Seven Books to Read When You Have No Time to Read “When life gets really hectic, sitting quietly with a book can feel like an impossible luxury,” writes Bekah Waalkes. “What works best for me, though, is choosing just the right book.” Here she suggests some books “representing varied genres” that you might “actually want to […]
Text Is (Still) King “Why the written word will never die.” Psychologist Adam Mastroianni argues that all the current narratives about the decline of reading and the related decline of civilization itself “tend to leave out some inconvenient data points.” He concludes that “humans have a hunger that no video can satisfy. Even in the
Is AI hurting your ability to think? How to reclaim your brain Noel Carroll, an associate professor in Business Information Systems at the University of Galway, warns that “many people may be falling victim to the same phenomenon – outsourcing the ‘struggle’ of thinking to AI.” He calls this condition “cognitive atrophy.” Essentially, AI is
Deep reading can boost your critical thinking and help you resist misinformation – here’s how to build the skill Two college professors, a cognitive scientist and a literacy expert, explain the drawbacks of doomscrolling and how deep reading can help overcome brain passivity. Deep reading . . . refers to the intentional process of engaging
Julian Barnes Says Goodbye to the Novel “His fiction has found meaning in life’s gaps and love’s absence.” In The Atlantic literary biographer Adam Begley writes that Julian Barnes’s latest novel, Departure(s): offers only a sketchy storyline, mixed with memoir and thoughts on memory. An extended farewell, an author’s valedictory flourish, the whole package is
The Unexpected Benefits of Reading at Random “Elspeth Wilson on Becoming a Literary Omnivore” Scottish writer Elspeth Wilson, author of These Mortal Bodies (July 2025), concludes “reading at random won’t solve all the issues with unequal advances, difficulties in sustaining a career, and lack of diversity in publishing. But it has helped me encounter the
Notable Literary Deaths in 2025 Dreaming of writing your novel this year? Rip up all the rules! If your New Year’s resolutions involve getting to work on that novel you’ve been meaning to write, novelist Elizabeth McCracken has some general advice to offer. Books That Open the Mind Writers for The Atlantic offer “recommendations for
The cultural works becoming public domain in 2026 NPR informs us of the works entering the public domain this new year. There are some big names here, including the first four books of the Nancy Drew series, Dashiel Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon, and Agatha Christie’s first Miss Marple mystery, The Murder at the Vicarage. Can
For 2025 I decided to focus on books related to the topic of Life Stories in Literature. As usual, I read mostly fiction, but I also fit in a few nonfiction resources (about various aspects of storytelling) for Nonfiction November. Here, then, is the list, arranged alphabetically by author’s last name: 10 Best Books I
The Best Books I Read in 2025 Read More »
The best book I read this month is Buckeye by Patrick Ryan. Here are the other two. When you’ve been in the writing business as long as I have, the one thing you need to constantly search for are stories that will challenge you as a novelist . . . This is probably the most
Reading Notes: December Read More »
