29.0

I have this problem with books.

I love them. Oh, I love them so much. They sing me to sleep and they jolt me awake all in the same page. They are the vehicle with which authors can make the world fall in love with them 300+ times in a row. But I can't finish them.

The best feeling in the world is when you can snag a book from your bag and flip it to its middle section to begin reading. The middle section is always the best section of the book. It's the checkpoint in the relationship, it shows that you are past well acquainted and now having dinner conversations with the characters in your head when six o'clock rolls around and you happen to be eating alone. But getting to the middle section is hard, because you have to get past the first half of the book.
Now that's honestly no problem. Reading is reading. It just feels so strange to not get past the 20th page of a book after 1 week.

There are some answers to this phenomenon. One is that I've gotten to be a slower reader. I have, to some extent, changed the pace at which I eat books. I used to devour them. I'd be Swallowing 300+ pages without even chewing as opposed to munching on a word 10 times and letting the flavor coat my mouth before moving on to the next one. So yes, I have gotten slower. I'd like to say this is because of how insightful I've gotten over the years (2 1/2) during which this pace change took place, but honestly, I think it's because my IQ and attention span have deteriorated tremendously and I can no longer identify the flavor of prose if I don't read over it a couple of extra times.

However, I HAVE gotten more insightful. The realization of my actual IQ level proves it. To have access 300+ pages of someone's brain and then to greedily scarf it down without a pause for even a sip of water seems extremely insolent. Completely counter-productive, in fact. The whole point of books is communication, sending a message. And maybe the message will be something super simple like "Everybody makes mistakes", but the way Victor Hugo communicates that message is TOTALLY different from the way Miley Cyrus does. Les Miserables is not meant to be acknowledged only during the chorus. It is not meant to be over in 3 minutes. It's not meant to be scarfed down. It's not meant to be quick.