Books have become such an engrained part of our culture, it's easy to lose sight of how divorced they are from "normal" (on an evolutionary time-scale) uses of language. Usually, language is reciprocal, bi-directional - you speak I listen, then I speak and you listen.

But books (usually) only go one way - the author speaks, the reader listens. This allows strong power-laws to take hold, so that a small handful of speakers take up a very disproportionate amount of people's attention.

This is another argument for Alan to make some friends, with whom he can practice the more balanced language-art of conversation.

As an aside, this reminds me of my fantasy of parsers becoming sophisticated enough that instead of books, authors can write chat-bots that allow readers to feel "heard" by the author.