Retro Readers Solidarity Club

An introduction and an invitation

The seed for this solidarity club was a reader’s comment on my first By My Reckoning essay of 2025.

She was responding to this passage (I presume):

I know I don’t think like I used to. Much of the time—certainly when I’m trying to think through complex or inter-related ideas—my mental processes feel fractured, my thoughts easily disrupted, my ability to concentrate corrupted. I’ve become frustratingly distractible. Also, I used to be a bookworm. I was able to sink into a novel and be absorbed for hours—yes, even when I had little kids (that’s what nap time was for—a daily sacred ritual). Today, I start reading and almost immediately my mind wanders . . . unless I’m scrolling social media or reading online. Then I’m easily absorbed and time slips away from me, so caught up am I in the web of information and ideas and opinions being culled for me by whatever algorithm is tracking and holding—and molding—my attention. Offering me link upon link upon link, ad infinitum.

My diminished ability to focus really bothers me. And it makes me want to leave the internet—take a really long break from all social media and just spend a bunch of months, maybe even years, reading books, not websites. Writing by hand, not typing. Re-learning to concentrate and think effectively again. It too often feels like I’m stuck in the shallows, mentally swimming in circles while I am longing to dive back below the surface of life and explore concepts and truths in depth and on demand.

Rachel, the reader, felt similarly and commented (in part):

I was wanting to give myself a goal of how many paper books I will read this year but I need people to join me or I don’t think it will happen.

I too miss sinking into a novel for hours. Now it is mostly audio books —and usually at night when the priority is sleep. Otherwise it is largely articles.

Since companionship helps motivate as well as provide a prompt of accountability, I jumped on board the idea of creating a place where like-minded real world reading aspirationists (new word!😎) can meet and share our experiences and Recommended Books lists and offer one another support for the effort of resisting the online compulsion. After a brief delay, due to me forgetting to act on the idea (classic me), I started a thread in my BMR subscriber Chat and found there was plenty of interest. After pondering the options, I decided to create our solidarity club as a separate sub-section to By My Reckoning. (Click this button if you want to join Retro Readers.)

My thought is that I will occasionally write here about what I’m reading, as well as seek writing by others, whether personal book reviews or musings inspired by their own reading, from anyone in the group who wants to share their thoughts as a post. Conversations can occur in the comments, and if the topic is a specific title I will use a thumbnail photo of that book for easy search reference.

I know that traditionally book clubs involve everyone agreeing to read a book and discuss, and I’m quite happy to host that here for anyone who wants that format, but I’m not likely to participate. As I said in the initial Chat:

One of my personality quirks? weaknesses? failures? is that the minute I feel obligated to read something I suddenly don't want to. My inner contrarian comes out and it feels like homework and I procrastinate and resist.

So while I might not engage in the reading and discussion (but who knows, maybe giving myself permission NOT to will inspire my interest—a little reverse psychology on myself 🤓), it wouldn’t be hard to create a post for everyone else to use as their discussion space. Also, anyone who wants to recommend a book could write a little blurb about it—why they read and/or liked it—and that can be a post that prompts a retroactive book discussion, if others have read it and want to discuss. (Come to think of it, I have a few I could do in that vein. . . .)

Some other thoughts about this space I had, again from the subscriber Chat:

~ Everyone reads whatever book they want, whether fiction or non.

~ If some club members want to choose a book to read together, either as a once-a-month thing, or bi-monthly, or sporadically, some could do that and not everyone needs to opt in.

~ We each could make and share our reading goals for the year (e.g. one book per month, or read War & Peace, or read 3 fiction and 3 non-fiction, whatever . . . everyone's mileage may vary).

Really the point here is just to create an open space for all things retro reading-inspired.

Lastly, as I mentioned in the Chat, I'm currently reading a book that a reader recommended to me in the comments of my Finding Faith in a Technotopia essay. It’s called The Extinction of Experience: Being Human in a Disembodied World, by Christine Rosen.

If any of you out there in subscriber-land want to read and discuss this book, I highly recommend it and it would make for a great conversation to launch this initiative. It's certainly a relevant book for our purposes here. Here’s the Amazon link, and the blurb about it:

A reflective, original invitation to recover and cultivate the human experiences that have atrophied in our virtual world.

We embraced the mediated life―from Facetune [sic] and Venmo to meme culture and the Metaverse―because these technologies offer novelty and convenience. But they also transform our sense of self and warp the boundaries between virtual and real. What are the costs? Who are we in a disembodied world?

In The Extinction of Experience, Christine Rosen investigates the cultural and emotional shifts that accompany our embrace of technology. In warm, philosophical prose, Rosen reveals key human experiences at risk of going extinct, including face-to-face communication, sense of place, authentic emotion, and even boredom. Considering cultural trends, like TikTok challenges and mukbang, and politically unsettling phenomena, like sociometric trackers and online conspiracy culture, Rosen exposes an unprecedented shift in the human condition, one that habituates us to alienation and control. To recover our humanity and come back to the real world, we must reclaim serendipity, community, patience, and risk.

Let me know if this appeals to you and we can officially launch with a group read and discussion. Otherwise, we’ll just piecemeal it and create our club as we go. In any case, don’t forget to hit the Subscribe 👇🏻button👇🏻 if you want to be a part of it!