What We Lose When We Gamify Reading by Marissa Levien

But even if we’re reading more, all this quantifying is forcing readers into harmful patterns. First and most obvious, when we read to hit a goal rather than simply for pleasure, everybody reads as fast as possible to hike up their numbers. It’s like the entire reading public is a high school freshman trying to cram To Kill a Mockingbird at midnight the day before the assignment is due. We technically finish the book, but we retain nothing. Ask someone what they thought of A Guardian and a Thief, they’ll say, “Who knows? That was ten books ago.” More worrisome, when we read fast, we experience nothing. The book does not have a chance to burrow into our heart.

I have felt this once or twice - not often, but enough like reading The secret of secrets at 1.5x. That was driven more by the duration of time I had the book borrowed from library for (14 days).

The second problem is: it’s less and less likely that A Guardian and a Thief is even on a person’s list if they’re shooting for a tally of, say, one hundred books a year. If we’re trying to read fast, the best strategy is to pick books that read easy. Generally this means books that are prose-light, plot-forward, and propulsive. It means we’ll forego a Moby Dick or a Middlemarch in favor of five declensions of A Court of Thorns and Roses. (Before the pitchforks and torches emerge, I should mention that I adore fun, propulsive books. We need these kinds of stories in our life, for the joyous escape of it. I’m not saying you shouldn’t read A Court of Thorns and Roses. I’m saying you shouldn’t only read it.)

Again, not faced this problem, but I can see it happening. I usually chose what to read next thanks to lists. What I add to the list is dependent on a bunch of factors - but mostly is it interesting?

I don’t have a goal though. I am happy with whatever I end up reading. Like I read more books in January because I had time to read. There are more important things in life than reading.

Phantom Obligation by https://indieweb.social/@tg

Email's unread count means something specific: these are messages from real people who wrote to you and are, in some cases, actively waiting for your response. The number isn't neutral information. It's a measure of social debt.

But when we applied that same visual language to RSS (the unread counts, the bold text for new items, the sense of a backlog accumulating) we imported the anxiety without the cause.

I have wondered about this myself. My current practice involves reading what I want to read and then marking everything else as read with prejudice. It’s not ideal. There is this feeling of guilt I have, of a task that needs to be done, quite like email.

There should be a different design, a different paradigm. Maybe I should write my thoughts in a place.

Audible syncs ebook reading and audiobook listening to keep you focused by Stevie Bonifield

On Wednesday, Audible launched a new "immersion reading" feature that could help readers concentrate on their audiobooks by allowing them to read along with the ebook version. While listening to an audiobook in the Audible app, users can tap the "Read & Listen" button above their book's cover art to see the text version of what they're listening to. As the audio plays, the text is highlighted in sync.

If the future of e-readers is getting weird, I’m here for it by

If I were Xteink or any similar hardware developer, I’d be looking hard at giving support to the CrossPoint project and then focusing my efforts on making a device with simpler controls (fewer buttons!). Adding lighting and potentially a touchscreen would make this interesting, too. There are a lot of directions this sort of product could go—so let’s get to experimenting.

I was similarly looking at this device. I had seen it somewhere on threads and thought this looked cool.

But then I looked at the feature set and given that most of my reading is happening via the e-library app. It did not make sense.

Spotify is testing a feature that syncs audiobooks with paper editions by Jess Weatherbed

Using Page Match will require users to unlock or purchase the audiobook on Spotify, and own either the paper or ebook version of the same book. The feature works by scanning the page you’re currently reading with your device camera, using optical character recognition (OCR) to identify passages that are then matched to specific timestamps in the audiobook.

I wrote about a similar idea in mixed format books. It would be good to see it out in the world.

Helsinki sending kids free comics to spark love of reading

The gift subscription is part of a research project led by the University of Jyväskylä that examines how regular access to printed reading material at home affects children's motivation to read.

My love affair with reading was similarly forged over reading full comic book sets during the summer holiday months I was in my village in Bihar. That was the only source of entertainment for us.

We would get a full set of 10-12 comic books and be done in a day. This seems like a good initiative. Get the kids away from the dam screens.

In 2025, most Americans read fewer than four books.

More distressing is the larger cultural shift away from reading for pleasure. According to a National Library of Medicine study, reading has been slowly falling out of fashion since the dawn of the millennium. Kids aren’t reading as much, or getting read to. Men at large may be shifting genre focus, and spending more time with magazines.

We should be reading more. Not an American, but we would see similar trends for the whole world.

Why Stories Make You Smarter Than Self-Help Books by Joan Westenberg

The young read fiction because they haven't yet learned to be embarrassed by imagination. The genuinely brilliant read fiction because they've looped back around to understanding that pure information transfer is the least interesting thing a book can do. But there's a vast middle ground of people who have just enough education to feel insecure about it, and these folks read non-fiction exclusively. They read because they love being seen learning, more than they love the process of it. I know. I’ve been one of ‘em, at various points in my life.

My reading pattern or the pattern I try to implement is one non-fiction book, followed by a fiction book and so on. I find fiction books work better with audio format and since most of my reading is that, I think I will dip more in that pool.

Maybe.

Learn Powershell in a month of lunches was one of my favourite books to learn PowerShell. I still recommend it whole heartedly.

I never got the shtick though.

Until today, when I was reading Time management for system administrators. By chance I have been reading one chapter per day, per lunch hour.

And finally it clicked. I can finish one chapter per lunch hour - learn powershell in a month of lunches.

How To Raise a Reader in an Age of Digital Distraction by

We’ve discovered that children who regularly engage in these kinds of active reading practices develop stronger neural pathways for deep comprehension. Their brains learn to treat reading as an interactive, creative process rather than a passive reception of information.

The ritualization piece is equally important. The families raising strong readers don’t just find time for books—they create sacred space around reading. This might mean a bedtime routine that’s never rushed, weekend morning reading sessions with special snacks, or car trips where audiobooks replace music. The key is consistency and intentionality.