I’ve been participating in the annual Goodreads Reading Challenge since its inception in 2011 (succeeded five years, failed three), in which you set a personal goal of books to read that year. It’s a nice motivator throughout the year, and a fun little badge each December once I’ve sprinted to the finish, usually with a few short story collections or graphic novels.

This Atlantic article digs into why we effectively “give ourselves homework” in this way with books so much more often than other hobbies usually considered leisure:

Other forms of entertainment straddle that line—watching documentaries, for example, can be both educational and fun—but reading seems to inspire this gamification, homework-ification, and quantification to a unique degree. Perhaps that’s because society tends to view reading as an intrinsic good, whereas other media—movies, TV, the internet—are often seen as time-wasters. “Given many [people] feel they’re consuming too much media, the goal is usually to limit consumption,” Ayelet Fishbach, a professor of behavioral science at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business who studies goals, told me in an email. “In this sense, for many people reading is a virtue—so you want to increase it—while watching TV is a vice—so you try to limit it.”

Then, it goes a bit deeper into why… but not quite deep enough. Not a single interviewee admitted anything along the lines of, “It makes me feel smart. It’s part of my identity — that I’m a person who reads more than most, which isn’t hard, considering over a quarter haven’t read any and the average is only about 12.” Seems like a reporting miss to not get to why.

Why do you read as much as you do? Or not read as much as you do?

What do you get from it beyond the content of the books themselves, or what do you free yourself up to do by not reading more?

What, if any, inherent value is there in reading books at all?

Early Kindles succeeded at being both revolutionary and revolting at once.

In Aeon magazine, writer Craig Mod reflects on his initial enthusiasm for digital books, and how that enthusiasm has cooled, sending him back to the physical versions for a whole host of reasons.

It was an incredible user experience, full of perceived value, delightful in its absurdity. Most importantly, using the device in these ways felt like an investment in the future of books and reading. Each Kindle book I bought was a vote with the wallet: yes – digital books! Every note I took, every underline I made was contributing to a vast lattice collection of reader knowledge that would someday manifest in ways beautiful or interesting or otherwise yet unknowable. This I believed. And implicit in this belief was a trust – a trust that Amazon would innovate, move the experience forward unpredictably, meaningfully, and delightfully. This belief – that Amazon was going to teach the old guard new tricks – kept me buying and reading and engaging.

…

From 2009 to 2013, every book I read, I read on a screen. And then I stopped. …It was a stark reminder that pliancy of media invites experimentation. When media is too locked down, too rigid, when it’s too much like a room with most of the air sucked out of it, stale and exhausting, the exploration stops. And for the intersection of books and digital there’s still much exploration to be had.

In his case, it’s not the lack of willingness or enthusiasm for the idea that has turned him off. It’s the lack of momentum on exploring even newer possibilities.

What differences have you perceived in your digital reading vs digital reading, in terms of reading experience, or how you engage with the material?

What are the most meaningful strengths of each format? Do any of these make you a die-hard advocate for one or the other?

If in another 20 years they were to stop physical book printing outright, what would you miss most? What would we lose as a culture?