ONWARD AND UPWARD WITH TECHNOLOGY ABRIDGED TOO FAR

The world according to Blinkist.

-  ANTHONY LANE

Apps can boil down entire books into synopses lasting as little as ten minutes.

There are many reasons not to read a book. One, because you don’t want to. Two, because you started reading, crawled to page 17, and gave up. Three, because the idea of reading never crosses your mind. (If so, lucky you. That way contentment lies.) Four, because it’s Friday, which means that “W.W.E. SmackDown” is on Fox, which in turn means that Marilynne Robinson’s beatific new exegetical study of the Book of Genesis must, for now, be gently laid aside. Five, because reading a book is, you know, so lame. Only losers do it. And, six, because you simply don’t have the time.

But what if the need to read won’t go away? In a spasm of initiative and a sudden flush of guilt, you buy a Kindle and download “The House of the Seven Gables,” fully intending to complete, on the subway, what you left unfinished in college. Three weeks in, though, and you still haven’t got as far as Gable No. 1. You toy with joining a local book club, on the principle that having to read something, to keep pace with your fellow-clubbers, will be a fruitful challenge; what holds you back is a fear that the conversation will swiftly turn to campus protests. Before you know it, people will be throwing glasses of Chardonnay and slapping one another on the base of the skull with copies of “Getting to Yes.”

The most potent enemy of reading, it goes without saying, is the small, flat box that you carry in your pocket. In terms of addictive properties, it might as well be stuffed with meth. There’s no point in grinding through a whole book—a chewy bunch of words arranged into a narrative or, heaven preserve us, an argument—when you can pick up your iPhone, touch the