Yes. Just like I don’t feel the need to monetize all my hobbies (because then they aren’t hobbies they are jobs), I also don’t need to socialize all my hobbies. I do some things just for myself. I walk in the woods almost every day and that’s lonely too but I don’t think anyone would question that loneliness as a bad thing

(Well, to be fair, I do have my dogs with me in the woods. But usually I also have my dogs with me when I’m reading.)

This is a great example of why I think the common argument that schools should teach “fun” books is flawed. For many people, the thing that turns them off books is not some poor choice of books (“if only the school had taught better books I would have become a life-long reader!”) but it’s the act of teaching itself. Some people just don’t like school!

To be clear: that’s okay with me! Not everyone likes school. I loved pretty much every book I read as a kid, and this would have been true with or without school. But I don’t expect everyone else to have the same experience.

I read Ben Lerner’s Leaving the Atocha Station thinking that I would probably hate it. The whole autofiction trend seemed so self important and this is a book about a whiny poet complaining about his poetry writing scholarship and… I loved it. It’s such a great rumination on art. And the protagonist is struggling with so much self-doubt and self-loathing that I didn’t really need to add any more of it on my own, instead I wanted him to break through his own walls and come out the other side. It’s a great book and a great work of art.