Novels are an endangered art form. In the early 1990s, more than 60% of American adults finished at least one book a year; today, fewer than half do. Gen Z often takes the heat for this decline, but we’re all to blame — including me, a time-poor millennial with two young kids, two phones and a roughly-two-minute attention span.
Each January, for the last few years, I have set myself a (what I thought to be) perfectly achievable New Year’s resolution: to read, for the sake of pleasure alone, 12 books in 12 months. And each fall, for the last few years, I found myself behind schedule and shamelessly attempting to game my own challenge. What if I blasted through some poetry to make up the numbers? And plays counts, right? They’re technically books but are short enough, almost by definition, to finish in one sitting.
