‘To be or not to be’ may be the question but when it comes to eliciting answers, I’ve always preferred Mr Darcy’s epic conversation starter: ‘What think you of books?’

Two hundred years on, it has become harder than ever to find out what anyone actually thinks of books – and not just because our attention spans have been so corroded by dopamine addiction.

There are more books published today than ever. TikTok creates relentless literary sensations, and the day after the murder of Charlie Kirk, AI-produced histories were available on Amazon giving ‘the full story’. If social media is to be believed, everyone is reading so much it’s impossible to keep up. But what matters most is not what you think about books but how your books look.

Conspicuous competitive reading posted on social medi

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