Reading and the Moral Imagination: Aristotle and C. S. Lewis
Doing this in public could earn you funny looks. If you are a reader of books (not just blogs), these days you are apparently in the minority. Some alarming statistics I've run into on various web sites claim that: 1/3 of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives. 42 percent of college graduates never read another book after college. 80 percent of U.S. families did not buy or read a book last year. 70 percent of U.S. adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years. Today's column by Fr. James Schall on The Catholic Thing suggests that one reason young people don't read much any more is that they are tethered to their cell phones, which constantly demand their attention, making it impossible (unlikely, at least) for them to devote themselves to reading or sustain reflection -- these days, college students hit the beach with their "smart phones," not paperback novels. Fr. Schall goes on to comment that he is...