For a while I never noticed the new reading-time estimates that accompany Times headlines. Now I can’t help noticing them, and I’m aghast. Seeing an estimate attached to a review of two books about attention and technology makes my ironymeter go haywire.
Jacques Barzun: “Jane Austen could write novels in the family parlor and some people can think in a boiler factory, but it is foolish to take the hardest hurdles first when the power of attention is so rare.”