Are you an actual book nerd, or are you just 'performative reading'?

Before Sebastian Castillo cracks open a book on the bus, he has an intrusive thought: Should he tap the stranger next to him on the shoulder and clarify that yes, he’s starting this book on Page 1, but he has, in fact, read many other books before? Castillo, a novelist and English literature instructor, said he realizes that is extreme. He'd never do that. But the urge reflects a recent anxiety that has burgeoned around the act of reading in public in the digital age, when everything is scrutinized as possibly “performative.”