The Atlantic’s latest bombshell headline is a stark one: It says “The End of Reading is Here.” The theory is that it can no longer be assumed that universal literacy will be achieved. And that, instead, the age of reading will be a short one in human history. Are we entering a postliterate society?
Well, Barbara Vandenburgh has hope that reading is still relevant — even if she can see the impacts of our technology-drenched world in her own life.
Vandenburgh hosts the First Draft Book Club each month at Changing Hands Bookstore and she is the former Books Editor at USA Today. She told The Show it’s a bleak, but not inaccurate article.
Full conversation
BARBARA VANDENBURGH: I can see a lot of the effects of what the article is discussing in my own life, and it scares me. So the article talks about how our attention spans collectively are measurably worse than they were before smartphones, before TikTok, before social media, before short-form video. Our brains have been hijacked by these smart devices.
I see that in my own life as a lifelong reader. My house is a fire hazard. I have so many books in my house. I ran out of room on my bookshelves years ago, and they’re piled on the floor. I have so many books.
And I have never had a harder time getting through a book than I do now. And I love to read. It enriches my life so much. So I do think that there’s a lot of truth to this article. Do I think that we are headed for a post-literate society? Do I think all hope is lost? No, I don’t. I’m very hopeful.
LAUREN GILGER: Good. And that’s because you are involved in reading communities, it sounds like, in some ways, right? Like you host this book club at Changing Hands every month. It seems like it’s getting bigger at this moment, right?
BARBARA VANDENBURGH: Yeah. So I’ve hosted this book club, the First Draft Book Club at Changing Hands in Phoenix, for 11 years as of this summer. Every single month — including during COVID, which we did virtually — but every single month, we get together and we discuss a recently published work of literary fiction.
So that’s the stuff that people are especially having a hard time reading, right? Things that have complicated themes and difficult character arcs and stuff that you have to think on and ponder to make sense of and discuss.
So we’ve been doing this for 11 years, and I would say especially in the last year and a half, it has started to really pick up. We get regularly over 100 people per month in this gathering place at Changing Hands to discuss fiction, which is incredible. Outside of a classroom setting. That’s incredible.
LAUREN GILGER: Of their own volition.
BARBARA VANDENBURGH: Of their own volition. And I’m seeing a lot of—every meeting I ask who’s here for the first time, I’m seeing more and more hands come up every single time I ask who’s here for the first time. I’m seeing younger people. So Gen Z, people who are still in college or freshly out of college.
It’s a predominantly female crowd. There’s lots of women who come together and talk about fiction. I’m seeing more and more men show up.
LAUREN GILGER: Hey hey.
BARBARA VANDENBURGH: Right? And I’m just seeing this uptick in enthusiasm, just even in this sample size group of people in midtown Phoenix show up to talk about books. I’m so full of hope.
LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. And you also have ways, it sounds like, of dealing with the distraction of your phone. And a lot of us do this, like have focus modes or apps that we use. But you have a couple of, I think, interesting tips. So run us through those.
BARBARA VANDENBURGH: So I sat down at the beginning of the year. I don’t do resolutions, but I do sort of write a list of: What is it that I want for myself in this new year? Not so much a resolution, but what are my hopes? And a big part of that was I want to read more, I want to read more intentionally, I want to read undistracted and I want to get off my stupid phone. I hate this device that I’m addicted to.
And so one of the things that I found that I’m now obsessed with is this app, and it’s called Focus Friend. And it was created by Hank Green, who is an author. And this app is so silly. It is a cartoon character, and it’s a little bean. I’ve named mine Dolly.
And this little cartoon character, you put your phone into focus mode, and the little bean will shut down all of your apps, except for the emergency stuff like your phone, right? But it’ll shut down all of the apps, and the little bean will knit you something.
And so what I’ll do is I’ll put 30 minutes on that timer and I’ll shut down all my apps, and I’m like, “You are going to sit here and you are going to read for 30 minutes and you’re not going to look at TikTok or Instagram or check your work email for the 50th time. You’re not going to do any of that, you’re just going to sit here and you’re going to read.”
And I would say that after doing this all year, I am now better. I’ve trained myself to know what 30 minutes feels like again. Something like that is really cute.
My friend has been giving me stickers. And this is stupid, it’s so — it ignites the kindergarten part of my brain. But she’ll be like, “Put your phone away and read at a coffee shop with me for an hour and I’ll give you a sticker at the end of it.”
And I’ve got this planner and it’s full of stickers, and if I go a certain amount of time without any stickers, I’m like, “I really need a sticker fix.” So for whatever reason, you got to build in these little rewards and dopamine hits that will replace whatever it is your smartphone is giving you.
LAUREN GILGER: Do you think at this point in our culture, Barbara, that we can still assume that reading is a good thing, an obviously good thing?
BARBARA VANDENBURGH: Yes, I will die on that hill. I mean, personally, obviously, I’m deeply passionate about reading and literacy and what it does for us as human beings and how it builds understanding and bridges between cultures, and there’s so much that’s worthwhile about reading.
I think there’s still social and cultural cachet to reading, too. Like, I think walking around with a book or reading in public, there’s still a little allure to that. I do. Maybe that’s a little romanticized, but I do think it’s true. I think reading and sitting with something that takes a long time to get through and digest is about teaching you how to think critically. And that’s something that a YouTube video and that TikToks aren’t going to do.
LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, absolutely. OK, so what are you reading this summer? We can’t let you go without a few recommendations.
BARBARA VANDENBURGH: Oh, so we just had an insanely great book club conversation. The book that we read last month was “Yesteryear” by Caro Claire Burke.
LAUREN GILGER: Oh, so much buzz on this book.
BARBARA VANDENBURGH: It’s so good, and it’s going to be a movie. It got optioned for film rights before the book was even published. Anne Hathaway is going to be in it. So “Yesteryear” is this just delectable novel about this woman who is a tradwife — which these are influencers on like TikTok or Instagram who are sort of living and promoting an old-fashioned, more like sort of conservative lifestyle, where they’re homemakers and cooking everything in their kitchens from scratch, and it’s a very an idealized, romanticized propaganda of a kind of life that didn’t really exist the way it’s being presented, right? There’s not a controversy over tradwife influencers and content.
And so this main character of this book is a tradwife influencer, and one day she wakes up and she’s in the 1800s. And so she’s living the reality of this thing that she’s been promoting online, and it’s just — you will not walk away without an opinion, let’s just put it that way.
LAUREN GILGER: Ah, I can’t wait. OK, I got to read that one, OK.
BARBARA VANDENBURGH: I’m also, independent of this book club, my friends and I have done an offshoot book club where we’re tackling a classic. And we’re doing it very intentionally over the course of months.
And so the first one that we did for this book club was “Lonesome Dove” by Larry McMurtry, which is a brick of a book. It’s like 800 or 900 pages. Intimidating size, yeah. Yeah, and we met every single month and we would assign ourselves a certain number of chapters, and we would meet every month, and we got through the book, no problem, and it was so rewarding.
And now we’re doing “Middlemarch.” So I cannot recommend enough, like creating accountability in the form of meeting with friends or finding other people to do it with is so effective.
LAUREN GILGER: All right, well, lots of great recommendations and ideas when it comes to reading this summer. Barbara VanDenburgh, manager of programming and communications at the Sidney Poitier New American Film School at ASU, as well as former books editor at USA Today. She hosts the First Draft Book Club at Changing Hands Bookstore in Phoenix every month. Barbara, thank you so much for coming back on The Show. We appreciate it very much.
BARBARA VANDENBURGH: Thank you for having me.
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