By far the funniest moment in Homer’s Odyssey is when Circe says, “Shall we have sex?” and Odysseus says, “You just turned all my men into pigs. You have the GALL to think I would sleep with you? Of course I will. Absolutely. But don’t do any weird spells”

Some exciting news! My new novel, The Christmas Tree Murders, is out later this year, and doesn't it look beautiful? Within it you'll find: 🔎 Some amateur sleuths ✉️ Various epistolary elements ✒️ A narrator who talks to the reader 🔑 Characters with secrets aplenty 🎄 Lots of Victorian festive fun

The trick to getting kids reading again is the same as it ever was: cram every available surface of your home with books, limit their access to brain-destroying technology, wait for them to get bored and watch them flourish both spiritually and intellectually.

They should make a version of The Odyssey, only it’s set in Dublin, Ireland in 1904 and Odysseus is a Jewish man whose wife is having an affair and Telemachus is an aspiring author who gets into fights in pubs and wanders the strand brooding on his mother’s death.

Retired folk spend hours a day watching slop on their phones. Kids can’t read because they’ve been hooked on tablets since they were two. College students are using AI to summarize books & write essays for them. Screens are eating this country alive.

In the end, the world belongs not to the hedge-fund managers and vulture capitalists and tech moguls but to the lovers & scholars, the preservers of lost things, the stewards of the natural world, the human artists, the poets and mystics, the child just learning to read.

Oh! Oh! Oh! A chance to plug this great book!

Several folks in my mentions said they quit watching the new Count of Monte Cristo on PBS because it features Black actors. My friend, you are going to be shocked when you learn the ethnicity of Alexandre Dumas.

Saw someone say the world is a boring place because there are no elves or dragons, so I'm legally obliged to share this:

Saw someone say the world is a boring place because there are no elves or dragons, so I'm legally obliged to share this:

People think I’m being alarmist when I say they are trying to make you dumb. They feel entitled to control how and to what extent you can access knowledge. They send their kids to tech-free schools while ensuring public school kids can’t read. They want you illiterate.

Leah McElrath@leahmcelrath.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Upside down, by the ankles, and then treat him like a piñata.

Midway through Fahrenheit 451, we learn that the U. S. government has launched a series of unprovoked wars against smaller countries, just because it can, while the population is so hypnotized by amusements & devices that hardly anyone knows the wars are taking place.

I get yelled at for saying this but for many hundreds of years people went to university not to get diplomas or be employable but because immersion in the humanities was considered foundational to a good life, and school must return to its original purpose: the joy of learning.

I get yelled at for saying this but for many hundreds of years people went to university not to get diplomas or be employable but because immersion in the humanities was considered foundational to a good life, and school must return to its original purpose: the joy of learning.

AI art isn’t real art and AI artists aren’t real artists.

I find it bleak how many people seem to have given up on having any kind of intellectual life. Depression is rampant because we’ve abandoned books & hobbies in favor of joyless amusements. The single most attractive thing a person can do is read often & delight in learning.

This is why you need to be reading books and writing your own emails, by the way. When you outsource your thinking abilities, you risk turning your brain into soup. Heavy dependence on AI has already been linked with severe cognitive decline. What you don’t use, you will lose.

C. S. Lewis tried to warn us about AI

The Washington Post is getting rid of its Books section. We’re losing the institutions—journalism, middle-class artistic and intellectual culture—that once made life bearable. Those things were a threat to the super-rich who increasingly govern us. Democracy dies in illiteracy.

Rach and I walked over to the university library yesterday and spent a few hours writing this list of our thirty-five most beloved characters in Dickens. Tremendous fun, and one of my favorite things we've written together. bibliollcollege.substack.com/p/our-thirty...

Our Thirty-Five Favorite Characters in Dickens

A Celebration of the Greatest Character Writer in English

bibliollcollege.substack.com

I find it depressing that so many people seem determined to outsource their basic brain functions. Like WHY ARE YOU EVEN ALIVE IF THAT'S HOW LITTLE YOU THINK ABOUT EXISTENCE

Boze the Library Owl@sketchesbyboze.bsky.social · 7mo ago

I find Gmail’s new “write this for me” feature deeply sinister. They’re trying to convince you that you are dumb and helpless. Don’t let them steal your ability to formulate thoughts and communicate. You were capable of writing an email in 2022 and you’re capable now.

You can write your emails just fine. You always have! Want to improve? Take a writing course (there are cheap and free writing courses for a variety of types of writing to be found online). Using features like this is literally dimming areas of your brain. Keep them lit. Forget this feature exists.

Boze the Library Owl@sketchesbyboze.bsky.social · 7mo ago

I find Gmail’s new “write this for me” feature deeply sinister. They’re trying to convince you that you are dumb and helpless. Don’t let them steal your ability to formulate thoughts and communicate. You were capable of writing an email in 2022 and you’re capable now.

I find Gmail’s new “write this for me” feature deeply sinister. They’re trying to convince you that you are dumb and helpless. Don’t let them steal your ability to formulate thoughts and communicate. You were capable of writing an email in 2022 and you’re capable now.

Our mutual Christmas book haul (Rach’s books on the left and mine on the right). I’ve found that the happiest life is a life filled with love and books.

Some of you have forgotten that only three years ago you were perfectly capable of writing a text, writing an email, telling a bedtime story to a child, and it should worry you that powerful companies have convinced us we can’t do things we’ve been doing since the dawn of time.

People say AI is a magic shortcut to creativity & success. I’ll tell you the real secret and it’s voraciously reading, being interested in everything, being diligent in the pursuit of learning, paying attention to the interior lives of others & keeping a heart open to the world.

“Why are folks getting dumber?” Because they don’t read. “Why aren’t men as romantic & poetic as they used to be?” Because they don’t read. “Why are people so vulnerable to propaganda?” “Why is everyone a conspiracy theorist?” Because they don’t read. Because they don’t read.

No offense but I think we underestimate how many of our current problems, both cultural and political, are downstream of the decline in reading, the decline in learning and the loss of interest in the humanities.

In honor of my birthday this week I encourage you to get a library card, read books of folklore, listen to medieval & Tudor Christmas carols, watch an old film by Welles or Bergman. Life is not long and we ought to find some beauty in each day. We ought to hold each other close.

There's an enormous cat who lives a few streets down. She somehow figured out a way to unlatch and open the screen door leading into our bedroom. Every night she breaks into our room, curls up on my chest and falls asleep. I've been adopted by a real-life Miyazaki character.