Margaret Renkl finds a solution for dealing with our times that is much like Austin Kleon’s.

In recent years, I’ve been looking for a solution to this conundrum. How is it possible to be a well-informed citizen and simultaneously a calm, mostly cheerful, more or less sane human being?

The closest thing I’ve found to a workaround is the right dosing. I follow the news during daylight hours. At night, I read a book.

Sometimes it’s a poetry collection I can finish in an evening. Sometimes it’s a memoir or a thick, juicy novel that will carry me through a week or two. Often it’s an essay collection, a genre which comes with those lovely, built-in stopping places that make it easier to close the book and avert a wrestling match with the clock.

Short Books Are Perfect for Our Distracted Age

Jacqueline Gerber's movie quiz on WCLV this morning focused on War and Peace. introductory remarks cited an Associated Press article noting that many students are no longer asked to read full-length novels:

In many English classrooms across America, assignments to read full-length novels are becoming less common. Some teachers focus instead on selected passages — a concession to perceptions of shorter attention spans, pressure to prepare for standardized tests and a sense that short-form content will prepare students for the modern, digital world. 

The National Council of Teachers of English acknowledged the shift in a 2022 statement on media education, saying: “The time has come to decenter book reading and essay-writing as the pinnacles of English language arts education.”

I need to read that 2022 statement and see whether I have enough of an attention span left to write a rebuttal. I'll fuel the response with some of the ideas in my reading tag.