when Virginia Woolf said, “Autumn is my season, dear; it is, after all, the season of the soul” and when F. Scott Fitzgerald said, “Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall” and when Anne Shirley said, “I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.”.

RT @wren_and_paper: is anyone else anticipating autumn with comfort foods? pumpkin donuts, pumpkin porridge, Cornish pasties and quiche. 🍁….

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One thinks of Henry David Thoreau, whose method of teaching was to take students out into the Concord countryside and observe the trees and read poems. At least that resulted in educated children, whereas too many schools today are removing the teaching of books entirely.

This may sound utopian but school would be much improved if it mostly consisted of reading books and having discussions. No exams, no grades, you just read a million books and chat about them. There is no better way to educate someone than to make them a voracious reader.

It comes from a place of love, obviously: I think life is more rewarding and pleasurable if you use your brain for things, if you expose yourself to the best literature and art that has ever been made, if you maintain a lively curiosity about this strange world in which we live.

I’m afraid I’ve grown grumpier the older I’ve gotten. I don’t agree that we should “let people enjoy things”; you should consume good things. We shouldn’t be handing iPads to babies. If you’re using AI to write texts or haven’t read a book in your adult life, I worry about you.

RT @SketchesbyBoze: utterly floored by this moment from an interview with Susanna Clarke; each sentence is better than the last https://t.c….

Louisville looks to keep its unbeaten run alive taking on Portland tonight on Amazon Prime

I know it sounds mad but if you had regular exposure to trees and sunlight and started reading again for pleasure, it would heal you.

RT @MissSassbox: so sad that the younger generation doesn't understand we used to read the dictionary and encyclopedias FOR FUN. it was an….

RT @Feisty_Waters: This is the way.

RT @moniza_hossain: I love when I deeply admire an author and then find out they’re sixty. The sheer relief of realising they’re older than….

At dinner tonight someone wanted to use ChatGPT to look up a word, but everyone else at the table shouted “LOOK IT UP IN THE DICTIONARY” so the entire family spent the next ten minutes looking up word origins in the Oxford English Dictionary and Skeat’s Etymological (1883).

People say, “Every generation lamented technological change” but not every generation was confronted with devices that threatened to destroy not only literacy but also curiosity, imagination and the act of thinking itself. We are facing an existential crisis.

It feels like every millennial who vowed we would never turn into our parents, complaining about the good old days, is suddenly seeing what iPads and AI have done to a generation of young brains and going, “Back in our day, we actually did our own homework. We knew how to read!”.

To the end of my days I will never forget the time that one account who always posted things like “expecting authors to read is ableist” was driven off twitter after being exposed as working for a weapons manufacturer, sparking a celebration that spanned this entire platform.

I'm a broken record on this but the reason half of us have any personalities at all is because we picked up a random book at an impressionable age.

see also: that book of Norse myths, a book on paleontology, various books on castles, a murder mystery for children,

RT @joynessthebrave: As a child, I became fond of a fir tree near my home. I called it “Sir Noble,” visited it often, and left a little box….

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utterly floored by this moment from an interview with Susanna Clarke; each sentence is better than the last

RT @SketchesbyBoze: With universities in free fall and Big Tech building machines designed to destroy your brain, you need to be proactive….

Eowyn, Lady of Ithilien, shieldmaiden of Rohan, daughter of Éomund and Théodwyn, did not march on Minas Tirith and slay the Witch-King of Angmar for you to disrespect her name like that.