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Notes -
I managed 6 full books last year, and about 200 'chapters' of works I've read in the past and saw fit to revisit, and maybe 1500+ pages of articles or journals or guides. I realized my lack of completing books cover to cover mirrors my lack of completing TV shows season to season or even video games: I'm old(ish).
Not that age makes me incapable of enjoying the new. More that age makes me have a larger corpus of works to compare new consumed media against, and if a new work fails to hook me I immediately tune out and go for a Greatest Hits run to tickle the nostalgia dopamine of reading that work the first time. New works failing to capture that for me largely stinks of just old age cantankerousness, and the threshold of excitement to breach is not worth the gnawing knowledge that i've read BETTER and this work just doesn't' cut it.
The sole exception is reading new books for my kids. Little shits that they are, they hold no interest for Journey To The West or Water Margin, but for them I can power through my irritation at the archaic prose and tired tropes. Maybe one day I will finally be able to read King Lear without falling asleep, just for their sake.
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