Twenty years ago, someone with my [political] interests would’ve spent a lot more time reading books because blogs simply didn’t exist yet. Magazines were around, but the advent of the Web led to daily content, so I’ve also spent more time reading those. But I can’t deny it: So much as I love my favorite books, the biggest influences in my thinking have been the continuous intellectual relationships I’ve had with blogs, periodicals and other people. Books aren’t even that close.
March 23rd, 2010 at 5:09PM
Depends on the book. Blogs and other Internet-related activities have, for me at least, raised the bar for reading: there are books that I probably would have put up with before that I now don’t bother with because their writing quality or content isn’t quite up there. But I still read a lot of books, both fiction & nonfiction.
Magazines have probably taken more of a hit than books, at least in my case. And while I’ve never been a big TV-watcher, my impatience threshold for that medium has been set at a much more sensitive level.
March 23rd, 2010 at 9:00PM
Well, for someone who’s really interested in policy and its evolution, that makes sense. But bloggers–even policy bloggers–differ Matt Yglesias is more of a book guy than Ezra (in the sense, as he recently said, that he set the basic coordinates of his thinking by books, and will presumably go on doing so). Much as I love blogs–and blogging–I still love long-form magazine articles more, and books more still. So little time, so much to read.