[5/18/26] I Read Now

Not that I was illiterate or anything. And I actually read quite a lot - if Reddit counts…

Point is books. I didn’t really read any literature as they call it. Brave New World and 1984 are the only exceptions (both of which were re-reads).

Now, I don’t really watch any short-form video, but, I do spend too much time (as a viewer) on YouTube. Often rendering me lethargic soon after. Or at least feeling wasteful. But coincidentally, it was on Youtube that I stumbled across this video:

And this idea, of an e-reader in your pocket, was super attractive to me. And not in the (brainwash marketing) sense of the ReMarkable and products like it - that sell this image of digital minimalism while in-fact selling you another device. No. Moreso in the sense of:

Having the incentive to read always in your pocket.

Now I know. Smartphones already do this with a single app. But… digital minimalism haha!

I bought the build-guide for the e-reader but couldn’t bother. Instead I got a XTEINK x4 device. It looks like this:

And did it get me to read?

Yes!

In the last 2 month’s I’ve finished:

  1. Animal Farm
  2. Harrison Bergeon
  3. Project Hail Mary (I have gripes with the movie)
  4. Slaughter-House Five
  5. The Anxious Generation
  6. The Diary of a Young Girl
  7. Watership Down

I’m telling you - limiting the page-per-page scope to a few sentences at a time really lengthens my sessions. My eyes take longer to gloss over.

Also, Anne Frank (The Diary of a Young Girl) already having better writing than me at 13 was a real blow. We (sorry to bring you down with me) may be out of practice.

I keep running into new vocabulary. And since the XTEINK doesn’t have a built-in dictionary (like the Kindle does), I now carry around this dictionary everywhere I go:

Minimalism is truly out the window. But my objective was to read more. And that I did.