00:11
Okay, so I can see Masaka, you're tired, so let's keep this one short and sweet.
No, don't worry about it. There are days like that.
And we both worked in the lab on Sundays, so...
Not encouraged, but oh well.
It is what it is.
Anyway, I wanted to share my brief thoughts about my e-reader experience
now that I've had it for two months, three months.
Yeah, and I love it. I think it encourages my 衝動買い a lot more.
Yeah, I know. I know. I just, you know, once you click it, you can buy it.
Exactly, like I don't even have to wait for the book to be delivered.
I don't have to go to a bookstore to buy them.
It is slightly more expensive, I think, typically, than I think if you had gone to like a used
bookstore or something. So that's why I try to buy books that I don't think is available in used
bookstores. So kind of, it tends to be a little bit more 専門書より because I know that they're
not probably available at book off. But having said that, it also encouraged me to read random
books on a whim. Like, yeah, one day I'm like, I'm tired tonight. I don't really want to look
at work anymore after dinner. And I just scroll through, usually go through 本屋大賞
You know this award?
本屋大賞, yes, yes, I know.
本屋大賞, it's an award selected by the people who sell books, like the bookshop keepers.
So it's kind of, you know, people who love books pick these awards. So I tend to trust them,
especially the early years. Like when they first started doing this, I don't know how long ago,
maybe 20 years ago, maybe not that long ago. Yeah, I like especially the early ones because
they have had some hits for me when I picked from 本屋大賞.
It's interesting because if you look up 本屋大賞,
like 歴代の本屋大賞みたいな, you can see like the top 10 of every year.
Yeah, I can see that.
03:01
And you can definitely see a certain type of trend, whether it's authors or like the genre
of the books. It's almost always novels, first of all. I don't know if that's part of the criteria,
that it has to be a fictional novel.
Probably, yeah.
But I don't know, maybe just that non-fictions are less popular.
Non-fictions are less popular, I see. Or divided, maybe.
Or yeah, it's too divided for the 評点集まる.
So, and I also see popular authors who are in 本屋大賞.
I see the same names every year, kind of thing.
But it's also interesting, some years there's like 100 points separation between the first
and the second prize. And things like that. It's very interesting.
It's huge, like 2018, the first 大賞 is over 600 points.
The 10th is like 88, so there's a huge deviation.
Yeah, exactly. So sometimes there's a huge deviation.
And yeah, so I like picked a couple, I found my favorite author through this 本屋大賞.
And I also found some books that I wouldn't otherwise pick based on a title,
or the covers based on this.
Of course, with any book, you don't always love it.
But generally speaking, I have decent luck picking books from this list.
And even if you don't like it, you now know the content of this very popular
and frequently talked about books. So you can discuss with your friends,
which is honestly the most fun part about reading books, right?
Like discussing with other friends.
So I haven't looked at the recent list, but sometimes if I don't really know what I want
to read, I go scroll through this list and like, oh, okay, this title sounds cool.
Or like, oh, this one won by like 500 points.
So I'm gonna like, you know, it must be really good for that year or something.
So yeah, having an e-reader is super helpful in that regard.
It does encourage your 衝動買い.
And because if it's fictional novels, I can usually go through them very quickly.
So I just like blow through it.
And then the next day I buy another book or something.
06:00
Yeah, but I think it's better than mindlessly scrolling on internet sometimes.
Yeah, much, much better.
This is very hypocritical of me because just an episode ago,
I said that I don't subscribe to 新年の目標.
But I have one sort of like, it's not 新年, it's just like it's been ongoing theme for
the past, I would say a couple of years for me, is trying to be more mindful about the
quality of information I expose myself to.
And with Instagram, with Twitter, like with all the other random internet news website,
it's so easy to like, I mean, I don't know about you,
but I frequently find myself reading the most pointless, the most pointless
like content off of internet when I'm not thinking about it, when I'm just too tired.
Yeah, that happens to me too.
And it's not good.
It's not good.
It's just wasting the time, your time.
I don't care about like, I mean, if you think about it, I just kind of read it thinking
this is like, oh, this is me studying like the trends, like what's happening in a world
or like, what do other people who are like, you know, like Arasa thinking about?
And I read like, essays that talk about like how this person like, cannot go to the favorite
cafe anymore because of X and Y and Z.
And it's like, I cannot care less.
Like that gave me zero, zero informational content, educational or helpful.
And it didn't even make me feel good.
So like, why?
You know, I tried to.
Why would you?
Yeah, I know.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Or like read about, I don't know.
Yeah.
It makes, it's made to, you know, read those.
Yeah, yeah.
It's made to click things.
Yeah.
And then one click is followed by another click.
Exactly.
And your algorithm learns that you like that.
And then they give you more of that.
And I think about, you know, we are what we think about.
And not to say that all books are high quality content, because that's not true either.
But at least there has been multiple people who went through the draft.
It took a lot of time for somebody to write this and check this and get through the publication
process.
And I think there's a little bit of quality assurance there.
It is then up to you to decide, you know, if this was a good read or not.
But I feel like the baseline quality is guaranteed.
09:04
If you're reading published, like published books, published news article, like not one
of those, I don't know who you are blogs, or like, kind of like random essayist who use
pen names and don't even let you like, figure out your sources.
And I, yeah, so I just think that I saw so having an e-reader is just helpful in just
instead of scrolling random noise on the internet, I can randomly pick a book.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So there's that.
So I think I'll continue to use this.
I decided to ask for my parents, my Christmas present to be like, my ebook purchases, like,
you know, I'll like get like a little gift card for them.
And like, they can supply more of my Shodogai of the books.
Yeah, I have a lot of tsundoku, but we can talk about it on another episode.
All right.
That's it.
That's it for the show today.
Thanks for listening.
And find us on X at Eigo de Science.
That is E-I-G-O-D-E-S-C-I-E-N-C-E.
See you next time.
