What is ScreenSaver?

ScreenSaver is a weekly (at best) newsletter about any reading I do outside of my smartphone or laptop, a small chronicle of my attempts to save myself from a screen.

It began with an act of self-sabotage.

After failing to reduce my daily screentime by removing the apps for Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit—I just accessed those same sites from my web browser—I removed the browser itself. It proved a small disaster. I couldn't follow links, basic info eluded me, and I made an embarrassing habit of Siri, once asking "How old is Kate Winslett?" when watching "The Holiday" ("Asking a robot the age of a woman" will be a crime charged against me in the AI wars).

Instead of scrapping the plan entirely, I compromised by removing the browser from my visible apps, introducing more friction between me and my phone. At the same time, I began reading physical books again.

The experiment has worked.

Not only is my screentime down to about 1 hour a day, I've also started devouring novels. This is who I should have been when my book club was active, but, alas, half of my book club's members are now parents, and I've been assured that, while toddlers love books, babies hate book clubs.

The only problem with devouring books alone, then, is that I don't get to talk about them. So, once a week or so, I'm going to write about what I read because it's fun.

ScreenSaver is also decidedly not a series of book reviews, though the first month's posts read that way to "catch up" with prior reading. Some weeks may highlight just one sentence, some may lean on an article to go down a rabbit hole, and some may explore nothing at all.

And, of course, if you're asking how I can coherently use a screen to document my time away from one, my answer is easy: I don't care, and shut up. We're allowed some grace in this world and especially in any other ones we may find.