The Silver Key blog feels “A bookish nostalgia”…

Life was moving slowly, but it was great.

A blog post well worth reading, I’d say.

I’d only add that there was a lot more piffle back then which we’ve forgotten, dire pre-Internet stuff that you took or watched because you couldn’t get anything better in that line. Some of it still has a certain charm and wobbly interest, but much of it was just… commercial piffle (see any issue of SFX for the re-treads). Now, search skills + speed-of-access + watching-the-right people means we can vector onto the good stuff with relative ease. The excitement and anticipation for it is perhaps less, admittedly. By the time we discover it, the item tends to be already available. And available in quantity. So there’s a further personal discipline that’s then needed for focus, both in “what worthy stuff do I spend time on” and “how do I make the time needed for it”. Since the quantity is also often increased, e.g. omnibus doorstop editions of Savage Sword of Conan etc, massive TV series, long videogames. Then there’s the question of attention span, with The Silver Key finding…

sustained reading is much harder today than it used to be

Might be a good idea to do it over and just after breakfast? That gives you at least an hour a day of sustained book reading from paper. Audiobooks + wireless wi-fi headphones (not the infernal bluetooth type, proper wi-fi) can also help cover the ground on books and stories, at other times.