. . . reading literally does make your brain more efficient.  This is why I sometimes feel like crying when I see so many twenty-somethings (or thirty-somethings or forty-somethings) who can’t sit or walk by themselves for 15 seconds without opening their iPhones or shoving in some earbuds.   Are we really entering an age of “secondary orality”?  Click and read and think: Caleb Crain, “Twilight of the Books.”

I usually give this essay to my students.  They are usually fascinated by it, but as far as I can tell, few if any of them become any more likely to read something besides Harry Potter.