Category: Reading
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Decentralizing Your Media
The more you have in universal mediums, the better off you will be in the long term. I like BlueSky, even though people behave the same as they ever did. The lede: Bookshop is now selling ebooks, and the proceeds from ebook sales goes to local, independent booksellers. Supporting indie brick-and-mortar’s has always kind of…
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Riffs On: Shadow Libraries
Last year I read Syria’s Secret Library, and then dug into the reporting behind the book (permalink), a project of love in a time when Darayya – just outside Damascus – was under siege. “In many cases we get books from bomb or shell-damaged homes. The majority of these places are near the front line,…
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The Loss of the “Literary Man”
The headline is simple but does what it can to rattle the alarms: The Disappearance of Literary Men Should Worry Everyone. The author spends a lot of the essay pointing out how the numbers and proportions of male/female students, writers, readers, etc. have changed over the decades. Yes, duh. They’ve dropped across the board. Oh,…
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Why Kids Can’t Read
I have no patience for podcasts. I leave it to my wife to decide what gets listened to on long road trips (or, in the winter, when a 1,000 piece puzzle is littered all over the dining table). During our drive back from Savannah, where we spent the week of Thanksgiving and adopted our darling…
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Riffs on: Reading Well
The current reality: reading isn’t a priority. When newspapers were still a stalwart of our cultural hegemony, even they were written at a 7th grade reading level. After all, everyone needs to know the news. I far the average reading level is far less than that. There is the story about the woman suing because…
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The path to better brains
Write more. All the time. See what your thoughts look like on paper. Writing by hand conditions fine motor control. This can help with everything from improving synapse connections to properly fingering your partner to orgasm. Read better. Learn to read a text deeply and thoroughly. Ideally, spend large amounts of time with novels published…
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Teens Will Do Whatever It Takes To Not Read William Faulkner
And it is true that children are annoying. But I do think that all these hysterical stories that people love to circulate to prove that the younger generation is doomed because of wokeness, illiteracy, pro-Palestinian politics or whatever, overlook one very important fact: teens will do whatever it takes not to read William Faulkner. -Jessica…
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This Black Box of Doom is getting Heavy
It’s billed as “satire,” but, man, I don’t know. Maybe it was the vibe of the trip, but I picked up this book when we were recovering from Helene in Charleston. At the same time, in the same shop, I also bought Loneliness & Company. Both books addressing more or less the same problem: tech…
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Failing Creativity – Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act
“Hate” is such a strong word, but I can’t get my head around Rubin’s dumb book any other way. I’ve soured on Rubin over the years as he has shifted from less business and more “creativity,” wandering the world in his unruly, unwashed opulence. Sure, he looks the part of a creative guru, but my…