A Year in Reading: Alejandro Varela
In the best of times, I find reading a chore, possibly because my brain wasn’t built to give attention to a page full of small, immobile characters. This space isn’t the venue to delve into the science that links intergenerational, in utero, or early childhood stress to attention span. You’ll simply have to trust me; the peer-reviewed literature exists, and if I were able to focus for long enough, I would read and summarize it for you.
In the worst of times, my desire and responsibility to read also compete with the Internet, the siege of Gaza, the water crises in Jackson and Flint, and the rise of Elon Musk. What’s the point of reading, after all, if we’re careening toward doom? But that’s life. One does all manner of things between
