Trevin Wax, “The Great Awokening and Performative Justice” (The Gospel Coalition)

“In his provocative new book We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite, al-Gharbi makes use of the intellectual tool kit of Nietzschean power analysis and Foucauldian critique and flips the philosophical script of the ‘Great Awokening’ of the 2010s back onto itself. The acid of critical theory splashes back onto its advocates, revealing the hollow performance beneath the veneer of justice.”

Collin Hansen, “The N.I.C.E. Dystopia: C. S. Lewis on Escaping Our Humanity” (The Gospel Coalition)

“Lewis published his own dystopian novel, That Hideous Strength, in August, the same month as Animal Farm. That Hideous Strength puts a narrative behind the ideas Lewis shared in 1943 with The Abolition of Man and in 1944 with “The Inner Ring.” While third in his Space Trilogy, That Hideous Strength takes on a more concrete, realistic, and thus sinister feel than the earlier two books.”

Dan Olson, “The Secular Liturgy of ‘Goodnight Moon’” (The Gospel Coalition)

“Goodnight Moon was a follow-up to the successful The Runaway Bunny (1942), but when Goodnight Moon was released in 1947,  it barely registered an audience. In 1953, a year after Brown’s death, it sold just 1,500 copies. By 1970, however, it was selling 20,000 copies a year. By 2007, sales had skyrocketed to 800,000 annually. Today, various editions sell more than 1 million copies every single year.

“The book’s delayed success is hard to explain, but I find it interesting that its rise in popularity coincided with a decrease in Christian faith and practice.”

Cade Metz, “Anthropic Agrees to Pay $1.5 Billion to Settle Lawsuit with Book Authors” (New York Times)

“In a landmark settlement, Anthropic, a leading artificial intelligence company, has agreed to pay $1.5 billion to a group of authors and publishers after a judge ruled it had illegally downloaded and stored millions of copyrighted books.

“The settlement is the largest payout in the history of U.S. copyright cases. Anthropic will pay $3,000 per work to 500,000 authors.”

Trevin Wax, “Reading as Rebellion” (The Gospel Coalition)

“I know the stats. I’ve heard the stories. But I believe we’re humans, not robots. Trends aren’t determinative. We make choices. We have agency. Which is why I refuse to bow to the fatalism that marks too many takes on the decline in reading—the insultingly low expectations of teachers and commentators who throw up their hands and surrender the next generation to the power of the cultural tides.

“I want you to rebel. That’s right. In today’s world, reading is an act of holy insurgency. I want you to ignore the chatter of parents and professors who claim you’re no longer able or willing to exercise your mind through reading. I want you to swim upstream against the currents that make it easy to settle for superficiality.”