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Driving a horse to the vet this morning (the kind of work that can’t be carried out with AI), I serendipitously caught an interview with Cal Newport, author of Deep Work. I’ll put his link below.
He was absolutely brilliant about why sitting down and reading works to keep us human. Reading isn’t a thing that we evolved as a survival strategy. It’s a learned behavior that links together parts of our brain that otherwise wouldn’t connect with each other. When we read for twenty or thirty minutes per day, we’re exercising and strengthening those connections. If we don’t read, those connections wither away.
I read all the time for work—whenever I’m sitting down to write, I’m constantly referring to histories, biographies, monographs, and other works of scholarship. But I’ve been increasingly aware, over the past year, that this sort of pragmatic, goal-focused reading (which tends to be in shorter chunks) isn’t the same as sitting down and reading. Which is something that keeps falling off the to-do list. It isn’t, after all
So for the past month, I’ve been putting “Read in the Library” on my to-do list. We recently moved all of the books from my parents’ offices into an upstairs room that now has two chairs, a table, a good light, and a cat that insists on sleeping there (that’s the library, pic for your reference). When I get to “Read in the Library” on the daily schedule, I go into the Library, sit in the chair that the cat’s not occupying, pull a blanket over me (the blanket seems to be important), and spend at least half an hour reading something that has nothing at all to do with anything I’m working on. I’ll list a few titles next week, if you’re interested.
It’s been a sabbath of sorts, a recapturing of a joy that I remember from childhood (sinking into a book without having to USE it for anything), and an oasis in the middle of a work afternoon.
I guess I’m just letting you know that even those of us who do word-work for a living have to continually re-start the deep work of reading.
calnewport.com/deep-work-rules-for-focused-success-in-a-distracted-world/
1 day ago
What a wonderful room!
A daily Sabbath. Very helpful.
This post is lovely because sharing your private world conjures up memories that are satisfying to many of us. Growing up in a 3 bedroom city row home that served 2 parents and 4 children, gave us no room for private reading spaces. However, our city provided a Bookmobile! I remember it being as large as a semi-truck. But I think that memory was based on my size. I vividly remember the sweet fragrance of books mixed with an interesting truck smell that was actually pleasant. My best memory was a small step that I claimed as my own where I got to preview which books I would borrow. Today, a regional library occupies nearly the same spot as did the Bookmobile. I'm happy for my Highlandtown friends. And I will cherish my childhood experience of anonymity and privacy I felt sitting on that small Bookmobile step. 💗
Yes. ❤️
What a wonderful idea. I hope it is ok if I recommend a book. I just finished Theo of Golden and it is such a gem. Best book I have read in years!
I’m building my library, if you look closely, you should see three of yours. Yours was the history timeline I decided to use for my “clothesline” on which to hang more facts as I discovered them.
I needed this post. After a wretched divorce, I left my books on the shelves for “a time that seemed right.” Today, I picked up All Creatures Great and Small. I’m healing.
Do you think the positive effects of sitting down to read for pleasure are lessened at all by choosing ebooks or audiobooks over paper books? This isn't to throw shade at those formats. I use all three formats in my reading life. I'm more curious if you or anyone else has thoughts on this.
I’m almost done with home schooling our tenth child. We’re downsizing dramatically for a cross country move and I’m daydreaming of reading by the fireplace in the living room. I just read Joan of Ark by Mark Twain and plan to rebuild our library in my retirement years. It’s enjoyable to return to my bookworm days.
Maryanne Wolfe has talked about this (with reading) quite a bit in her work, too!
I was speaking with my local independent book seller recently and she reminded me that not only reading, but also selecting books that we will enjoy, are muscles that must be exercised.
I've been working on the exact same practice for a few months now! I limited myself to real books with paper pages because I have relied on audio books so much for the past five years that I wanted to reaquaint myself with the tactile experience of bound pages. Yesterday, I found out that four months of real books has ruined me for e-readers. I tried an e-book and did not like it at all!
I've read three books of your history of the World Series through the Renaissance Is there a modern volume
To read for reading sake what is your favorite? I know this is a loaded question especially for am author and educator
I absolutely love this idea of scheduling reading time. I'm not sure why it never occurred to me. I often bemoan the fact that I have a little library area in my basement that stays neglected. I'm going to have to try the scheduling idea.
Cal Newport is really thoughtful and spot on with a lot of process in the area of thoughtful work. His perspective on AI is pretty sober too bringing his ComSci PH.d to the table.
I'm a librarian and reading used to be like breathing, but 2024 sort of broke it. I entered a slump in which I could only read old favorites again and again. I'm trying to claw my way back up to reading books more challenging than what I read at 13, and I'm finally feeling more like I can, some. Meanwhile my TBR pile kept growing and is now quite something....
I believe that associating pleasure with the written word may be the most important aspect of learning and growing as a human being.
I love this. I’m definitely interested in what you are reading, so please share when you get a chance. I’ve recently been introduced to Pam Jenoff’s books. She writes historical fiction, and thanks to homeschooling my kids for a few years using your Story of the World, I have fallen in love with history again, so these books are wonderful. She’s a super smart lady who teaches law school and writes a lot about Jews and World War II. It’s amazing how one book can lead to another one. For example, in one of her books she writes about how the 20th train to Auschwitz was attacked by resistance fighters, and many Jews were set free. She listed a book about it in her references in the back of the book I was reading, so of course I had to buy that one as well. One thing led to another, and I’m currently immersed in World War II historical fiction and loving every minute of it.
Sadly, I don’t have a dedicated space that I could call a library. And the spaces that do exist are too full of distractions, reminders, etc. to be conducive to relaxation. However… I am inspired to add “Read in the Library” to my daily schedule — and to find a comfy spot in my literal public library where this can happen. 🙂
What a lovely space! I love this idea. I'm a homeschooled bookworm who is now a homeschooling mom who uses audiobooks to get me through the mundane chores of life. I probably consume around 70 complete books a year with this method. I have an eclectic mix of classic, modern, re-reads, and non-fiction. Now that my own children are teenagers and also love various forms of books, I love the impromptu book clubs we have together!
Great inspiration for when (if?) I become an empty-nester re repurposing a room dedicated to books and reading!
I keep hoping to set up a reading room in my house... ❤️
You paint such a lovely scene of reading in your special place. I only hope my kids are as delighted with the books I leave behind!
I needed to read this today. Thank you
My brother is the featured speaker at William & Mary tomorrow.
My goodness, how we've grown.
And yes, given my last post, I am aware of the irony that he holds this particular job. But he's still a very good guy.
**
William & Mary alumni are on the cutting edge of innovation — including at Nvidia, the world’s most valuable company. Nvidia now holds approximately 80% of the artificial intelligence chip market and is worth more than $4 trillion.
Bob Wise ’86, vice president for engineering and operations at Nvidia DGX Cloud, an AI supercomputing service, is leading at a time of immense growth. On April 23, he will return to campus to share insights from his career in the tech industry with the W&M community as the inaugural speaker in the School of Computing, Data Sciences & Physics Class of 1975 Speaker Series.
**
news.wm.edu/2026/04/13/bob-wise-86-of-nvidia-to-speak-at-wm-april-23/
2 weeks ago
As a satisfied NVIDIA shareholder please tell your brother thank you.
Very cool, Susan! Sending the link to our two 20-something sons - one a robotics engineer in Boston and one a research oceanographer doing a post-doc in a climate lab in the geology department at an Ivy League university. Each was homeschooled for about 8 years (different years as they were 6 grades apart). They loved The Story of the World! But I don't think either of them has run into homeschoolers in STEM fields, other than a couple of childhood friends.
I had a dress very similar to yours!! 😄
Is that little Tom Hanks?🤭
Y’all are so cute! 🥰🥰🥰
I loved those playmates! Great memories Thanks for sharing, congratulations to Bob!
That's you on the left? Adorbs!
This photo is precious!! Sweet siblings 🥹
And I think today is Bob ‘s birthday too! Happy Birthday and what an incredible opportunity! I know your parents would be so proud.
Adorable photo 💛 Was he homeschooled too? Because the idea that a homeschooler can grow up to become a VP at Nvidia is very encouraging to those of us with little ones!
I love this photo! You all weren't too much older than this when we met!💕
My daughter is there-glad for the notice!
Will this be recorded? I am really interested in hearing this.
Wow, the 3 of you were absolutely darling!
As the parent of a programming and engineering-minded kid, I'd love to hear more about how William and Mary prepares students on that side of the postsecondary spectrum. I always think of W&M for letters, but it slips my mind for the sciences.
I love seeing you support your brother. The twist and turns of life’
Beautiful PHOTO, Susan! Great hearing the recent news about your brother, Bob, Old Man River,as your Mom would call him.🥰
SAME
Wow.
And these are the things that wake me up at 3 AM, perseverating on the possible demise of my profession.
**
No living American historian is as prolific as Blake Whiting. In one week alone last fall, he published 13 books on a host of complex archaeological and historical subjects, ranging from the collapse of Near Eastern civilizations in 1177 BCE to the recent discovery of a huge Silk Road–era city in Central Asia...
Whiting, as you have guessed, is neither historian nor human. His fake persona is harbinger of an alarming trend threatening disaster to academics and journalists alike...
This is not plagiarism in the old-fashioned sense, in which a few sentences or paragraphs are lifted from a previously published work. This is word-laundering on a truly industrial scale, aided and abetted by one of the world’s largest corporations...The volumes by “Blake Whiting” provide sophisticated analyses with up-to-date information, flashy covers, and introductions written in the first person. There is no hint that the author is not human. “I first encountered news of this discovery”—a large settlement recently found in Uzbekistan— “while researching trade networks for an entirely different project,” states the introduction to Archaeology of the Silk Road’s Forgotten Metropolises, “and like many historians, my initial reaction was skepticism.”
That book details the groundbreaking work of Michael Frachetti of Washington University in St. Louis and his colleague, Farhod Maksudov, of Uzbekistan’s Institute of Archaeology in Tashkent. The two men have spent more than a decade excavating remote Central Asian sites that shed fresh light on the medieval network of the Silk Road, and they have published their results in peer-reviewed journals. I have covered their research in Science and Smithsonian, visiting their excavations and interviewing them extensively. When I contacted Frachetti, he was not familiar with “Blake Whiting.” “Never met him,” he said. “I guess someone is making money off us.”...
Readers, however, seem unaware that “Blake Whiting” is not a flesh-and-blood author. “Fascinating read!” wrote one Amazon reviewer of a book about the important Turkish archaeological site called Gobekli Tepe. “Well organized chapters, clearly explaining what has been discovered,” wrote another. “Speculations on all aspects are well grounded in real archaeology.” A reviewer on Goodreads gushed: “This was an EXCELLENT overview for the layperson about this site. It was a simple but well-balanced discussion of the site and its possible origins.”
AI projects designed to pose as real researchers, set in motion by unethical humans, with the cooperation of a powerful corporation, are now capable of fooling even careful bibliophiles. This is not the ChatGPT of 2022. “It reads beautifully and is accurate,” Cline says ruefully of 1177 BC Revisited....
For now, at least, the rapidly changing environment leaves writers like Cline and me in an increasingly grueling race. We are competing not just with other authors but also with smart and polished computer programs used by unknown actors eager to glean a profit from our years of work and who confront few obstacles. Before I can reach my desk with my morning coffee to labor on my next chapter, they can churn out a half-dozen books. “It’s enough to make me want to head for the hills and spend the rest of my days tending sheep or picking daisies,” says Cline.
**
Well, I'm in favor of tending sheep, but I can tell you from experience that sheep don't pay the bills.
Who Is Blake Whiting? - The American Scholar
theamericanscholar.org
The most astonishingly productive historian in recent times is someone you’ll never meet2 weeks ago
As disheartening as this is, AI will never write the history books that you write. It will write history books, but not yours. And we need your voice! Keep plugging away.
I can absolutely understand the frustration and nervousness you and many other authors are facing now with AI. But I 100% agree with pp Nathan Carter Johnson, AI can write, but they don't have the voices, the emotion, or personality. They can fake it, and maybe can fool some. But they don't have it and won't fool everyone. My fear is author’s will begin dropping their profession because of AI, and that in the future we won’t have the same quality of books - real books. That writing and reading abilities will drop across the board. Ugh, I'm just so tired already of reading AI slop everywhere. I can't imagine a world without real authors and real books...💔
Thank you for posting this. As a literature and writing teacher at a classical online school, I, too, have been asking myself what is the point of trying when my students are using Chatgpt to do their homework for them. The only answer I have been able to give myself is: in a world that is increasingly saturated with robots pretending to be human, I am going to give my kids an example of being a weird, imperfect, genuine human, so they know we're still out here.
“You like Thanksgiving dessert?” I said today to my 12 yo, discussing exactly this. “Let’s take the best ones: chocolate pudding, pumpkin pie, banana cream cake- And mash them all together. You’ll need an extra dose of sugar to enjoy it. (She laughed and didn’t deny it) That’s the problem with AI writing. It is not nor ever could be a unique flavor. It may taste fine to the person with an unrefined pallet- who has never had our fancy butter pie crust or homemade vanilla pudding with a touch more vanilla, but it will inevitably lack.” Truth is, many actors in Hollywood today are often young, fresh-faced and beautiful in a redundant sort of way. We are not impressed much with the march of pretty faces across the screen (those movies often bomb), but Ryan Gosling’s odd sense of humor has its own flavor. Are his looks perfect? Maybe to some, but that isn’t what sells his movies. Perfection isn’t a flavor, and we crave flavor.
Thank you for putting this before us...alarming, disheartening, but so important to know! I appreciate what one commentator has already said to you, Mrs. Wise Bauer, "We need YOUR voice!" (Emphasis mine, but the sentiment is obviously shared!) Keep up the good work.
"Amazon sells his hardbacks for $28.99, the paperbacks for $20.99, and the Kindle versions for a bargain $7.99. What you can't buy from Amazon at any price, however, is Blake Whiting's CV. Though the books claim to be copyrighted in his name, you won't find an author picture or bio, nor will you find his website or Instagram. He does not belong to the faculty of any college or university, and he is unknown to those academics he cites in his books—which are not actually copyrighted." Amazon really seems to be allowing these. With all their algorithms, they could filter it out.
I just keep thinking of the assault on embodiment that all this is.
This is truly alarming and it just keeps getting worse. (As a teacher, combating it in the classroom is one thing, but this is next level.)
Wow, congratulations on achieving such an incredible milestone! Publishing a book is no small feat it truly reflects your passion, creativity, and dedication. You know, beyond just publishing, getting real reader recognition can take a book even further. Being part of a reader-driven award and reading challenge can help your book gain meaningful visibility, authentic feedback, and stronger credibility with readers. Have you ever considered having your book featured in something like that?
Hello! We came across your book and found it quite remarkable. As we prepare for our April 25th Spotlight, we’re featuring a select number of standout works and would love yours to be one of them. Feel free to message us directly, or connect with us through the email provided on our Facebook page.
