2 . Digital reading (数字阅读) appears to be destroying habits of “deep reading”. Astonishing numbers of people with years of schooling are in fact illiterate (文盲). This month’s Ljubljana Manifesto (宣言) explains: “The digital field may promote more reading than ever in history, but it also offers many attractions to read in a casual and scattered (零散的) manner— or even not to read at all. This increasingly endangers higher-level reading.”

That’s frightening, because “higher-level reading” has been necessary to civilization. It made the understanding and an international increase in empathy (共鸣). Without it, we would suffer a lot. As the Ljubljana Manifesto notes, “as much as one-third of Europeans struggle even with lower-level reading skills.” More than one-fifth of adults in the US “fall into the illiterate/functionally illiterate category”. Separately, post-pandemic (后疫情时期) reading scores for American13-year-olds are the lowest in decades. And the Washington-based Center for Global Development recently estimated that literacy (读写能力) in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa among those with five years of schooling has decreased by 10% this past half century.

Experts in the Ljubljana Manifesto record the demerits of digital reading: “Recent studies of various kinds indicate a decline of thoughtful reading, slow reading and long-form reading.” When you read a book on paper, you can be entirely inside the experience, absorb hundreds of pages of details thoroughly and begin to catch the world’s complexity. Online, says Maryanne Wolf of UCLA, we are “skimming, scanning and scrolling”. The medium is the message: doing deep reading on your phone is as hard as playing tennis with your phone. Recently, a bright 11-year-old boy told me I was wasting time on books: he absorbed more information faster from websites. He had a point. But digital readers also absorb more misinformation and seldom absorb fine opinions.

In short, as professors from Northwestern University predicted in 2005, we are returning to the days when only an elite (精英) “reading class” reads long texts, which is worrying.

4 . A man may usually be known by the books he reads as well as by the company he keeps; for there is a companionship of books as well as of men; and one should always live in the best company, whether it is of books or of men.

A good book may be among the best of friends. It is the most patient and cheerful companions. It does not turn its back upon us in times of adversity or distress. It always receives us with the same kindness, amusing and instructing us in youth, and comforting and consoling us in age.

There is an old proverb, “Love me, love my dog.” But there is more wisdom in this: “Love me, love my book.” The book is a truer and higher bond of union. Men can think, feel, and sympathize with each other through their favorite author. They live in him together, and he in them. The best books are treasuries of good words, the golden thoughts, which, remembered and cherished, become our constant companions and comforters.

Books possess an essence of immortality. They are by far the most lasting products of human effort. Temples and statues decay, but books survive. Time is of no account with great thoughts, which are as fresh today as when they first passed through their author’s minds, ages ago. What was then said and thought still speaks to us as vividly as ever from the printed page. The only effect of time has been to sift out the bad products, for nothing in literature can long survive but what is really good.

Books introduce us into the best society; they bring us into the presence of the greatest minds that have ever lived. We hear what they said and did; we see them as if they were really alive; we sympathize with them, enjoy with them and grieve with them. The great and good do not die, even in this world. Embalmed in books, people’s spirits walk abroad. The book is a living voice. It is an intellect to which one still listens.

8 . In an effort to keep a little poetry in my life long after National Poetry Month passed, I decide to read at least one poem a day after scanning the newspaper over breakfast. Thanks to the free online poetry-in-your-inbox services, it’s been an easy resolution（解决办法）to keep.

Poem-a-Day was started during National Poetry Month in 2016, and it focuses on new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends.

Ted Kooser offers a similar service through his American Life in Poetry Series, though it’s a weekly, rather than a daily. Kooser briefly introduces each week’s poem, offering a little bit of information about the selection, the writer, and books where readers can turn to if they want more work from the featured poet.

Reading at least one poem a day has been like an intellectual vitamin, giving me a small dose（剂量）of literature even on busy days when I can’t get to the novels and non-fiction on my desk beside the bed. Another benefit has been connecting with a lot of talented poets I wouldn’t otherwise know about. Poetry being what it is, even the best talents in the style can work in relative obscurity（朦胧）. Maybe the biggest benefit of reading a poem every morning has been the chance to see the familiar in new ways.

Last April, I wondered if I could remind myself to read a poem each morning. Now, deep in summer, I wonder if I could ever do without it.

9 . Technology seems to discourage slow, careful reading. Reading on a screen tires your eyes and makes it harder for you to keep your place. Online writing tends to be more skimmable (易略读的) and list-like than print. The neuroscientist Mary Walt argued recently that this new standard of skim reading is producing“an invisible, game-changing transformation”in how readers process words. The neuronal circuit (神经回路) that maintains and supports the brain’s ability to read now prefers the rapid absorption of information.

We shouldn’t overplay this danger. All readers skim. From about the age of nine, our eyes start to skim quickly across the page, reading only about a quarter of the words properly, and filling in the gap s by inference. Nor is there anything new in these fears about declining attention spans (持续时间). So far, the anxieties have proved to be false alarms. “Quite a few critics have been worried about attention spans lately and see very short stories as signs of cultural decline,” the American author Selvin Brown wrote. “No one ever said that poems were evidence of short attention spans.”

And yet the Internet has certainly changed the way we read. For a start, it means that there is more to read, because more people than ever are writing. And digital writing is meant for rapid release and response. This mode of writing and reading can be interactive and fun. But often it treats other people’s words as something to be quickly taken as materials to say something else. Everyone talks over the top of everyone else, eager to be heard.

Perhaps we should slow down. Reading is constantly promoted as a source of personal achievement. But this argument often emphasizes “enthusiastic” “passionate” or “eager” reading, non e of which words suggest slow, quiet absorption. To a slow reader, a piece of writing can only be fully understood by immersing oneself in the words and their slow understanding of a line of thought.

The human need for this kind of deep reading is too tenacious for any new technology to destroy. We often assume that technological change can’t be stopped and happens in one direction, so that older media like “dead-tree” books are kicked out by newer, more virtual forms. In practice, older technologies can coexist with new ones. The Kindle has not killed off the printed book any more than the car killed off the bicycle. We still want to enjoy slowly-formed ideas and carefully-chosen words. Even in a fast-moving age, there is time for slow reading.

10 . “A good book is easy to find.” That is the _______ on a sign at Hernando Guanlao’s home in the Makati area of Manila, the capital of the Philippines.

Guanlao has _______ his home into a free public library. Visitors can borrow the books inside for free. Guanlao says he hopes his library will inspire people to read, _______ the young. The 72-year-old said that his library _______ books that all students can enjoy — from young children in kindergarten to _______ students in grade 12. He calls his library Reading Club 2000, which includes many different kinds of books.

He _______ his library more than 20 years ago when he set 50 books beside the walkway in front of his home. Guanlao’s _______ have grown greatly over the years — thanks to a continuous supply of books from donors.

Speaking of donors, he said, “They just _______ boxes of books outside my house.” He has also begun _______ books himself by sending reading materials to public schools in faraway communities.

Guanlao's ________ make a difference at a time when reading ability among students in the Philippines remains ________ . Some students in the Philippines are also facing learning delays（延迟）in math and science. He hopes to help more students ________ these problems.

Guanlao is ________ to stick to his goals. “My mission（使命） is to ________ used and donated books to others at no cost,” he said, “and to promote ________ through literature.”