A lot of people have been talking about The Atlantic’s story about the end of reading. A few people have asked me what I think. I have thought about it and come to a conclusion.

I don’t care.

One of the toughest parts of existing in the digital era is the constant intellectual triaging one has to do to preserve their peace. Much in the way a lie can spread across the world before the truth has the chance to get its pants on, an emotional reaction—by definition of being an emotional reaction—can run circles around our psyche before any rational thought occurs. We face an unrelenting barrage of people telling us to care about things. Sometimes they’re right and we should. But most of the time they’re not. Despite writing a newsletter about books, I simply do not care if other people are reading books. It is delightful and liberating to admit I don’t care about something people are trying to convince me to care about. I’m going to do it more often.

But the question today is not whether other people are reading books. It is whether I am reading books. I haven’t sent an edition of this monthly newsletter in—gasp—four months! I won’t hold you in suspense. The answer is yes, yes, yes! Of course I am reading books.

But hold on to your butts folks because I got some big news: I have started reading fiction again for the first time in five years.

This change of preference did not occur gradually. It was, much to my shock, instantaneous. I was 87 pages into my fifth book of my China series. The first four China books were long, so I was pushing 3,000 pages on the subject in just a few months. I won’t name names, but the book in question was poorly written in the way many books by academics are, violating Orwell’s rules of writing so flagrantly it would have been more expedient to simply urinate on his tombstone. And I thought to myself, I would give anything to read a good sentence. I wonder where I could find one. And I realized I would be much more likely to find one in a fiction book.

Since then, I’ve been alternating between fiction and non-fiction. The pick of the litter so far has been the Lew Archer detective series by Ross MacDonald. It is clever, thoughtful, the writing is terrific, and the title character has just the right mix of cynicism and self-deprecating humor. The familiar rhythms of a well-executed noir comfort me, like hearing a favorite band over and over.

Don’t worry, this isn’t going to become a fiction recommendation newsletter. I know very little about what makes good fiction. I analyze fiction the same way I do classical music, with the absolute bare minimum of sophistication. But it is refreshing to read books I can let wash over me.

On the non-fiction front, here are some books from the last few months which did have good sentences:

• Little Bosses Everywhere: How the Pyramid Scheme Shaped America, Bridget Read. I read this in about two days. Many very good sentences. My tolerance for books about how the modern American economy is fundamentally built on scams and schemes is extremely high.

• London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family's Search for Truth, Patrick Radden Keefe. For my money the greatest non-fiction writer currently at it. Didn’t read the article the book is based on so went in fresh. I suggest doing the same if you can.

• The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst, David Nasaw. Naturally I found the bits about how Hearst built a newspaper empire the most fascinating. He understood a great deal about human nature, nearly all of which doesn’t reflect well on humans.

I hope everyone is reading books—or not, whatever—and I’ll see you next month.