infinite entertainment is not a blessing
When I was a kid, I reread books a whole lot more than I do now. This wasn’t because I was so diligent that I wished to dedicate effort to truly absorb and understand books I had already read once. It was because I had nothing else to do. I was deeply fortunate, I now realise, to have grown up with an extensive library of books at home, but it was finite. I also had access to what I believe is one of the best national public libraries in the world, but there were only so many books I could check out at once on my library card. So when I ran out of things to read, I just read them again.
Earlier this week, I started reading The Count of Monte Cristo, which I had resolved to read after watching Lang Ya Bang. My first thought when I loaded the book and saw how long it was was oh no, it’s going to take me so long to finish this. Then I wondered when, and how, it was, that I had become someone who looked forward to finishing a book more than I looked forward to savouring the reading of it.
Having an infinite number of entertainment options is not a blessing. I don’t know that I’d call it a curse either; I don’t think it’s an inherently bad thing. But I think back to the days when I reread all the books at home multiple times, and I know that even now, if you ask me about some detail of the Belgariad, the Xanth books or the Babysitters Club, I’ll probably remember it much better than anything I read last week, let alone last month. If I read something and then proceed to forget everything about it because I’ve sprinted on to the next thing on my to-read, to-watch, to-play list, is that a good way to spend my time?
I don’t know if I’ll ever be as voracious a rereader as I was pre-internet. But at the very least, for now, I’d like to relearn how to read books to read them, and not to finish them. The Count of Monte Cristo is decently long, but that just means I have a lot of book to sink my teeth into. Isn’t that great?