Rate this book

The Lost Art Of Reading: Why Books Matter In A Distracted Time (2010)

by David L. Ulin(Favorite Author)

3.58 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

1570616701 (ISBN13: 9781570616709)

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

Sasquatch Books

review 1: This book was a real disappointment to me. Perhaps I was reading it for a different purpose than the author intended. This is on the AP Lang argument reading list, but I felt the meandering beginning, referencing authors that most people would not know, would be a complete turn off to high school students. I was hoping that the book would encourage people to read--that deep reading is still important (as I enjoyed reading about in Nicholas Carr's The Shallows). The way this book is written (with very little direction, no chapter breaks, no index at all, complex vocabulary) is only going to reemphasize for those students who struggle with reading that it is an elitist activity and readers are pompous, self-congratulatory people. As I said, I think I just was reading th... moreis from the view of the wrong audience.
review 2: Given the title, one would assume I would love this book, but it doesn't really explore much new ground Nicholas Carr didn't cover in The Shallows. Like Carr, Ulin has a really strident dislike of e-readers yet admits he rarely uses one. Too often such pundits think of e-readers as book substitutes, but everyone I know who owns one uses it as a supplement (like how having an mp3 player doesn't make you pawn all your old stereo gear; I mean, who wants to take one's collection of vinyl records on an airplane?). I appreciate his many references to the books that built the framework of his thinking, and I couldn't agree more with the necessity of reading to combat the encroachment of distraction that is exacerbated by our digital environments. Still, he undermines his own points when he applauds a Facebook page where kids exchange advice on how to "BS" essays. less

Download links for: The Lost Art of Reading: Why Books Matter in a Distracted Time

Advertising