It’s never too late to do something new. Be you 24, 44, or 74. Self study and improvement is at mutch about intention and the willpower to keep going as anything else, and these can refine with age (and practice).

So start, even if it’s something small like Duolingo, Mimo, a meditation practice, or just reading a short article or two a day to start building a learning habit and cultivate willpower. You don’t have to just dive into a big program.

It’s a bit of a shot in the dark, but I ran your post through an LLM and it thinks you might be talking about James Patterson.

Would it feel more authentic if they went back to the thesaurus every time they needed that adjective? Sure, they might start with sentimental, but eventually they are going to use lachrymose and then there is going to be a fight.

What you are experiencing is the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon or Frequency Illusion, a rather interesting cognitive quirk which now that you are aware of, you might see people mentioning a lot.

Modern books are hard to predict. You can’t really tell if it’s going to resonate culturally in the future. And you need that cultural importance. A book that is old and rare is just a book that is old and rare. To be valuable it’s got to be something more than just words on a page. There are loads of books that sold well and received praise in their time that are now long forgotten (I’d give examples, but there is an implicit problem with that).

I don’t think special editions make much of a difference, aside from making sure that certain books won’t become rare. And I say this as someone really bad at not buying fancy books. Buy books because owning them brings you joy. If you are lucky some might make some descendent of yours a tidy sum but don’t bank on it.

When I’m moving into a new subject, I try and find reviewers who have reviewed something I already know and look at those reviews. If we are in agreement (or they at least have good points) then I look at what they recommend.

On top of this, be willing to cut your losses. If you are reading for leisure you don’t have to read an entire book if you aren’t enjoying it/connecting with the ideas/curious author’s arguements. Give it a fair shake of course, but there are no prizes for finishing books you don’t like.