I sense in myself a disconnect between my desire to read longform journalism and my willingness to actually spend the time to do it.<p>It's as if I have a guilty, deep-down feeling that the longform stuff is the really good, nourishing stuff, and anything else is basically fast food.<p>But perhaps this is just not true anymore. Maybe it never was. I always come back to the adage “If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.”<p>When I think of a garden-variety longform piece, it is often one or more narrative components bolted onto lots of historical and background material. There is some new stuff, some reporting, some original thought -- but always laced with flourish and narrative.<p>Occasionally this is fun to read, but more often I just don't have the time. There is a time and a place, but as a matter of course, it's not practical anymore. One must carefully choose which long pieces to devote time to, whether they be longform articles, books, or otherwise. There is just so, so, so much to read.<p>I wonder why authors of this kind of thing don't put more energy into providing TL;DR executive summaries. Is it because it obviates their job? Or is a summary somehow less than the real thing?