There are no shortcuts for becoming a good reader, but there are lives that propel and sustain it. Aristotle wrote that the good society16 has three lives: the life of knowledge and productivity; the life of entertainment and the Greeks’ special relationship to leisure; and finally, the life of contemplation. So, too, the good reader. In the final letter I elaborate how this reader—like the good society—embodies each of Aristotle’s three lives, even as the third life, the life of contemplation, is daily threatened in our culture. From the perspectives of neuroscience, literature, and human
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