READING: “Luddites Rejoice! Americans Still Prefer Printed Books” / PBS Newshour ☮

Girl with Coloring BookThe printed book remains the popular choice for readers over their digital counterparts, according to a new study by the Pew Research Center.

In the past year, 65 percent of U.S. adults surveyed said they read a book in its printed form. 28 percent of people said they read an e-book over the same period, while 14 percent said they listened to an audio book.

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BOOKS: “Thirteen Books Atheists Should Consider Reading” / Atheist Republic ☮

Atheist Scarlet Letter (Hitchens)These are not books debunking creationism, nor an item-by-item critique of the factual plausibility of holy writings, nor a demonstration of their historic shortcomings when compared to current notions of progressive humanist morality, nor are they an overt attack against religion. Since you are already an atheist, I assume you don’t need convincing anymore. Rather, they are about understanding your world and yourself without religion. These ideas are not new. Generally speaking, they are not trying to convince the reader. They are proposals for a different way of understanding reality without a god, logic, ethics, morality and yourself – perhaps the hardest thing to objectively fully understand in life.

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BOOKS: “Joshua Prager: Wisdom from Great Writers on Every Year of Life” / TED Talks ☮


As different as we humans are from one another, we all age along the same great sequence, and the shared patterns of our lives pass into the pages of the books we love. In this moving talk, journalist Joshua Prager explores the stages of life through quotations from Norman Mailer, Joyce Carol Oates, William Trevor and other great writers, set to visualizations by graphic designer Milton Glaser. “Books tell us who we’ve been, who we are, who we will be, too,” Prager says.