Say, I forgot to mention I finished reading How to Hide an Empire by Daniel Immerwahr which I started not long after we went into quarantine. You might be thinking, “You’re still reading that?” (No I finished it! ^_^) but seriously folks, a while ago I’m reading my book on my phone and after a little bit I get a notification from the eBook app itself completely unbidden to the effect that I have reached my daily reading quota! I confess that, Dumas that I am, the news that I had made a daily reading quota without breaking a sweat stroked my ego. The unsolicited notice began appearing daily each time I picked up the book, and in almost 0 time became the signal to me at each session that I was done reading for the day.
The first day it seemed effortless. The second day I may have been on the lookout for it enough to realize that it was not my imagination that my daily reading goal was hella easy to reach. By the third day I figured out that the quota had nothing to do with pages or anything related to my own idea of how much effort one should ideally put into book reading each day (I’m always certain I’m way under par) but instead was some default setting that amounted to 5 minutes.
That’s right the ebook app was rewarding me for sticking it out for a full 300 seconds. It didn’t matter that I thought that that was an absurd standard; what happened was that I used the appearance of that little notice as my get-out-of-jail free card and I’d say to myself, “Welp! Goal met! Quota read!” and I’d set the book down for another day.
The weird thing is that I greatly enjoyed the book. It was not a chore at all. So why did I permit myself to have my reading habits dictated to me by this impersonal default configuration that just appeared without my asking for it on my phone one day and began on its own proffering an opinion (a super mediocre if not inferior opinion) on my reading habits? Why did it not occur to me that this unsolicited default low bar of achievement might be Apple's way of discouraging a daily ad-free habit among its multitude of users of keeping oneself informed and intellectually sharp? A service to its entrepreneurial class and not to the consumers of its products. Because it was making me feel good about myself. 'You're a good reader!' it lied to me. I didn't even have to ask for its opinion! But truth be told it stretched out my reading of this book by many extra weeks, and telling you about this, I’m ashamed of myself.
That would be the end of the story except my next challenge was Rick Perlstein's 1120 page true crime book Reaganland. I know how it turns out but it's too good to put down. If I want to live to see the end of it, though, I've got to read it the hard way, under my own steam. I can't bring myself to turn off the daily affirmation from my phone about my superior reading habits, but vanity only gets you so far-- about 4 tiny e-pages, mere gulps of this vast ocean of words-- and I have a long, long way to go. Now, if you'll excuse me I have some reading to do.
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