The Book was Better - Free Audio Books

No one believes me when I say this, but the decline in reading is already having dire consequences for art & culture. The media you loved in your youth—shows, albums, films—was made by artists who were widely read. You will not have that quality of art in a post-literate world.

basically every form of anything has that problem, the simpsons is now written by people whose only background is in watching the simpsons, snl with snl, star wars with star wars, pop music with pop music

You have the power to help your friends as well as yourself. Turn your phone off. I mean, completely power it down, then put it in a time lock box. Start with a half hour. Then one. Two. Four. An entire day. Tell friends who call or text what you’re doing. Tell them how it feels to be free, to feel your mind get beyond that twitchy desire to check social media or email. To know you’re stronger than the desire to check your phone. Get into a book or movie. Take a walk. Nap. Meet up with friends in green spaces under the sun, away from your phones. Live. Free range humans. Let’s make that happen.

A world in which everyone's brains have rotted is unsustainable.

Reading the favorite books of your favorite authors is the quickest path to becoming well-read. As a teen I set out to read the works that inspired Lewis & Tolkien, which is how I fell in love with The Faerie Queene, the Arabian Nights, Sir Gawain & the Green Knight and a dozen others. As an artist you have a sacred mission to pass down works you love that are in danger of being forgotten, keeping them alive for the next generation. This is how the great tradition is handed on from one age to the next.

I feel like it’s okay to admit you learn new things or take recommendations from someone you’re a fan of

So, I took multiple classes on Moby-Dick as an undergrad & one of the first things you learn is that Ishmael is NOT his name; it’s an allusion to Ishmael from the Book of Genesis (the exiled son of Abraham, of whom it was prophesied, “His hand shall be against every man, and every man’s hand against him”). The narrator imagines himself an outcast, rejected by society & forced to seek his destiny on the high seas. His self-understanding is beautifully transformed during the scene in which he shares a bed with the cannibal harpooner Queequeg, who becomes his bosom friend. As his heart softens, he writes, “I felt a melting in me. No more my splintered heart and maddened hand were turned against the wolfish world.” Love has come to redeem him. He is Ishmael no more.

So, I took multiple classes on Moby-Dick as an undergrad & one of the first things you learn is that Ishmael is NOT his name; it’s an allusion to Ishmael from the Book of Genesis (the exiled son of Abraham, of whom it was prophesied, “His hand shall be against every man, and every man’s hand against him”). The narrator imagines himself an outcast, rejected by society & forced to seek his destiny on the high seas. His self-understanding is beautifully transformed during the scene in which he shares a bed with the cannibal harpooner Queequeg, who becomes his bosom friend. As his heart softens, he writes, “I felt a melting in me. No more my splintered heart and maddened hand were turned against the wolfish world.” Love has come to redeem him. He is Ishmael no more.

This is the single greatest paragraph in American literature. It comes at the close of chapter 93 of Moby-Dick. Young Pip, a Black cabin-boy, beloved by the crew of the Pequod, is inadvertently stranded alone on the open sea. The experience of being lost for hours in the middle of those “heartless immensities” drives the boy to insanity. But in that madness, Melville argues here, is a kind of wisdom. Pip had a vision of the inner workings of all things, and it drove him mad. On the first day of my final year in college, my literature professor, Dr. Gaines, asked each of us to name a favorite work of art: song, book, film, it didn’t matter. When my turn came round, I opened a copy of Moby-Dick that I happened to have brought with me and read this passage aloud. By the time I had finished reading, Dr. Gaines was in tears. He said, “Class dismissed.” In all the years I knew him, he could never get through this paragraph. It haunted him. It haunts me.

I think it’s a crisis that kids are growing up with no knowledge of Robin Hood & Merlin, Charlotte and Babar, Ratty and Badger and Long John Silver. In the words of Katherine Rundell, “We need to be infinitely more furious that there are children without books.”

“When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.” C. S. Lewis

Underrated benefit of reading a great number & variety of books is that it will make you a more interesting person. As C. S. Lewis said, the person who doesn't read lives in a tiny world; reading lends us the perspective of a thousand lives.

George MacDonald was foundational to the fantasy genre & deserves a wider readership. Close friends with Lewis Carroll and a formative inspiration for C. S. Lewis, who made him a character in The Great Divorce. His novel Phantastes is an overlooked gem, sublime in its weirdness.

Morning reading. What are you reading?

For children to flourish, they need to grow up reading and being read to. The following is a list of essential books for any beloved children in your life. And they’re brilliant enough that they can be enjoyed equally well by adults. THE ARABIAN NIGHTS, preferably in a kid-friendly version. These shockingly strange stories of magic and adventure fired the minds of authors like Lovecraft, Dickens, George Eliot and the Brontë sisters. FIVE CHILDREN AND IT and THE PHOENIX AND THE CARPET, by Edith Nesbit. A series of books about four children who have misadventures with a Psammead and a phoenix. The way Edith portrays kids was a major influence on Narnia and Harry Potter. A WRINKLE IN TIME, by Madeleine L’Engle. Awkward, brainy Meg Murry must travel to the ends of the universe to rescue her father, in a visionary fusion of science, mysticism and cosmic horror leavened by L’Engle’s gentle Episcopalianism. LITTLE WOMEN, by Louisa May Alcott. Not just for girls. Alcott is second to none as a writer of characters, and in telling the story of the March sisters and Laurie, she becomes the closest thing we have to an American Dickens. ALICE IN WONDERLAND and THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS. Harold Bloom called them the greatest children’s fantasies ever written, and they are my personal favorites. Every child needs to know the Cheshire Cat, the Red Queen, the Mad Hatter and the March Hare. THE PRINCESS AND THE GOBLIN, by George MacDonald. A girl named Irene must battle a race of sinister goblins with soft feet who are threatening to abduct her and force her into marriage. The influence of MacDonald’s Goblins can be seen in The Hobbit. THE WESTING GAME, by Ellen Raskin. A child’s first introduction to the mystery genre. Turtle Wexler is one of the all-time great children’s book heroines, and reading the end of this book as an adult still brings me to tears. A JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH and TWENTY THOUSAND LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA, by Jules Verne. Some of the most thrilling adventure stories ever written, satisfying a child’s fascination with things that live in the sea or beneath the earth. A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS, by Lemony Snicket. A masterpiece of contemporary fantasy, Snicket’s unique blend of whimsy, Gothic horror and clever wordplay birthed a generation of darkly funny, verbally precocious readers. Read to your kids. Teach them that reading is for pleasure, not to pass a test. Let them read what they love. Let them see you reading books with joy and enthusiasm. That’s how you get a child to fall in love with reading. That’s how you make a lifelong reader.