Go on an adventure ... simply by reading a book:

Just one more chapter ... and another ... and another ...

Bookworms will rule the world ... as soon as we finish one more chapter.

What we lost when we stopped binge reading books:

By George F. Will
Columnist
The Washington Post
April 17, 2020

Long before today’s coronavirus lockdown provided occasions for the vice that the phrase denotes, “binge watching” had entered Americans’ lexicon. Few, however, speak of binge reading. To understand why this is regrettable, mute Netflix long enough to read Adam Garfinkle’s “The Erosion of Deep Literacy” in National Affairs. He believes that because of the displacement of reading by digital, usually pictorial entertainment and communication, “something neurophysiological” is happening to individuals, and especially to the “neural pathways” of the young. And something vital to democratic culture is waning.

Garfinkle, founding editor of the American Interest, elaborates on Maryanne Wolf’s idea of “deep literacy” from her 2018 book “Reader, Come Home.” Garfinkle defines this (or “deep reading”) as engagement with “an extended piece of writing” in a way that draws the reader into “a dialectical process with the text.” This involves the reader in anticipation of the author’s “direction and meaning.”

Few scientists doubt that heavy dependency on electronic screens has shortened attention spans. “We know,” Garfinkle says, “that prolonged and repetitive exposure to digital devices changes the way we think and behave in part because it changes us physically.”

The brain is continuously rewiring itself in response to changing stimuli, and 200,000 years of evolution did not suit it to process today’s torrents of fleeting stimuli.

“More items vie for our attention in a given hour,” Garfinkle says, “than our ancestors had to handle in a day or even a week.” Becoming comfortable with shallow attention to everything, people become transfixed by the present, unable to remember, or to plan well. He reports that high school guidance counselors say most students lack the social skills to speak one-on-one with college admissions personnel. This, Garfinkle believes, reflects “acquired social autism.”

People immersed in digital torrents acquire “self-inflicted attention deficits.” They become incapable of the “quality attention” that deep literacy requires. Such literacy is, in evolutionary terms, a recent innovation that changed brain circuitry. Garfinkle says, “We are or become, cognitively speaking, what we do with language.” Printed words, presented sequentially in sentences and paragraphs, are demanding, but rewarding: Only they can present the reasoning required to establish complicated truths.

Garfinkle’s surmise is that government’s problem-solving failures reflect not just hyper-partisanship and polarization but also the thin thinking of a political class of non-deep readers who are comfortable only with the shallowness of tweets. Instantaneous digital interactions encourage superficiality, insularity and tribalism.

Deep reading, like deep writing, is difficult, hence unnatural. It is unpleasant to those who, tethered to their devices, have become accustomed to lives that are surface straight through. Garfinkle worries that “cognitively sped-up and multitasking young brains may not acquire sufficient capacities for critical thinking, personal reflection, imagination, and empathy, and hence will become easy prey for charlatans and demagogues.”

Modernity’s greatest blessing — individualism: the celebration of individual agency — depends on a sense of one’s interior, of self-consciousness. This is facilitated by deep literacy that, unlike the oral communication of premodern groups, requires solitude for the reader’s private repose. Modernity, and eventually democracy, advanced through Protestantism’s emphasis of individual engagement with writing — the Bible made accessible to personal reading in various languages.

Integral to liberal-democratic politics are, Garfinkle says, abstract ideas — “representation; the virtues of doubt, dissent, and humility; and the concept of a depersonalized constitutional order.” A society that loses the ballast of deep literacy is apt to become less thoughtful, more emotional and volatile. It will become impatient with the pace of refined, impersonal governance through institutions. It will seek “a less abstract, re-personalized form of social and political authority concentrated in a ‘great’ authoritarian leader.”

Deep literacy has always been a minority taste and attainment, but is always necessary, especially among elites, to leaven majoritarian politics. But because of today’s social media technologies, Garfinkle believes, there is increased, if superficial and emotive, participation in political discourse. Yet even among young people in higher education, many professors will not assign entire books, or substantial portions of challenging ones.

Deep readers can “deploy shields of skepticism” against those who, lacking the reading habit, are “locked in perpetual intellectual adolescence.” And then? “Populism of the illiberal nationalist kind is,” Garfinkle believes, “what happens in a mass-electoral democracy when a decisive percentage of mobilized voters drops below a deep-literacy standard.”

Garfinkle’s essay – mental calisthenics for a confined nation – deserves at least the grudging gratitude of even the most egalitarian Americans. It requires what it describes – deep literacy – and might be a spur to binge reading.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/what-we-lost-when-we-stopped-binge-reading/2020/04/16/d440d7ba-8005-11ea-9040-68981f488eed_story.html

MLB player Sean Doolittle pitches for independent bookstores:

CBS News

September 21, 2019, 10:57 AM

For Sean Doolittle, a trip to the bookstore is a sensory experience. "There's something about holding [a book], it just smells cool."

And reading for Doolittle? "It's kind of evolved over time," he said. "I've had other hobbies, I have other things I tried: Video games, watching movies, you know? I love my job, but it can be a little stressful at times. And reading has become a really healthy escape."

His job is that of a major league pitcher for the Washington Nationals – a dream come true, but with it comes an inconsistent schedule and plenty of pressure.

"CBS This Morning: Saturday" co-host Dana Jacobson asked Doolittle, "Do you remember which came first – your love of books, or your love for baseball?"

"Baseball came before a lotta things in my life," he said. "I played all sports growing up. Baseball was always my favorite, though."

Books, he said, were just always there. With teachers in his family, an emphasis was put on the importance of education and reading. "I could never go to practice or to a game unless I'd finished my homework."

Jacobson asked, "Do you remember a first book as a kid where it just opened your eyes and your imagination and you remember thinking, 'I need more of this'?"

"'Goosebumps' and sportsbooks," he said. "I loved reading those kinds of books, but then there were books that I had to read for school that I wasn't super-excited about reading. Even still to this day, I'm still going back and reading some of the books I was probably supposed to have read in high school, you know? I just read 'Lord of the Flies.' I loved it. It was awesome. But when I was in tenth grade, I really wasn't that psyched about it."

Doolittle's reignited passion for books has enhanced more than just his own personal library; it's created a personal mission.

Back in April, he began posting on social media about what he was reading — and the independent bookstores he shopped in during each major league stop. He started with New York's McNally Jackson Bookstore in Soho.

"To me, it's just so cool the way that these bookstores create this inviting, inclusive space," Doolittle said.

"It's a community center, really?" Jacobson asked.

"Yeah, it really is. It's a lot more than a bookstore. And early on, I didn't think of it in my head as a way to save local bookstores. This was just, like, an adventure I was gonna go on."

Doolittle's adventure was a hit on social media. His passion and platform combined to raise the profile of not just the shops where he snapped pictures, but others like them across the country.

And that exposure is priceless, says Christine Onorati, owner of the independent WORD bookstores in Jersey City, New Jersey and Brooklyn.

Jacobson asked Onorati, "What is it like owning a local bookstore in the year 2019?"

"Online shopping has really sort of affected our entire world," she replied. "But I think that we serve a purpose in our communities that makes us a little different than a lot of other retail stores. That's why somebody like Sean, who's shining a spotlight on books and how important they are, will always be a great thing."

Mark Pearson agrees. He's co-founder and CEO of Libro.fm, an app which allows you to download an audiobook, then split the proceeds with a local bookstore of your choice. There are about 800 stores currently affiliated with Libro.fm.

"We are doubling every year," Pearson said. "And when Sean Doolittle sent his tweet out, you know, we had a record day. When he says that it's cool to buy audiobooks and books from your local bookstore, it sends the message that books and bookstores matter, and where you buy them makes a difference. By giving your money to them, you keep that going. You keep reading alive in the community."

And that is the real win.

Doolittle said, "There's a lot of really kind of alarming statistics when it comes to literacy rates in kids in the United States. Over half of kids who are in fourth grade read below basic level – that's a really crucial time for them because there's so many indicators about where they're at in fourth grade can determine where they go in their education level down the road."

"It's a little surreal," he said of his bookstore mission. "This started out as something that I was doing just 'cause it was a hobby that I enjoy. But it's been a really rewarding experience. If you can get kids excited about reading, maybe that can open up a whole other world for them."

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/washington-nationals-star-sean-doolittle-pitches-for-independent-bookstores-mlb-2019-09-21/