There was a great article in Harpers about an English Lit professor visiting a tiktok house and he witnessed them form basketball teams and then they all just wandered off, and when he questioned why he was told oh they all get distracted we never actually play. The attention span of people raised in the digital world is very worrying.

What you said about the files system being good for authors but not for readers was quite interesting. It reminded me of something Umberto Eco said in one of his last interviews, "I am not a reader, I am a writer".

Steve, when you reach 100k you'll have to do a live read-along of 'The Road'. :)

Well, I sure wish you had done this before I made my "Has Steve read it" Season 2 video LOL

Just watched my first Ryan 'brotube' video. Never knew of him. I liked it ... anything that gets my bros and sistahs reading is to be commended. Sure he has a business angle but he's hardly hiding it.

Oh Steve you make me laugh so much!

He publishes a monthly (I think, but I’m not sure) newsletter where he lists the books he read.

While it is sad when people reduce reading to a transaction this way, I wonder if there isn't a silver lining. When the gurus talk about reading and the followers swallow it, you can't help but marvel at how highly esteemed the act of reading is, even among those who don't regularly participate. Monetize them, exploit them, ban them, burn them - at no point since Gutenberg did his thing has the book's reputation suffered - at no point has the centrality and importance of this thing we call the book been significantly called into question. That gives me hope.

But a page a day doesn’t even allow you to get interested! Unless of course it’s an unusually marvelous book. This is even-handed, and I really liked it.

Loved this Steve! I had never heard of him so I paused your video to check him out. I’m always happy for someone when they get a book published but it’s a turn off when they show it a dozen times in the first few minutes. I’ve never been lonely 🐈‍⬛🐈 🐈‍⬛🐈🐈‍⬛🐈 or bored 📚 How could anyone read just a page a day 😧 that’s like eating one potato chip. I get so much from a re-read. My books are well worn/ loved. It sounds like he’s a nice guy but just isn’t for me. I love how in Booktube there’s something for everyone 😊

My first foray into Stoicism was the novel A Man in Full by Tom Wolf, but unlike the characters, I didn’t convert. I took a quick glance at Ryan’s channel, but I think I’ll pass.

I'm not intrigued, you lost me after I heard the word stoicism 😉 I saw the title of this video and assumed it was an announcment to read Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan novels over the holidays 🤣 Btw if I read 200 books a year I'd probably lose my job too ! 😂😂

I'm over-commenting here (sorry) but it's an engaging video. Loneliness is an interesting phenomenon in that you can be surrounded by people and still be lonely. Such loneliness is not easily conquered, no simple mechanism existing to take it away. This, above all else, might be why we philosophize.

I cannot do him.

Well… “Just life your life” is a philosophy in itself, albeit not a formal one, and Christianity is surely a formal philosophy, even if most of its adherents follow very little of it, ignoring the rubriced parts of the Gospels as it suits them - those words ultimately at the heart of this particular philosophy. Your advice to not cut off parts of your life is also a philosophical stance. We can chide Stoics for their simplistic take on life, but I've yet to see someone articulate a philosophy of life - formal or otherwise - that didn't simplify an ultimately irreducible existence. Lao Tseu's stated axiom that “those who speak do not know” is maybe the closest we can hope to get. Alas, books are a form of speech, so speak we must at some point, and of that philosophies will spin themselves up unbidden. In the end, we are philosophizing animals.

I had an aunt who was raised in absolute misery and was a functionally illiterate adult. Anyone who compares this to "only reading a little" is ignorant and a fool. My aunt was a beautiful human being, who hid her illiteracy for years, and wanted desperately to be able to read a newspaper. To associate/compare what one reads with the inability to read is simply elitist double speak to make Ryan Holiday feel superior to others. Poor excuse for a human.