The Need to Read

Learning to write comes from reading, both the work of published writers and of our peers, and from using one’s powers of insight and creativity to analyze what one reads and figure out why it works when it does and what is missing when it doesn’t. This is where knowledge is gained, and it’s slow and frustrating, nebulous, diffuse, much less direct

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Finally, in the national furor over “why Johnny can’t write,” let’s not forget to ask why Johnny also can’t learn. The two are connected. Writing organizes and clarifies our thoughts. Writing is how we think our way into a subject and make it our own. Writing enables us to find out what we know—and what we don’t know—about whatever we’re trying to

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While we naturally understand that writing is a good way to share ideas with others, we under-appreciate just how much good writing helps us think about an idea ourselves. Writing is not only a means of communication, it enables us to practice reasoning.

So why is reading books any better than reading tweets or wall posts? Well, sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes, you need to put down your book, if only to think about what you’re reading, what you think about what you’re reading. But a book has two advantages over a tweet. First, the person who wrote it thought about it a lot more carefully. The book is... See more