To read, we need a certain kind of silence . . . 1 that seems increasingly elusive in our over-networked society . . . and it is not contemplation we desire but an odd sort of distraction, distraction masquerading as being in the know. In such a landscape, knowledge can’t help but fall prey to illusion, albeit an illusion that is deeply seductive, with its promise that speed can lead us to illumination, that it is more important to react than to think deeply. . . . Reading is an act of contemplation . . . an act of resistance in a landscape of distraction. . . . It returns us to a reckoning
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