Why Read Blogs?

Stumbling Tongue asks the question:

Once upon a time I used to read books. Next to my bed there’d be a half-dozen of them, neatly stacked (okay, randomly piled with great slovenliness) in the exact order I’d dropped them from the bed before falling asleep.

Then the internet happened. And the internet was everywhere, so you could always grab a quick read — blogs, magazine articles, Arts & Letters Daily. So quick, so easy. And then the war happend, and I even started following news. For a brief insane moment, I closely followed developments in the utterly predictable and depressing Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Is there a more irrational act in the world? What was I thinking? Newspapers? What crap. As someone once said, why put into your brain the material they’ll be using to wrap fish the next day? Whoever it was, I wish he’d been there to stop me.

My rediscovery: Ephemeral reading is intellectual junk food. It feeds the habit, not the hunger. My god, genuine books are just so much better. Why are you even reading this now? Why? Why? Why?

I often wonder the same thing.