What books are you currently reading?

  • Welcome to Christian Forums, a Christian Forum that recognizes that all Christians are a work in progress.

    You will need to register to be able to join in fellowship with Christians all over the world.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon and God Bless!

Matthias

Well-Known Member
May 3, 2022
37,189
26,180
113
Kentucky
Faith
Other Faith
Country
United States
Gender
Male
“In Fahrenheit 451, the chief book-burner, Captain Beatty, describes how reading became obsolete because the public demanded increasingly fast-paced entertainments, and those entertainments slowly corroded their ability to think. ‘Books cut shorter. Condensations. Digests, tabloids. Everything boils down to the gag, the snap ending. Classics cut to fit fifteen-minute radio shows, then cut again to fill a two-minute book column … Many were those whose sole knowledge of Hamlet was a one-page digest in a book that claimed ‘Now at last you can read all the classics’ … School is shortened, discipline relaxed, philosophies, histories, languages dropped, English and spelling gradually neglected, finally almost completely ignored. Life is immediate, the job counts, pleasure lies all about after work. Why learn anything save pressing buttons, pulling switches?’

In this passage Ray Bradbury foretells the intellectual hollowing out of the working class, the advent of AI-generated ‘summaries’ of classic novels, the attention-frying culture of short-form video, the relaxation of educational standards into non-existence. All of this in a book published in 1953.”