Books are not tasks to check off a to-do-list.

They are experiences—potentially transformative ones.

Treating a book like a task to be gotten through is the same as sprinting across a beautiful ridge-line to get to the next mountain peak.

You miss the panoramic views. And even if you do look up once in a while to stare out across the endless forest, or to admire the bald eagle soaring overhead, you experience no transcendent sense of awe because your mind is occupied with nagging thoughts about how you’re wasting time and not working towards your next goal of bagging that next peak.