Unplugged: what I learned by logging off and reading 12 books in a week

[demmiblue]

On a Sunday in mid-December, I drove towards Nevada City, a former Gold Rush mining camp in the foothills of the Sierras in northern California. I had rented a secluded internet-free cabin – a “tiny house” to be precise – outside town.

My mission: to detox my brain by logging off my social media accounts and trying to read 30 books in a week. To prepare for the trip, I had gone to six independent bookstores to locate copies of the National Book Award longlists for fiction, nonfiction and poetry.

This was a perfect assignment. For journalists on many beats – including mine, which includes the far right and gun policy – it had been a year of escalating violence during which conspiracy theories had moved into the mainstream. By December, I was exhausted and anxious. I craved the most American form of self-care: I wanted to get away with something.

My co-workers had plenty of opinions on my new mission. One of them loudly referred to it as “your vacation” whenever she thought our editor was listening.

How many books? How many days? How had this happened?

“I am very good at reading,” I replied with dignity.

By the time I drove to Nevada City, I was already three days into the experiment, which I had eased into gently: no Twitter, Facebook or Instagram, but still occasional email for work. (I did not Farhad this assignment, in the style of the New York Times columnist who wrote about a Twitter detox while still tweeting daily.)

I was not going to finish all 30 books at any cost, skimming to the right section of the right chapter in order to say one smart thing – in the US, we call this skill a “liberal arts education” – but instead wanted the books’ authors and their protagonists to collide and argue with each other, to give me some different understanding of what had happened in 2018.

I arrived at the tiny house in late afternoon, built a fire, sat down on the couch and opened my first novel: An American Marriage (Tayari Jones), which follows a well-educated, middle-class black couple after the husband, Roy, is wrongfully convicted of rape and sentenced to 12 years in prison.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/dec/29/social-media-detox-read-books-one-week?CMP=twt_gu&__twitter_impression=true

[mickswalkabout41]

1. Such an excellent read

And now I have plans to do the same. I was plugged into the mass media in a great 20 plus year career in photo journalism. I still find it alluring and inticing. But I believe it’s time for me to step away too. Off to the bookstore I go, to ease my weary mind and find my soul

[Polly Hennessey]

2. "The saddest thing in the world is not hatred

but the failure of love.” Thanks for posting the article.