reading
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A Book Voyage with No Guide
As the number of Americans who read books has declined, those who do read have begun wearing t-shirts, carrying tote bags, and sticking magnets on their fridges declaring their love of reading. Some book lovers even perform “book stunts,” reading…
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On Changing Things
Over at the New York Review of Books blog, Tim Parks gives us a short, historical narrative concerned with the ways in which our changing attention spans have altered our reading experiences, as well what forms of literature we are…
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Just Read All of the Books
Why is offering book recommendations so hard? People solicit book recommendations from their well-read friends all the time, but too often we’re left seemingly stumped to provide them with the best book possible. Swapna Krishna over at BookRiot points out…
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Influence Without Anxiety
Inspiration comes from many sources, including the books we read. As we internalize other authors’s work, they inevitably influence our writing (often without us ever knowing). The novelist Kim Triedman explores the relationship writers have to the books they read…
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Reading: Still Probably a Good Idea
We linked to an Atlantic article in January about the recent decline in readers in America. According to the article, 23 percent of Americans went without reading a single novel in 2013. Now, Time has a summary of a recent study of reading’s…
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The Emancipation of Digital Reading?
Is it possible to read War and Peace on an iPhone? In the Pacific Standard, Casey Cepp considers whether apps can actually help us become better, more thoughtful readers: This literary diet will not be for everyone. But the emancipation of digital reading habits, like those of…
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Discussion Nostalgia, Book Clubbing
Up on your wall behind your office desk is a small sheet of paper, gold-leaf embossed, an emblem in the bottom right hand corner—it reads: The University of Something-or-Rather in authoritative print. But is the paper just filling space? You…
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A Reader’s Imaginative Freedom is Absolute
Reading is a private activity, even as it allows us to commune with the mind and imagination of an author we will probably never meet. Yet because reading a great book can be so overwhelmingly gratifying and transformative, many of…
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The Best Stories Leave an Aftertaste
In her deeply personal essay on The Millions, Allison K. Gibson explains some of the intense literary cravings she experienced during her pregnancy. Some of them were unexpected, even violent, but all were led entirely by intuition. “Now I had…
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America Not Exactly a Nation of Book Lovers
According to a recent Pew poll, 23 percent of Americans didn’t read even a single book last year. That number has been rising steadily, from 8 percent in 1978, to 16 percent in 1990, to the current figure. The Atlantic‘s Jordan…
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Make Reading a New Year’s Resolution!
The folks over at BOOKish have a wonderful idea: add reading to your list of New Year’s resolutions. They have helpful hints for how you can accomplish this: “Read a new author It’s so difficult to determine which authors are…
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Thanksgivukkah Reading
Over at WNPR this week Maureen Corrigan offers up a “Literary Escape Plan” from holiday stress. The Borsch Belt-style Pilgrim jokes and mishmash recipes (turkey brined in Manischewitz, anyone?) are flying around the Internet; but since Jews are frequently referred…