Reports from the death of reading are greatly exaggerated

Do you be concerned that you’ve lost patience for anything longer than a tweet? If so, you’re not by itself. Digital-age pundits alert that as our hunger for books dwindles, so too do the virtues where printed, bound items once educated us: the willpower to spotlight a sustained debate, the interest to appear beyond the day’s information, the willingness to become by itself. The shelves from the world’s great libraries, though, inform a more complicated story. Evaluating the deterioration over the books that they contain, British professor Leah Cost finds scant proof that a fantastic age group of reading ever existed. From your dawn of mass literacy to the invention from the paperback, most visitors currently skimmed and multitasked. Print-era doctors also forbade the same silent absorption now recommended as an end to electronic addictions. The data that books are dying proves even scarcer. In encounters with librarians, booksellers and activists who are reinventing older ways of reading, Cost offers fresh desire to bibliophiles and books lovers alike.