On books, devices, and habits.

When I was young I devoured books.

They took me places

Introduced me to faces

Helped me imagine worlds that weren’t my own.

Nothing to distract me, except siblings and toys

and being told to

go outside.

In the past few years it’s been hard

to read a book

from start to finish.

Grown up books are different.

Big words and ideas so difficult

they make my head

and heart

hurt.

Books are in competition now

with things that take

my attention.

Some rightfully so – kiddos, home, dogs, work.

But for pages

and stories

to compete

with a screen?

With notifications and channels and threads and

electronic mail?

No.

But wait!

You can read on a screen.

They make books that way.

I know.

I’ve tried.

I have never finished,

or read

in entirety,

not once,

a digital book.

Now to be fair

the device where I read

is a phone

or a laptop,

not a device

specifically made for books.

So I reflect, in what times

and spaces

and places

is it impossible for me

to put down a book?

When do books win?

And I think.

And I think some more.

The beach.

At the beach, I read.

YA. Fantasy. Suspense. Picture books.

(Fiction. Lots of fiction.)

Books with robots, dragons, housewives, utopias, and vampires.

Books with characters so flawed

and so brave

and so perfect.

That I paint pictures of them

in my mind

and I feel like I know them.

That I cry when they cry.

And laugh when they laugh.

They teach me things.

When I read at the beach

there are no distractions.

Because sand and devices

don’t mix.

Because wifi is spotty

at best.

So how can my every day

Be more like the beach?

It wasn’t easy, but

I made a choice.

Pings, dings, and social things.

Can wait.

Goodbye, device.

You’ve been replaced.

Morning coffee and a

book

or two.

This is my habit.

This is my morning.

This is me

devouring a book.

Taking me to places,

introducing me to faces.

Imagining worlds.

Again.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *


This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
https://lynhilt.com/on-books-devices-and-habits/
lynhilt.com
CC-MAIN-2024-18
100566
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:6G2CFBAASXAIHNNG3RVXIOKD4PYY7274
<urn:uuid:f815f76f-c528-48c3-841b-a27b253f7f26>
2024-04-23T00:40:12Z
51.81.12.123
text/html
sha1:CV4WEJ2XOYMNVHMFF5NW5BSQ5YR5FYGD
<urn:uuid:73e7cadc-177c-4e39-9a79-9b3bf07840ce>
https://lynhilt.com/on-books-devices-and-habits/
response
<urn:uuid:1dd4aebb-ec5f-4b75-a164-6068ff2db37d>
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2024-18
publisher: Common Crawl
description: Wide crawl of the web for April 2024
operator: Common Crawl Admin (info@commoncrawl.org)
hostname: ip-10-67-67-159
software: Apache Nutch 1.19 (modified, https://github.com/commoncrawl/nutch/)
robots: checked via crawler-commons 1.5-SNAPSHOT (https://github.com/crawler-commons/crawler-commons)
format: WARC File Format 1.1
conformsTo: https://iipc.github.io/warc-specifications/specifications/warc-format/warc-1.1/