I Read A Book in One Sitting

Yesterday I got to ride Amtrak for almost 5 hours going North, get off the train, give a 45 minute sales presentation, then get back on the train and go home. Not the most productive use of my time, for sure. On the way North I was working. It turns out canceling meetings because I'm on a train is a pretty good way to get 4.5 hours of uninterrupted work time.

On the way home I wasn't interested in working. I had Uncanny Valley by Anna Weiner in my backpack so as the train started South I settled in to read. I was in business class so the train car was reasonably quiet, I didn't even bother to put my headphones on. Somehow I managed to go 4.5 hours with nobody calling me and no major distractions from the train. I simply read a book in a reasonably comfortable train seat with just the background noise of the train as kind of a white noise.

It was glorious. I have no idea when the last time I read a book for 4.5 uninterrupted hours was. Very likely it was sometime in the last century.

I do have thoughts about the book, which will probably be shared via another blog post in the next few days. In the meantime, booking a cross country train trip and bringing a stack of books suddenly seems like a really awesome idea.

*Actually I was about 20 pages shy of done when the train pulled into the Richmond station. Close enough.