How Do You Know if You Should Read Literature More Slowly?

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Ceren: I want to be formed more by what i read, and not just read for pure information. What are books that have that formative experience impact? Ceren: Even if it's not explicitly christian, i think we can be formed by a varide variety of books. Just throw out some books and tell us why you might recommend these books to people. The one that everyone should read is jane eyre. It's actually an allegory of the modern christian soul making her way to a faithful lifein Christ in the world.

This week David and Curtis are joined by Karen Swallow Prior, writer, thinker, and research professor of English and Christianity and culture at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. Karen talks to us about the current state of affairs in social media, particularly Twitter, and compares its impact on culture and the church to another critical technology, the printing press. She discusses how these modern technologies are impacting our brains, and how we can push back against this through the simple act of reading, especially the (necessarily slow and contemplative) reading of literature.

Show Notes:

-National Endowment of the Arts - “Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America”

-Caleb Crain (The New Yorker) - “Why We Don’t Read, Revisited”

-Sign up for David’s French Press newsletter

-Follow Curtis’ work at RedeemingBabel.org