I lost my taste for rhapsodies to the power of reading—rhapsodies like Teju Cole’s—around the same time I became a halfway competent reader. It was two months into what would become a twelve-month period of unemployment, and I had come to realize that the reading style that got me through college and young adulthood was not suitable for reading several hours at a stretch—and it was desperately important that I be able to read for hours at a stretch, both because I wanted to make the most of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to read mountains of books and because I needed something to fill the long, dragging, structureless days. (Television made the time pass, but oh, the self-loathing after!) It took several rather humiliating weeks, and I am not sure I would have seen it through if circumstances hadn’t forced me to, but I gained conscious control over my distractibility, relieved my mental tonus, and became a decent reader.
