At one point I would've read a large number of books, the implications of which I did not understand. (Here come the black squiggles.) It seems hard to do this as an adult for reasons of ego. I avoid feeling stupid, and imagine I am not the only one given how few people go to the library (and how much people like simple explanations of things). Yet surely reading a book I don't understand at all is the best way to learn about whatever subject it describes? I don't yet know the qualities and ideas that I don't know. But this is hard, materially - I have to sit for hours, looking at the black squiggles, and try to form them into pictures and ideas in my head by dint of their juxtaposition. Sometimes I don't know what the individual black squiggles indicate, let alone their larger structure.