There’s stuff in here that’ll blow you away!
It’s troubling to see how little reading gets done, these days. Our civilization, which would not have even been possible without literacy, is looking rather sickly.
In addition to flat-out needing what books can tell us, books are an inexhaustible store of pleasure for the reader. Like this, for instance:
A haunted stamp collection! Betcha never thought of that before.
Books can help keep us from turning into Eloi. And when you consider how our teachers’ unions discourage independent reading, you’ll know who the Morlocks are, too.
You might want to try “Critical Race Theory and the Zeus Factor.” Go to allauthor.com/book/67189/ Or do it the hard way
Let me think it over. I’m already two books behind in my book reviews.
Yes, I can’t understand how people can do without books, all kinds of books. They open up different worlds for us and also show us that we aren’t alone in the universe with our joys and sorrows, desires and agonies — others have been there before us. Besides, as I used to tell my students, knowing things is fun.
You mentioned Marvin Kaye in your original article. Even after my downsizing, I kept his mystery novel “Bullets for Macbeth” because of its wonderful idea about Shakespeare’s play — an idea that I used to tell my students about, after giving them a spoiler alert. The setting is a company putting on a production of “Macbeth,” with a director who has a brilliant idea about who the third murderer really is. (Everyone speculates on why there are three murderers ambushing Banquo and his son, even though Macbeth has hired only two. Many scholars propose that it’s Macbeth himself, there to keep track of his thugs. Considering Macbeth’s reaction to the First Murderer’s report to him later, I find this hard to believe.) The director, to hide his idea from the whole cast, arranges to rehearse the ambush scene in two sets: one publicly with only the two murderers whom the cast has already seen, and one privately with the actor playing the third murderer. Then the director himself is murdered during one of the private rehearsals, and in order to solve the murder we have to figure out whom he thought the third murderer to be. It’s a really clever solution to both mysteries (the book and the play), and it makes a lot of sense. I’ll leave you in suspense about it — and hey, Violet Crepuscular, who’s the queen of suspense now, nyah nyah?
That sounds good!
The reading of books is on the wane but reading because of the internet is actually up. Even those who just do surface level perusing while watching Tic Toc videos type videos are reading script when it appears. Sight bite reading is soaring, deep thinking reading is sinking.