Why can’t we read anymore?

Or, Can books save us from what digital does to our brains?

By Hugh McGuire

Last year, I read four books.

The reasons for that low number are, I guess, the same as your reasons for reading fewer books than you think you should have read last year: I’ve been finding it harder and harder to concentrate on words, sentences, paragraphs. Let alone chapters. Chapters often have page after page of paragraphs. It just seems such an awful lot of words to concentrate on, on their own, without something else happening. And once you’ve finished one chapter, you have to get through another one. And usually a whole bunch more, before you can say finished, and get to the next. The next book. The next thing. The next possibility. Next next next.

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12 Days of “A Christmas Carol” featuring Lisa Hannigan, Sene Naoupu and more

The Lord Mayor of Dublin, Hazel Chu, invites you to join her for ‘12 days of a Christmas Carol’. Featuring a number of well-known faces reading a different chapter of the Charles Dickens tale ‘A Christmas Carol’ every evening at 7pm, starting on December 13th and continuing right up until Christmas Eve. Tonight is musician, singer and composer, Lisa Hannigan. Please consider donating to The Mansion House Fuel Fund, which distributes cash grants through charitable societies including St. Vincent de Paul and Dublin Simon: https://dublin.ie/mhff

Day one
Day Two
Day Three

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