For the last three years, I've spent more time reading blogs than books. I love books. Across a broad range of subject matter. Fiction and non-fiction. A teensy bit of poetry. Known authors and those making their debut. Starting my last year in high school, I began reading about 150 or more books a year. And I pretty much kept it up, with a couple of year-long hiatuses until sometime around June of 2004.
Now, admittedly, I've read a lot of crap. Inevitable, I suppose. There's a lot of crap out there, and you can't know it's crap unless it's written by an author renowned for crap, which you avoid after finding out s/he writes crap. But learning somebody is a crap writer doesn't inoculate you from picking up another book of crap in the future by someone you don't know. And you sometimes can't tell - at least I can't - that a book is crap until you're deep into it, and even then, occasionally you want to find out if the crap gets less crappy so you read to the end anyway, hoping.
But much of what I've read was terrific. Even when I was in the middle of something else, a writing or editing project, a political effort of some sort, even a trip abroad for business or fun (driving my traveling companions crazy), I was never happy unless I had a pile of unread books by my side. What I liked most was to read 10 or 20 or - over time - 100 books in the same subject area, history, archaeology, religion, philosophy, political science, environment, and biographies of people who fought against great odds. And, guilty pleasure: books about serial killers, both true and fictive.
By 2004, however, I was reading on-line a lot. Newspapers - the abbreviated electronic versions that leave out a lot of the good stuff - both mainstream and alternative and, ever increasingly, blogs. By the middle of 2005, I discovered that I was reading fewer books, quite a lot fewer than before.
Every week now, I scan about 100 blogs, (general and specialist - you can see a few of these on my blogroll) 30 or so on-line newspapers, and check out a rotating collection of think-tanks and partisan sites. Lately, I've taken to clicking the Stumble Upon button I've added to my toolbar just to see if there's something else I can squeeze into my routine. All this takes time. I didn't realize until recently that I've been spending perhaps 25 hours a week doing this. Which doesn't include researching and writing my own pieces.
Meanwhile, the book stack doesn't dwindle nearly so fast. And, as my wife gently reminds me on occasion, some house projects hang fire a bit longer than she would prefer - not my share of house-cleaning and cooking mind you, I'd get rightfully reamed if I reneged on those duties. But there is a bit of what building managers refer to as "deferred maintenance" that has crept onto the scene in the past 12 or so months. Moreover, I haven't built the tansu I drew plans for 15 months ago. And I take the bike out twice a week, half as often as my doctor says would be a good idea for a guy in the first year of his seventh decade.
Some might call this time spent on-line a waste. Or an addiction. But I can quit anytime. Really I can. Tomorrow if I wanted to. Really. Just turn off the computer and ... well ... maybe not tomorrow.
Enough already about me. How many blogs do you read a week? How many Diaries at Daily Kos? Are YOU addicted? And how can you tell? Are you reading more now than a year ago? Less? What does it all mean?
Take the poll.