Reading Online
Looking at my recent blog history, you’ll find that it has been rather book–centric. This is largely a function of a quick book review being easier to write than a longer, more personal post; however, it belies how much of my time I actually spend reading books. I sometimes bemoan the fact that I read less than I used to, but I think I can chalk that behavior up to three factors:
- I read a lot more in high school
- I still get to read more than most people
- I now read more content online
The first point is part of growing up, and the second point is part of a larger sociological question that I’m not qualified to address, so I’ll focus on the third point: how and where do I find and read short- and long-form content on the web? The list probably won’t be too surprising (Twitter, Facebook, blogs, news sites, etc.), but I’ll go into more detail on what clients I use to keep track of everything. It should not be surprising that my acquisition of an iPad in April of 2010 significantly changed how I interact with text online.
This has been a topic kicking around my head for close to a year, since I spend a lot of time connected, although some of my reading/archiving methods have changed over time. The most recent inspiration to write this up was a discussion I had with my mom back in October about how to save articles that she finds online, the way one might clip an article from a physical newspaper. Another one was this post from Brett Nordquist in May of last year about personal online recommendations, in which we happen to use a lot of the same sources/services.
Below the cut, my rather verbose recommendations on how to quickly filter a wide variety of text content online for eventual reading.
