Article

Books

Comment

Digital

Distraction

13 June 2025

5 min read

Reading is the perfect act of rebellion in our screen society

A fortunate meeting with the right text works an unfathomable, transformative magic.

Rachel Luckett

Rachel is a reader and writer, a coach, and an educator.

A young boy pores over a book tracing the lines with a finger.

Michael Parzuchowksi on Unsplash.

Every year out of the 22 years that I have been teaching, there has been at least one child, increasingly several, who lay down the gauntlet in September. They steady their feet and ball their fists before sizing up to inform me that they hate reading, they always will, no matter what I do, so there!

I likely raise an eyebrow and one side of my mouth; I don’t rub my hands together but the flame inside me leaps as I accept this familiar challenge. I’ve faced it so many times before and have almost always emerged the victor come July.

The secret is knowing great books, knowing the individual reader and knowing how to make that perfect match.

To read or not to read? That is the perplexing and troublesome question bothering many a teacher and (in my opinion) not enough parents in the present day. Need convincing? Though numerous research studies have evidenced significant benefits to cognitive function, brain health, physical longevity, mental health, stress relief, empathy, intelligence and sleep patterns, the National Literacy Trust's 2024 survey of over 76,000 children found that reading for pleasure saw an 8.8 per cent drop in just one year from 43.4 per cent to a worryingly low 34.6 per cent. This represents the lowest percentage since records began in 2005. Furthermore, trends are much the same throughout the adult population. It’s perhaps not hard to work out why picking up a book has declined in popularity. In our high-speed world of fleeting concentration, where bright, moving images flicker and fade, the monochrome, demanding, inanimate pages of a book can seem dull by comparison.

But a little effort can be hugely rewarding. Indeed, imaginatively creating, rather than consuming digital images, is the perfect act of rebellion in an utterly conformist, screen-based society. It is counter-cultural and subversive to sit awhile and demand that you bring your undivided attention to an effortful activity. To switch off devices and work your way into the unexplored possibilities of your own mind through the pages of a good book.

Teaching this to children has been my mission through 22 years of teaching English. I consider myself one of the stalwart guardians of the flame. The responsibility weighs heavy, urgent, and terrifying as resistance increases year on year. I obsess over it, feeling rationally afraid that if I stop breathing onto those embers for even one moment, the opportunity for revival will be lost…forever.

So, what of these books? What are we guarding? What is this paper-based treasure?

Imagine, for a moment, the sensational day when some tech billionaire creates a functioning portal or time machine, facilitating transportation back to the Tudors or the Trenches at the touch of a button.

Consider the mindless jostling to board a new rocket destined for a dystopian future not too distant or dissimilar from the present. Picture the frantic rush to buy personal transportation devices to enable visits to the rainforests of Guatemala, the Arctic glaciers or tropical island shores at a moment’s notice.

Imagine the insatiable sales of holograms masquerading as friends next to whom we could sink into an armchair creating free access to the minds of the rich and famous.

There would be jostling, posturing and frantic networking to get in on the action. That billionaire could set his price. Millions would be hastily spent to gain access.

But when that experience can be easily bought for somewhere in the region of £7.99 and comes in a 20x13cm rectangular paper format with monochrome printed pages, the levels of sensation and desirability dramatically drop through the floor.

In a world of fakery, a written encounter with truth transforms. Where empathy and compassion are eroded, accessing the imagination redeposits.

We fail to see that our books are indeed those time machines, transportation devices and conversations with wise giants. We were gifted such possibilities at the time of the printing press. A well-chosen book should never leave you the same at its last word as you were when encountering the first. Between those two covers was a moment in time when you were profoundly and fundamentally changed for eternity. You acquired new knowledge, encountered new people and places, travelled through time, experienced ranging emotions and developed thoughts and ideas in conversation with the greats. Something within you was transformed for good or for ill with your choice of book. If nothing happened, you need help choosing.

Content matters also. We should feed our minds as carefully as we should feed our bodies.

In a world of fakery, a written encounter with truth transforms. Where empathy and compassion are eroded, accessing the imagination redeposits. Where loneliness and depression devour, explorations of good character and relationship will nourish. Where fame and power corrupt, examples of service and humility will heal.

Good books will always nourish the soul.

Whatever is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent or praiseworthy – we should think on such things. This is why running our eyes over good words and filling our ears with exemplary voices is essential.

It is nothing short of a miracle that I can consult the wisdom of C.S. Lewis, the brave imagination of Katherine Rundell, the compassion of Maya Angelou and the teaching of Tom Wright in the silent space surrounding my armchair. I can equally learn from those who knew Frederick Douglass and those who knew Jesus not as figures in history but as a friend and teacher, a person of flesh and bone, in their literal time and space. They saw his face, they heard his voice, they felt the warmth of his hands on their skin, and I can know about it from their contemporary writings. I can consult equally with the writer of those ancient songs of wisdom that are the Psalms and the writer to the citizens of Philippi and know that between the words on those pages lies a moment when I am profoundly and fundamentally changed for all eternity.

Wise words are powerful, and they endure. They outlive a lifetime. They are miraculous and accessible. The world needs them.

So, to read or not read? The question is significant. It defines humanity. We guardians know that those last glowing embers must never be allowed to die. To read is a gift. It is noble work. It is a powerful and necessary act of rebellion in a world so out of touch with the Word.

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Article

Books

Culture

Education

Wisdom

15 April 2025

5 min read

We need libraries: they expose our limitations

These physical monuments to our own ignorance instil knowledge and humility.

Jonathan Rowlands

Jonathan is a theology lecturer and Liverpool FC fan.

Children sit in a library listening to a story

Spellow library children's talk.

Children’s Commissioner for England.

On 19 July 2024, my wife, toddler, cat, and I moved back to our hometown of Liverpool. Ten days later, three children were killed and ten more were seriously injured following a mass stabbing at a children’s dance workshop in nearby Southport.

In the aftermath, amid widespread misinformation about the killer’s background, riots erupted across the country. With unrest intensifying, on 3 August rioters set fire to Spellow Library, less than two miles away from our new home. The apparent reason for the fire? It contained Qur’ans. Imagine that: books in a library! (There’s an all-too-easy joke about far-right thugs not understanding what libraries are that I’ll try to resist making here.)

Nothing the country witnessed in those riots matches the unspeakable horror that occurred within that dance studio in Southport. And yet, I found the library fire deeply unsettling. I hadn’t worked out why, until recently.

I’m a theology lecturer and work from home a lot. I’m often listening to music while replying to emails, planning lectures, or marking essays. Recently, however, I’ve been in a musical rut. My usual stuff feels stale and nothing new catches my attention. I mostly use streaming services, and this week it hit me: the platform is the problem.

Streaming platforms operate through search engines: I search for an artist, song, or album, and start listening. In other words, I have to know what I want to listen to before listening to it. Platforms might suggest new music, but this is invariably based on what I already like. It very rarely exposes me to anything outside my comfort zone.

In the build-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, then-U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was asked about the mythical WMDs that served as the war’s McGuffin. His answer has gone down in political infamy:

“there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don't know we don't know.”

When teaching students, I constantly stress the importance of ‘unknown unknowns’. Good education exposes us to things we don’t know that we don’t know. It gives us increasing awareness of our own ignorance. Streaming services greatly reduce the chances of finding music I don’t know that I don’t know. Instead, I listen to music I know I know, or music I know I don’t know.

I used to love trawling through music shops, pouring over the vast sea of artists I hasn’t even heard of, imagining my favourite album was buried amid the reams of CD cases. It saddens me that I can’t remember the last time I did that. Music shops are physical monuments to my own ignorance. When I see all the artists, all the albums – even the genres! – I haven’t even heard of, I’m unavoidably confronted with my own ignorance.

So, too, with libraries. How many times I’ve wandered the stacks of university libraries and thought “I didn’t even know there was a book about this topic!” when picking something off the shelves! And this is their value to students: they are physical monuments to their own ignorance. They instil a passion for knowledge, and a deeper sense of humility, as students are forced to grapple concretely with everything they don’t even know they don’t know.

(Incidentally, this is what I’ll tell my wife next time I buy another book I invariably won’t read. I can already imagine her response: “But my love, we have plenty of physical monuments to your ignorance at home already.”)

I found the destruction at Spellow Library so disquieting. It is a supremely, nihilistic act. It is to reject engaging with our ‘unknown unknowns.’

Like music streaming platforms, libraries are increasingly digital spaces. My primary experience of reading nowadays is to type something into a search bar. My reading – just like my music – is increasingly myopic; increasingly confined to the realm of ‘known unknowns’. But true humility is only fostered through engagement with the ‘unknown unknowns’ of our life. We need the physical monuments to our own ignorance. We ignore them – or, as the case may be, set fire to them – at our peril.

There is a significant spiritual element to this, and this is why I found the destruction at Spellow Library so disquieting. It is a supremely, nihilistic act. It is to reject engaging with our ‘unknown unknowns’; a fearful unwillingness to be confronted by our own ignorance.

In a famous graduation speech entitled “This is Water” writer David Foster Wallace encourages those present to think about the ‘water’ in which they swim. What is so ubiquitous in life that it goes unnoticed? We might call these ‘unknown knows’: things we simply take for granted. On a theological level, the physical nature of our existence is one such phenomena. That we exist somewhere and somewhen is not a given; both space and time are creatures, too.

And this ought to make us reflect: why are we made to be physical if we might not have been? The Bible is clear that this physicality is a gift. So much so that God Himself chooses to dwell amongst us in physical form. The Christian story is that, in Jesus Christ, God becomes human. The Christian Gospels go to great pains to stress his physicality. He eats, He sleeps, He cries, He bleeds. He reads from physical scrolls when in the synagogue.

That God-given physicality means I can surround myself with the depth and breadth of my own creaturely ignorance; with my ‘unknown unknowns’. To my shame, I don’t do this often enough, and my increasingly digital life makes this harder. I have become physically detached from my ‘unknown unknowns’.

And so, now Spellow Library is reopen, I am going to make a concerted effort to visit and support society’s physical monuments to my creaturely ignorance. They may make me uncomfortable as I am overwhelmed by the extent of my limitations, but they may also just make me humbler. And that is the real gift of our God-given physicality.

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