A classic does not necessarily teach us anything we did not know before. In a classic we sometimes discover something we have always known (or thought we knew), but without knowing that this author said it first, or at least is associated with it in a special way. And this, too, is a surprise that gives a lot of pleasure, such as we always gain from the discovery of an origin, a relationship, an affinity. From all this we may derive a definition of this type: The classics are books that we find all the more new, fresh, and unexpected upon reading, the more we thought we knew them from hearing them talked about.
The End of Reading Is Here
Optimists once believed that universal literacy was inevitable. Now it seems that the age of reading might be a short anomaly in human history.
Why do we collect things?
Desire, nostalgia, loss, and completeness in the personal collections of Joseph Cornell, Peter Blake, and Vladimir Nabokov
Andrew Tate Doesn’t Get the Point of Books
The erosion of deep reading weakens our capacity to grasp complex ideas.
The Naturalist’s Library
A complete digital edition of William Jardine’s 40-volume series on natural history
What You Don't Know Will Make a Whole New World by Dorothy Lazard | East Bay Booksellers
From one of California’s most celebrated librarians and public historians, a coming-of-age memoir about the thirst for knowledge and hometown pride.A Best Book of the Year, Oakland Public Library2023 Bronze Winner for the Foreword INDIES Award, Autobiography & Memoir"What You Don’t Know will inspire for its grace, zest and courage.
The End of Reading Never Began
What “The End of Reading Is Here” gets wrong about literacy, intellectual authority, and American “decline”
Revenge of the Dilettantes
Book club and AI adventures, age of bespokeness, study groups, new rules of engagement
Revenge of the Dilettantes
Book club and AI adventures, age of bespokeness, study groups, new rules of engagement
“The End of Reading Is Here” - The Ringer
There’s no doubt that reading is in decline. But what is that decline doing to the way we think? Derek talks with The Atlantic’s Rose Horowitch about why Americans are reading fewer books than ever and struggling more with complex texts and what that means for education, work, politics, and culture.
The Shape of Knowing - The Cynefin Co
We evolved to make sense of a world that does not come with explanations attached. This is the third in a series on the trialectics. For an introduction
Hardcover
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Saying the obvious thing
Stating the obvious is surprisingly useful. Most of your knowledge lives below the threshold of conscious awareness, so it’s possible for a piece of writing to remind you of what you already know. It’s common to know you don’t like something without being quite sure why, and reading an obvious statement (such as “accuracy matters, even when you agree with the broad strokes”) can help clarify why you find certain things distasteful.
Henrik Karlsson on Twitter / X
When I read lively prose, one thing I notice is that it packs a lot of information per sentence—but not, usually, by being compact. Instead, how to explain it?Take this phrase “an interesting and exciting new finding”—that’s pretty dead. And one of several reasons is that the…— Henrik Karlsson (@phokarlsson) February 24, 2026
Reader guide · Standard Reader
How to use Standard Reader — following, reading, listening, and making it yours. No technical knowledge needed.
Ever thought we acquire generalizable knowledge by discarding details and compressing our experiences? In a new BBS paper, @sabinasloman.bsky.social and I argue otherwise, proposing a novel way of studying human learning inspired by double descent in ML. Disagree? Propose a commentary by May 15 :)
