Invisible Cities was the first book I put on my Kindle Paperwhite. I remember I got the actual device for ludicrously cheap on ebay, and it felt like a magical device that would change my life. I dreamed about the possibility of keeping an entire stash of comfort books on the device. I mainly kept the device in the car, for days parked alongside the Alaskan highway reading in the sun, because I am a person who enjoys possibilities more than experiencing things.

There is a line from a story by Camus where a bookshop owner says "History shows, that the more people buy books, the less they read." I don't think I ever read in the car, or even used it for the first year I had it. I had a lot of fun using Calibre and using Google-fu to try to pirate the books I wanted to read- I didn't have a private tracker invite or anything special, and it feels as though the pirate world for epubs and mobis is the least developed and the most treacherous. I'm pretty sure it's because libraries already do a good job of filesharing.

Here's when I finally read with it: while in trains, greyhounds, and airplanes. It's the only place where reading is an isolated activity, and the perhaps the only time when I don't feel guilty about enjoying my time. I'm always surprised at how quickly time passes. It just occurred to me that this is probably the part of traveling that I enjoy the most, and I should probably embrace this.

That said, I am someone who has trouble reading books, period. I joke to myself that I only read to fuck interesting people, and the longer I think about it the better I get at convincing myself that it's actually true. I am a person who enjoys possibilities more than experiencing things.