(…) enormous numbers of Americans say they wish they read more than they do, if only they could figure out how. It is to such persons that the following is addressed. – Matthew Walther, The Hundred Pages Strategy, The Lamp Magazine (December 2024)
(If you’re not interested in my love of reading, go print out ‘The Hundred Pages Strategy’ instead. It’s a much better loveletter.)
Pocket’s imminent closure really awoke something in me. I didn’t know that old flame from 2022 still burned so hot 😉 I haven’t used Pocket in ages. And there are other apps that promise to help you read more, like Matter, and Omnivore ElevenReader?…, but none of them have ever really changed my behavior.
I still save web articles for later reading though, and I actually struggle a little less to find time to read these days. (I’ll share my secret in an upcoming post.) And obviously, in this age of vibe coding, a friend and I are thinking of developing our own read-it-later app, if only for private use.
So why does Pocket’s shutdown mean so much to me? It’s not about the indie apps of the early web, of which Pocket was one. And it’s not because ‘reading matters’. At least, not in the way a lot of today’s discourse talks about reading. Emphasizing the productivity gains of reading – increased empathy, brain health, cognitive and analytical skills – are, honestly, in my mind, kind of gross.
I worry. I worry about how I’m so much less able to just sit down and actually read for enjoyment. Not like I used to. Our culture produces some of the greatest reading material civilization has ever produced, at a huge scale. We can’t even read it all. And to me, Pocket’s failure as a product was that it didn’t help me read even the few things I signaled intent on. Pocket helped us save so many articles, yet it never bothered to help us actually enjoy any of it.
I despise myself for not reading more because deep down, I think of reading, and especially reading ‘the good stuff’, sort of as a civic duty, a moral obligation. Something I owe to myself and others. Maybe you feel the same way. It’s an important ritual, one that we’ve been neglecting, and everybody is worse off for it. So when I’m disappointed in Pocket, maybe I’m actually more disappointed in myself.
So when my friend and I build our own read-it-later app, it has to be better at one thing. It has to help us read more. Help us sit down and enjoy great writing (like Matthew Walther’s The Hundred Pages Strategy, seriously).
If I were to build a read-it-later product, it would aim at that specifically.