Yeah, I'll agree with you! I'm now more interested in trying to engage with things (by doing skills or learning about them) than I am in just opening up more doors of potential. We're in the do stuff stage of life now, where for good or for ill, the amount of options/potential for ways we could spend our time dwindle every day. (This isn't inherently bad; but to dedicate yourself to learning music, you might not have the time or money to invest in learning to riding a horse, etc.) I'm aware of more options now than I could capitalize on in 5 lifetimes, much less the rest of this 1!

There's also not... as much that's completely new? Like, I frequently see a movie or read a book or play a game and know 'wow, I would've been WILD about this 15 years ago, it's a much better version of Thing I Was Into Then but have now tired out as an interest for myself currently'. I notice this with motifs/aesthetics I really like, and also NOTABLY with things that have archetypes or themes I really enjoy but have already thought about a lot.

I used to find meaning almost exclusively in other people and relationships, but that isn't working out for the way my life is. I am getting better about finding depth in other things independently, but it's required a lot of reworking away from other current human beings (which is challenging as a very social person). It's complicated and more personal than I think /r/books needs as to why that's necessary for me LOL. But history, ecology, and religion/spirituality is helping me find that depth in new places. Again, all non-fiction type topics rather than stories about people doing things for one another and navigating challenges between themselves!

Reselling books unfortunately will not net you very much. Even pristine books frequently are only worth a couple of dollars to places that just buy books from people outright. If you need the turn around immediately, something like Sell Back Your Book might be your best option....

Yes. I think there's a few reasons why.

When I was younger, I found fiction instructive. I had lame to non-existent model/mentor/parental figures and sourced most of my values and food for thought from media, from stories. (I happened to find these things really important innately; my siblings, however, did not, lol.) Fiction fed my sense of what was important and also fed my sense of aspiration for what life could be like - what could I do? what mattered? who would I meet? I had very little interest in non-fiction. It was story that mattered to me.

When I got to high school and reality set in that options were limited, particularly if your idolized roles in life were from the fantasy genre, I stopped being able to read due to some emotional issues. They were windows into worlds I would never experience. Realistic fiction didn't interest me, and real people were getting more limiting and frustrating by the day.

I've gotten back into reading in the last few years, but it's been specifically non-fiction. Spiritual-religious texts of the particular background that interest me, crafts/skills, tiny side of history from eras I find interesting. I find it particularly hard to find fiction I care about (and that ranges beyond books for me, I'm afraid). It doesn't feel like it matters anymore, most of the time. My fiction was never about escapism; it felt directly applicable to my life. But life my life hasn't ended up needing most of the themes I learned. If anything, it's just made me hurt noticing where real life doesn't tend to have the depth, meaning, or care that exists in story.

But at least the skills or knowledge still feels like I might be able to do something with it, gain something by it, besides noticing absence.

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Reading through other comments, it feels like a certain pattern holds: youth read for growth and older read for entertainment. It just depends on whether your growth is given via fiction (food for thought, creativity, etc) or non-fiction (skills and knowledge).

I agree that the pace of information and its depth in media in the last ~5 ish years in particular seem altered. More seems to happen, more characters are present, less time and detail is spent anywhere in particular. For someone like myself who has increasingly left short attention span entertainment (Reddit, as you can see, is my one scrolling vice I succumb to for a few days every few weeks), it's very noticeable. I am not trained to process that much info, or to not want more than a few words on something, before moving on. It feels weird; I suppose it's a sort of communication culture shock to try and experience recently released books, movies, and shows in many cases.