"34 hours! Not that Slate isn't fun, but I could have read Anna Karenina in that time. Curses, 'Explainer'!"

Farhad Manjoo -- who's got some program that records how much time he spends on each website -- frets over the information he's chosen to gather. Apparently, he wants to goad himself into a more efficient on-line lifestyle.

What interests me most here is the notion that one's reading time would be better spent reading substantial books, especially long, classic works of fiction. Why, really? There was that recent study that seemed to show that reading on line is more stimulating for the brain. And to me, reading on line feels much more active and creative, as you constantly make decisions about whether to go deeper or to branch out, where to branch out, and when to start something new.

If you are committed to a book, you keep going in linear fashion. You may think very deeply or skim along. That may be good, but what guilt trip makes us feel it would be better? And if books are better, why do we think of classic works of fiction as the gold standard? Why should we think it's bad to have spent an Anna Karenina amount of time reading on line?

And yet I still have some of that nagging feeling that all this on-line reading counts for less -- and even that it doesn't count at all... not that anyone is counting. (I won't get some cursed program to count for me.) I sometimes catch myself thinking: Am I reading all the time or not at all?