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Books don't have to be experienced as vicarious adventures. That's what YA lit is, mostly, but we can read books for their insight rather than fantasizing about being participants in a series of events that they're narrating. There's no reason to transform their thoughtfulness into the sort of disjointed juvenile power fantasies that modern movies are attempting to appeal to.

Also, you don't have to read literature or novels. Read the narratives and nonfiction around what people experienced in times and places that will never be experienced again, and that youtube and netflix don't care about. Read about thoughts and reasoning that exceptional and forgotten people had in the 19th century that are ripe for rediscovery.

The death of attention span is real, but the idea that the substance of "content" now is of better quality than the writing in 1890 is a slander. It's just the difference between a quick, tasty, and a bit vulgar value meal at McDonald's vs. an actual high quality meal. The laziness gets addictive.



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