The cultural tendencies of this time invite us to flit quickly from one story to another, sampling information and taking in various soundbites—both social and spiritual. It is as though we have been tacitly instructed never to dive too deep and to click quickly past anything that doesn’t automatically arrest our attention. Amid the mental clutter of so many neon-bright attention grabbers, the choice to read a book in full, slowly and carefully, or, as the Reading Program suggests, to read at least 5+ books in such a manner annually, seems practically countercultural—and maybe that’s exactly what we need. From the Nov./Dec. 2025 issue of response magazine.