Sorry to be a little off topic, but I notice that most of my friends and family spend a lot of time watching movies and other streaming media, but from conversations it seems to me like they spend little time reading (with some exceptions). We all get to allocate our own time, but I like limiting myself to a maximum of one movie a day, but I feel good about spending much more time reading, choosing an active pastime of visualizing the people and world depicted in books, rather than passively watching streaming content. A movie has to be really fantastic to get the same effect as just a good book.
"I spend my time doing better things than you do" risks coming across as arrogant, rather dissuades others from reading more, and also closes one's own mind to considering the strengths and depth of other types of media.
That said, I enjoy reading as much as you do. I am extremely grateful to my parents for encouraging the habit - I think reading books taught me as a young child to empathize with others around me, by letting me into the internal thought-worlds of their characters and getting me used to inhabiting other viewpoints. In that sense I think reading can also be very formative for comm skills during a certain time of life.
I have two different "modes" when reading - 1) for novels and light matsrial, which is just casual reading, 2) for material that warrants study, typically using a pen to underline critical information and write thoughts in the margins.
You seem to suggest that casual reading, while I'm sure shares some spillover benefit, should not be mis-characterized as active study and is closer to entertainment. Do you make a conscious effort to read most things actively?
Although I don't usually do this very much for for fun fiction, I otherwise select/hilite text that I think is important while I am reading. When I think of a previously read book, it is quick to open just the hilites - for me this is a great trigger for my memory (I am almost 70, so this helps!)
re: joy of reading: this really hit home when my grandchildren were really young, especially the transition from my doing all the reading to them taking over reading.
I am usually retired about 2/3 of the time since 1998. During periods when I am not working, I do watch more movies. I am super busy working for a unicorn startup right now, so extra movie watching is put on hold.
... Klara, the narrator of Ishiguro’s new novel, is a kind of robot version of Stevens, and a kind of cousin of Kathy H. She’s a carer, a servant, a helpmeet, a toy. “Klara and the Sun” opens like something out of “Toy Story” or the children’s classic “Corduroy” (in which a slightly ragged Teddy bear, waiting patiently in a department store, is first turned down by Mother, and finally plucked by her delighted young daughter).
In his kafka-like universe it might even work.
