways) is so laughable as to be self-parody, which is why I couldn’t help screen shot that tweet above. Could this idiotic worldview, maybe, possibly, have something to do with men’s decreasing grades and college graduation rates? Hmm, maybe they’re macho-ing their way right out of the future all on their own!

So…
What makes men so afraid of being seen as bookish? What are they hiding from?

How do those of us men who do read books make the case to the men of the future that books are good, actually?

What is it about nonfiction books vs novels that better attracts those men who do read? What are men missing by choosing that reading diet?

This week I wrapped up Astro City: Metrobook 2, a bulky 18-issue omnibus-style collection of the series that started in the mid-90s but which I somehow missed out on until last year. If you’re not familiar, it’s an anthology series telling all sorts of stories set in a city jam-packed with superheroes (sometimes referred to as “angels” in the world of the book). Sometimes it’s about the inner turmoil of a very powerful hero. Sometimes the gender politics bothering a female angel. Other times, it’s about the hotel doorman in downtown Astro City, or a local lawyer going to trial in a world where reality is surprisingly bendable, and evidence is newly questionable. Often, it’s about the sad reality of aging and becoming irrelevant after touching fame, greatness and glory. It’s such a gorgeously drawn, deeply felt, and reflective comic, I swear it didn’t actually exist my whole life, but was somehow dropped here from another universe just recently, or I surely would have picked it up decades ago. It’s so, so fun to read, and right up my alley in terms of crossing pop cultural referents (not references like gags, but more like tropes in fiction) with earnest human drama. A total treat.

Anyhow, the reason it works so well is that it’s interested in the truth of what a world where heroes exist might really be like for humans – super and otherwise.

So…
What are the pros and cons of living in a city, in a world, where superheroes really exist?

Would you want to live there or escape there, ultimately?

Would you HOPE to be one, or FEAR becoming one?

Recently, on a bit of a break, I decided to finally tackle one of those All Time Great Books that’s been on my to-read list for years and years, Invisble Man by Ralph Ellison. Also during this break, I took a three hour train ride from Portland to Seattle, which seemed like a very suitable environment in which to do some Serious Reading. About 100 pages in (out of ~580p in my edition), my train neighbor noticed my book and asked how it was going and what I thought — a conversation starter that book readers normally live for!

The best I could do was sadly little, along the lines of, “Well, it’s pretty dense, and I feel like I’m just getting started. I’m really curious where it’s headed and how it’ll all come together though. And obviously the writing is impressive.” You know, the utterly meaningless things you say when a book is a bit over your head and you’re not quite sure what to make of it.

Having finished the book this week, I am incredibly glad I read it. It certainly heads lots of places by the end. It’s packed with ideas about race in America, deftly addressing so many situations, power dynamics, social structures, political dilemmas, so many of which are still incredibly relevant even 70 years later. Plus, it’s funny and weird and episodic like an epic poem crossed with a satirical travelogue. What a read.

And yet, I still feel like I got maybe sixty percent of this book. Like I need to take a college seminar with weeks of accompanying lectures to really get the full experience and understanding I wish I could just naturally absorb from a book like this, but can’t do on my own.

Part of me thinks I should have saved this book for a context in which I really could read it that actively and deeply, in order to better appreciate it. The other part is glad I tried and got what I could with my 2024 brain, and maybe some day I will read it again even wiser and more ready to receive it. Who knows what the future holds? But since I’m maybe not equipped to ask super deep questions about this book specifically (or just too intellectually insecure to try, considering how many much smarter folks have written on the topic, I’m sure), I’m curious about Big Hard Books in general.

So…
How far do you push yourself with the books you read, and how often do you read Big Hard Books? Should we all push ourselves more, more often?

What’s the “right amount” of tough reading to keep yourself sharp and stimulated?

What’s the last really hard book you read and had a great experience?

Was there one you failed at? How did that feel?

Kyle Chayka in The New Yorker puts a name to something I’ve felt for many years while attempting to navigate the pervasive recommendation machines of the internet: algorithmic anxiety. As he relays in the article:

“I’ve been on the internet for the last 10 years and I don’t know if I like what I like or what an algorithm wants me to like,” Peter wrote. She’d come to see social networks’ algorithmic recommendations as a kind of psychic intrusion, surreptitiously reshaping what she’s shown online and, thus, her understanding of her own inclinations and tastes. “I want things I truly like not what is being lowkey marketed to me,” her letter continued.

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Peter’s dilemma brought to my mind a term that has been used, in recent years, to describe the modern Internet user’s feeling that she must constantly contend with machine estimations of her desires: algorithmic anxiety. Besieged by automated recommendations, we are left to guess exactly how they are influencing us, feeling in some moments misperceived or misled and in other moments clocked with eerie precision. At times, the computer sometimes seems more in control of our choices than we are.

Personally, this means being afraid to ever ‘dislike’ anything on Netflix or YouTube, with the fear that anything remotely related will now be banished forever from reaching me, or hesitating to like even the most enjoyable clips only to be inundated with identical clones. I’ve begun listening to mid-tempo synth music as background while working, and though I still prefer energetic indie rock, Spotify has now almost completely shifted its picture of my tastes toward retro paradise vibes. It’s now become a side job simply to manage a computer-generated picture of who I am and what interests me.

What are your strategies for optimizing how the machine will predict your tastes?

Are you doing a good job managing them? Are they delivering as a result?

What are the best examples of the algorithm nailing it for you, or totally missing the mark?

What are your alternative discovery methods to get out from the yoke of a digitally dictated taste profile?