Get back to the book

On Thursday July 20, an article by Philip Yancey was published in the Washington Post’s titled, The Death of Reading is Threatening the Soul. In it he articulates a crisis that many of us can probably relate to, though we have not had the patience and insight to name it. He discusses the familiar problem of being too inundated with the digital world to take time for the acquisition of knowledge which largely requires the concentrated and sustained reading of books. This argument may sound condescending, but read his article, in which he frames the argument  in the context of his own personal dilemma, and you’ll find it surprisingly relateable.

In his article, he identifies a number of texts he remembers from his heavy reading days, as well as a number of books which have helped him to sort out this dilemma and formulate a plan to return to the reading he loves. We’ve collected many of the titles he mentions here, with links to our catalog so you can read them for yourself.

Shakespeare’s collected plays
Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy
Crime and Punishment, by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Shallows: What the Internet is doing to our brains, by Nicholas Carr
The Gutenberg Elegies: The fate of reading in an electronic age
A Secular Age, by Charles Taylor
The Writing Life, by Annie Dillard
 Poetry of George Herbert
Poetry and Prose of Gerard Manley Hopkins
 The Benedict Option