Short pieces are easy to consume, while a book or long essay asks for a sustained stretch of attention.
There is no shortage of things to read online. Most of them arrive in small pieces, designed to be understood quickly and replaced by the next one. Reading something substantial is a different activity. It asks me to hold an argument in mind, follow it across pages, and resist the urge to check something else.
The internet has made reading more convenient and more fragmented at the same time. I still enjoy the feeling of getting absorbed in a longer piece, but it can take a while to settle into it. That quiet stretch of reading now feels less ordinary than it should.