Great Regulars: The Lost Art of Reading is framed by

an ongoing dialogue with his [David Ulin's] fifteen-year-old son, Noah, who gets assigned The Great Gatsby for school. Noah hates underlining key passages (complaining, rightly, "It would be so much easier if they'd let me read it.") and would rather be doing something else with his time. In a moment of both frustration and baiting, he tells his book critic father, "This is why reading is over . . . . Nobody wants to do it anymore."

Ulin has heard this before, of course--at work, from interviewers, and in civic debate.

from Powells: Review-A-Day: Go On, Please . . .

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