After a long period of reading very little fiction (and even less on deadtree), I’ve been rereading some SF in my bookshelf (the Culture series in particular) and I’ve been positively surprised how easy it has been to reach the "zone" where you aren’t constantly losing your focus or trying to fight the instinct to reach for an electronic device. Starting is the hardest part. It helps, of course, when the author’s prose is as compelling as Banks’s (RIP).