Tag: Books

Can’t Read. Won’t Read.

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…Many students no longer arrive at college—even at highly selective, elite colleges—prepared to read books…

…But the student told Dames that, at her public high school, she had never been required to read an entire book. She had been assigned excerpts, poetry, and news articles, but not a single book cover to cover…

…Now his students tell him up front that the reading load feels impossible. It’s not just the frenetic pace; they struggle to attend to small details while keeping track of the overall plot…

…(he) finds his students “shutting down” when confronted with ideas they don’t understand; they’re less able to persist through a challenging text than they used to be…his students have trouble staying focused on even a sonnet…

…Failing to complete a 14-line poem without succumbing to distraction suggests one familiar explanation for the decline in reading aptitude: smartphones. Teenagers are constantly tempted by their devices, which inhibits their preparation for the rigors of college coursework—then they get to college, and the distractions keep flowing. “It’s changed expectations about what’s worthy of attention…”

…Teachers at many schools shifted from books to short informational passages, followed by questions about the author’s main idea…

…300 third-to-eighth-grade educators, only 17 percent said they primarily teach whole texts. An additional 49 percent combine whole texts with anthologies and excerpts. But nearly a quarter of respondents said that books are no longer the center of their curricula…

…High-achieving students at exclusive schools like Columbia can decode words and sentences. But they struggle to muster the attention or ambition required to immerse themselves in a substantial text…

…A couple of professors told me that their students see reading books as akin to listening to vinyl records—something that a small subculture may still enjoy, but that’s mostly a relic of an earlier time.

…A 2023 survey of Harvard seniors found that they spend almost as much time on jobs and extracurriculars as they do on academics. And thanks to years of grade inflation (in a recent report, 79 percent of Harvard grades were in the A range), college kids can get by without doing all of their assigned work…

—  Rose Horowitch, from “The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books” (The Atlantic, October 1, 2024)

Photo: Dayan Rodio

You believe there is something?

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You believe there is something? she asks. I try to, yeah, Ivan answers. Some kind of order in the universe, at least. I do feel that sometimes. Listening to certain music, or looking at art. Even playing chess, although that might sound weird. It’s like the order is so deep, and it’s so beautiful, I feel there must be something underneath it all. And at other times, I think it’s just chaos, and there’s nothing. Maybe the whole idea of order just comes from some evolutionary advantage, whatever it is. We recognise patterns when there are no patterns. I don’t know. I’m not explaining myself very well. But when I experience that sense of beauty, it does make me believe in God. Like there’s a meaning behind everything.

— Sally Rooney, Intermezzo: A Novel (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, September 24, 2024)

Miracle. All of it.

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A leatherback, she’d once read, must cry two gallons of water every hour, just to keep its blood less salty than the sea.

— Richard Powers, Playground: A Novel (W. W. Norton & Company, September 24, 2024)

Notes:

  • Photo via Pexels: River Nelson-Esch
  • Post Title Inspired by Albert Einstein’s quote: “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle.”
  • Book Reviews:
    • NPR (July 7, 2024): “Pulitzer Prize-winner Richard Powers plunges deep into the ocean in ‘Playground”
    • NY Times (Sept 22, 2024): “First He Spoke for the Trees; Now He Speaks for the Sea”
    • The Guardian (September, 29 2024): “Playground by Richard Powers review – an electrifyingly beautiful tale of tech and the ocean”
      • “That Powers is an outstanding writer is hardly news. But with Playground, he proves himself a wizard. This novel is one long, clever magic trick. You approach the end thinking you have everything figured out. But then the author does something quite extraordinary – a move it would be criminal of me to give away. Let’s just say the reader is left reeling as the book’s conceit is revealed and the novel ascends to the plane of true, indisputable greatness.”

Monday Morning Wake-Up Call

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One of the things that I find haunting or difficult to accept is that I only get one life. I’m condemned to being myself, and I have to be me until the end. In a way, being a novelist allows me to get around that problem…

But what you’re talking about and what I’m talking about might be closer than you think. Because what you’re describing I also feel. Especially when I’m in the middle of a project and I close my laptop and return to my own life, I feel that sense of indescribable gratitude that I am alive on this earth, that my loved ones are a part my life and that I can experience the sensory reality of the earth that we share.⁠⁠

— Sally Rooney, in “Sally Rooney Thinks Growth is Overrated” (NY Times Interview by David Marchese, September, 21, 2024)

Sally Rooney’s new book Intermezzo is released tomorrow. Here’s the Irish Times book review. She is the best selling author of Conversations with Friends (2017), Normal People (2018), and Beautiful World, Where Are You (2021).

It was magic…

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The sweetest thing I read this week was a note from Cecilia Hogan, a reader in Tacoma, Wash. While waiting to pick up a book at her local library, she saw a 5-year-old boy applying for his first library card.

“The boy swam in excitement,” Ms. Hogan tells me, “bobbing from foot to foot, gurgling over each development the librarian devised. ‘Can you sign the back of the card?’ she asked. The boy nearly exploded. ‘You don’t have to write your whole name. How about just the first letter? A ‘Z,’ right?’ The boy took the pen from her and, after carefully executing a ‘Z,’ he added an ‘N’ and an ‘A.’ The more letters, the better, right?” 

Then it was time to put the card on a lanyard — his own lanyard. “The boy was ecstatic!” Ms. Hogan adds. “It was magic as old as libraries and still possible in the world we occupy today.”

Amid all the shameless assaults on librarians– like this real-life horror story – that little boy’s delight reminds us what’s at stake and why it’s worth defending everyone’s freedom to read. […]

Sunday marks the start of Library Card Sign-up Month, a national effort to connect children with libraries and books. The annual drive started in 1987 after then Secretary of Education William Bennett said, “Let’s have a campaign. . . . Every child should obtain a library card and use it.”

If there are young people in your life, consider how you can help them get a library card and begin a transformative engagement with the world of books. 

— Ron Charles, from “The Book Club” (Washington Post, August 30, 2024)

Photo: Ivo Rainha, Porto, Porto, Portugal