Insane haul today at the library book sale - seven books for seven dollars ... the librarian told us they had been donated and the donor worried that the books were too niche to sell ... I've been searching for some of these for AGES 🤓

It’s adorable when guys dismiss Jane Austen as saccharine romantic fluff because I suspect none of her critics will write novels of such sharp comedy and keen understanding of human nature that they’re still being read by millions of people 250 years in the future.

If you’ve never read A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, do yourself a favor and read it during the holidays. It’s one of the greatest books ever written, it takes less than two hours to read and once you finish, you can say you’ve read one book by Charles Dickens.

Social media amplifies our worst tendencies: bloodlust, baseless speculation, the hunger for vengeance. We were not made to see people repeatedly murdered on camera. We were not meant to read every person's unfiltered opinions. It is corrosive to the soul.

There’s a tradition in some European countries called “telling the bees,” in which bees are informed of notable events in the human world. In Oxford, when a hive’s owner dies, a member of the family will tap on the hive with a housekey and say, “Bees, bees, your master is dead.”

This is one of the best single-volume collections of weird folklore ever written, and awakened my love of bogies, feasts, festivals, drowned cities and haunted castles at a young age. An essential book for any lover of legends and old tales.

I know it sounds mad but if you had regular exposure to trees and sunlight and started reading again for pleasure, it would heal you.

The most alarming thing about the internet is how it kills our capacity for delight. People spend hours scrolling glass-eyed through content that brings only crumbs of amusement. Real joy is found in the real world: in reading, in starlight, in birdsong, in service to others.

If you’re someone who still reads for pleasure, you are a marvel. If you’re able to unplug from all the chaos of our entertainment culture and disappear into the warmth and solace of a book, that is a rare gift and I’m very glad to know you.

If you’re someone who still reads for pleasure, you are a marvel. If you’re able to unplug from all the chaos of our entertainment culture and disappear into the warmth and solace of a book, that is a rare gift and I’m very glad to know you.

Ray Bradbury; a world where no one reads books is no different from a world without books

Students don’t need chromebooks and AI tutors, they need Shakespeare and Jane Austen and the Greek myths, they need the Arthurian Legends and the Arabian Nights, they need constant exposure to nature, fairytales, folklore, poetry and beauty.

People are reading AI-generated synopses of books and then claiming they read 100 books in a week. This is how the abolition of books began in Fahrenheit 451: classics were condensed into five-minute summaries for those too busy to do the reading. Later came the burnings.

People are reading AI-generated synopses of books and then claiming they read 100 books in a week. This is how the abolition of books began in Fahrenheit 451: classics were condensed into five-minute summaries for those too busy to do the reading. Later came the burnings.

I read 186 books in the first six months of this year. In today's essay (link below) I explain how I did it, and how you can rekindle your love of reading and become a voracious reader in an age of distraction.

"Books are portals linking us with all that has come before and all that has ever been thought. To read a book at the drugstore is to transform the drugstore—and ourselves—into “something rich and strange.” Latest from Boze on Biblioll College: bibliollcollege.substack.com/p/how-to-rek...

I read 186 books in the first six months of this year. In today's essay (link below) I explain how I did it, and how you can rekindle your love of reading and become a voracious reader in an age of distraction.

People say, “if you’re not using AI to write, you’ll be left behind!” meanwhile study after study has shown severe and immediate cognitive decline in those who use it regularly. I’m still capable of reading and have a functioning brain, so who’s really being left behind here?

If you're using AI to write essays, eulogies, a text to your wife, I do think less of you as a person. Ceding your mental and creative abilities to a machine is an embarrassing thing and people should be ashamed to admit doing it in public.

If you're using AI to write essays, eulogies, a text to your wife, I do think less of you as a person. Ceding your mental and creative abilities to a machine is an embarrassing thing and people should be ashamed to admit doing it in public.

Frankly I don't like living in an era where no one can read, Big Tech is trying to abolish the educational system as we know it and PBS is gutted because those in power don't see the value in offering children educational programming to counter the ceaseless tide of slop.

A key point in Fahrenheit 451 is that books were banned because they made people depressed and uncomfortable. The novel's protagonist, Montag, is taken into custody after he reads a poem that makes a woman cry because she realizes the emptiness of her life.

A key point in Fahrenheit 451 is that books were banned because they made people depressed and uncomfortable. The novel's protagonist, Montag, is taken into custody after he reads a poem that makes a woman cry because she realizes the emptiness of her life.

Not enough people understand that a world where no one reads books is just as bad as a world without any books. Those who seek to make you illiterate don't need to burn books. They just need to take away any interest in reading them.

I've just spent three days on holiday at the sea-coast and I'm sorry to say I completely get why Victorian doctors prescribed trips to the sea for the nerves.

No. Ignore this. You are capable of reading books again. The brain is highly malleable and you only need a few screen-free weeks to recover your focus. You will be amazed how quickly the hunger for reading returns. You will be inhaling words

Feeling more and more thankful I grew up before the internet was omnipresent, when we spent most of our time watching old movies on cable or browsing encyclopedias and accidentally acquiring a level of literacy that will cause future generations to think us wizards.

I'm begging everyone who hasn't yet to read this book. The premise, about a man living in an infinite house, is terrifically inventive, and it goes in a direction you don't expect. No other living author writes with such a keen sense of horror & beauty. The book of the decade.

I wrote an essay reviewing and ranking my eighty-five FAVORITE books from thirty years of reading - the plays, poems, mysteries, fantasies, diaries that have shaped me. Please tell me in the comments which books I missed. (link below)

“I asked Grok.” “I asked Chat.” I didn’t ask anyone because I grew up without screens and reading encyclopedias was our sole source of entertainment. Now I’m a living compendium of useless knowledge and for the next twenty minutes we are going on an adventure of learning, Brian.

Very unpopular opinion but I think in a healthier world our schools would teach the so-called “useless things”: Latin, old poetry, classic cinema, how to read and enjoy challenging novels. Studying these things won’t make you a better person. But they will give you a better life.

these vintage library promotional posters go so hard

We need a return to analog culture: handwritten letters, seeing films in the cinema, reading books, in-person visits, time in the outdoors. We weren't meant to spend our whole lives online. The joys of tangible living are something no one can take from you.

I kid you not: I was just leaving the library when an old lady, seeing my tower of books, said to my wife, “All these books will keep us out of trouble—and they didn’t cost a penny! Everything is so expensive, I can’t afford groceries… I may as well go to the library!”

Dress it up in progressive language but you're cheating yourself by not doing the work. This is the worst thing about AI: millions of students refusing to learn, taking zero interest in the world around them, empty in mind and heart. Your punishment is the person you will become.

Changing my syllabus rn to include a section on why students should not use IA and finish it with "but if you are so inclined to use it, your punishment is the person you will become".

Dress it up in progressive language but you're cheating yourself by not doing the work. This is the worst thing about AI: millions of students refusing to learn, taking zero interest in the world around them, empty in mind and heart. Your punishment is the person you will become.

Summer is here, and many of you are seeking books to keep your kids occupied during the school break. Today I bring a summer reading guide with essential classics for kids and teens. THREAD:

I went through a massive reading slump in 2014. Today I typically read 30 books in a given month. And I want to offer some practical suggestions on how to get back into reading, from someone who’s done it. Thread:

We just hosted a dinner party and someone said, “I wonder where the word raspberry comes from?” I leapt up, shouted, “LET’S FIND OUT” and ran to my study, emerging a moment later with Skeat’s Etymological Dictionary (1883). (This is why I don’t get invited to parties.)

School ingrains in us that reading is a chore. It helps to remember that you're not being tested; you're engaging in a pastime that has given people pleasure for centuries. Learning is fun, reading is fun, and immersion in a good book is one of life's greatest joys.

Kurt Vonnegut said, “Only well-informed, warmhearted people can teach others things they’ll always remember and love. A computer teaches a child what a computer can become. An educated human teaches a child what a child can become” and THAT is why AI will never replace teachers.

In May I read 30 books, among them a Holocaust memoir, a neglected Gothic classic, a collection of afterlife visions, several books on the Middle Ages, a saga, a very strange ghost story and a late masterpiece by C. S. Lewis. Today I’m sharing my favorites:

People think I'm kidding when I say there is a fascist agenda behind the promotion of AI. These devices are designed to kill literacy. We grew up in one of those rare periods of history where most people could read, and those who can read are harder to control.

I wrote about Moby-Dick, the Book of Job, A Grief Observed, the sinking of the White Ship in 1120, The Man Who Was Thursday and the mystery of suffering. This is one of my favorite pieces I've written. bibliollcollege.substack.com/p/the-shadow...

Joseph Campbell; reading is how we find our way in the dark

“I don’t like reading, it’s too hard—” listen to me. if a Jack Russell terrier can not only read the classics but also ENJOY them so much that he feels moved to perform them in costume, and find in them constant application to events in his life, so can you.

I don't want to “improve my rizz,” I want to be a scribe in an Irish monastery in 950 AD. I’m hunched over a manuscript, painstakingly retracing the letters. Pangur Bán, the abbot’s cat, brushes against my leg. I doodle her image in the margin. I’ve never heard of the internet. I’m happy.

not to be sentimental but I think it’s beautiful that libraries exist and are free and that we can use them. I love that there are so many bookish folk who are always reading and learning. I’m so glad to live in a world where there are books.