{"id":936,"date":"2026-07-13T04:13:51","date_gmt":"2026-07-13T04:13:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nationallogisticspost.com\/?p=936"},"modified":"2026-07-13T04:13:51","modified_gmt":"2026-07-13T04:13:51","slug":"the-death-of-reading","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nationallogisticspost.com\/?p=936","title":{"rendered":"The Death of Reading"},"content":{"rendered":"
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L<\/span>ast January, I went blind in my left eye, the result of a botched cataract surgery. One of my first thoughts was will I still be able to write? It was instantly followed by will I still be able to read? The concept of life without visually intaking or outputting words, stories, and books seemed to me an unbearable tragedy. I was spared this fate by God, only to learn about too many people choosing it for themselves. A depressing new cover story by Rose Horowitch in The Atlantic<\/em>, \u201cThe End of Reading is Here,\u201d chronicles the cataclysmic decline in reading this century, which bodes ill for the rest of it.<\/p>\n

Read more Believe All Women \u2014 Unless They\u2019re Inconvenient<\/a><\/p>\n

The article cites a National Endowment for the Arts survey that found fewer than half of all adults reported having read a book of any kind in 2022. Just 38 percent read a novel or short story. The proportion of Americans who read for pleasure fell from 28 percent in 2004 to 16 percent in 2023.<\/p>\n

And the books being read \u2014 like the films being released \u2014 are less intellectual than afore. \u201cIn 1958,\u201d Horowitch wrote, \u201cthe English translation of Boris Pasternak\u2019s Doctor Zhivago<\/em> was the best-selling novel of the year \u2026 Last year\u2019s top-selling novel was Sunrise on the Reaping<\/em>, the latest in the\u00a0Hunger Games<\/em>\u00a0young-adult series.\u201d<\/p>\n

You might think it\u2019s positive that at least the kids are consuming books. But what Horowitch did not note is that a large percentage of the reading adults are now reading the same YA fiction, a trend started by the Harry Potter boom at the end of the 20th\u00a0Century. So, a modern totalitarian state would not have to ban a stimulative novel like the Soviet Union did Doctor Zhivago<\/em>. The masses would ignore it on the bookstore shelf in favor of the current adult fiction best-seller, Onyx Storm <\/em>\u2014 part of the women-driven \u201cromantasy\u201d series, Empyrean<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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That so many boys today will never know that experience \u2014 or later cherish memories of it \u2014 is truly lamentable.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

Amazon MGM Studios is currently preparing a small-screen adaptation of Empyrean<\/em>, as well they should for a popular female-oriented franchise. I wish that meant Hollywood feminists would leave male-driven literature such as The Odyssey<\/em> and The Lord of the Rings<\/em> alone, or in the library. But it\u2019s not in their XX \u2014 or X-neutral \u2014 DNA.<\/p>\n

Case in point, starlet Lupita Nyong\u2019o, who ridiculously plays Helen of Troy in Christopher Nolan\u2019s The Odyssey<\/em>, last week mocked Homer in a YouTube<\/em> interview since deleted because of the backlash. \u201cSo, Homer, how do you feel about the screen time given to these women considering how little you spent with them?\u201d Nyong\u2019o taunted. \u201cHmm? Remember us?\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more One Party Investigates, the Other Explains<\/a><\/p>\n

Such ignorance and insult is made possible by the steep decline in men reading fiction, precipitated by the decline in fiction written (or produced) for men and boys. Which is practically every book over the last 3,000 years, from The Iliad<\/em> through The Aeneid<\/em>, Beowulf<\/em>, The Divine Comedy<\/em>, Don Quixote<\/em>, and Robinson Crusoe<\/em> to the explosion of the novel in the 18th Century, now dying fast in the 21st. Those novels created immortal characters that became more real than most living people \u2014 Gulliver, Frankenstein, Captain Ahab, Scrooge, the Three Musketeers, Huckleberry Finn, Sherlock Holmes, Dracula, J. Gatsby, Philip Marlowe, James Bond, Don Corleone, and countless others.<\/p>\n

One of my most precious childhood memories is of a hot DC summer day, opening a cardboard box I\u2019d ordered for $12 from the back of a comic book. In the box lay all 24 Tarzan novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs. I spent the whole summer in heaven, or in Africa, devouring each book, then passing it to my neighbor and still best friend, Victor. We still challenge each other with the names Tarzan called his animal friends and foes \u2014 Tantor the elephant, Numa the lion, Gimla the crocodile, Hista the snake, and I could go on.<\/p>\n

That so many boys today will never know that experience \u2014 or later cherish memories of it \u2014 is truly lamentable. All because the liberal dragons at the publishing gate, like those in Hollywoke, deplore their masculine heteronormativity. Tarzan represents everything they detest \u2014 a toxic white male hero and leader (in anti-white Africa no less). Yet he inspired millions of men \u2014 and attracted millions of women \u2014 for over a hundred years. And that\u2019s precisely the kind of hero I advance in my fiction \u2014 along with heroes and heroines of different races \u2014 in the hope that others will derive a fraction of the pleasure I got from reading great books.<\/p>\n

Last week, I submitted to my publisher, Aethon Books \u2014 months late because of my eye trauma \u2014 the manuscript to my new novel, The Camelot Trail<\/em>, the contracted sequel to my well-received political thriller The Washington Trail<\/em>. As required in the relevance-dependent genre (READ MORE:<\/strong>\u00a0The Impeccable Timing of a Political Thriller<\/strong>), I had to anticipate the imminent geopolitical future. The Washington Trail<\/em>, for instance, required Donald Trump to be elected President, although I wrote most of it when he wasn\u2019t even a candidate, and might have gone to prison. But The Camelot Trail<\/em> really caught the wavelength of this article \u2014 the necessity of the classical hero for young men to save Western Civilization.<\/p>\n

In it, my two Washington private-eye protagonists \u2014 plus their hot new Latina associate \u2014 must protect a British expat literary scholar and leader of the mushrooming Excalibur movement. Excalibur induces young men to resurrect Arthurian chivalry and Christianity against growing spiritual darkness and for the protection of the weaker sex. And young women to support them and the future as traditional wives and mothers. The exploding movement makes its leader the number one target of the Left, and to once great Britain.<\/p>\n

Read more The Biology Feminism Can\u2019t Explain<\/a><\/p>\n

I hope by this Christmas, there are enough readers left to enjoy the book.<\/p>\n

READ MORE from Lou Aguilar:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Another Nail in the Hollywood Coffin: George Washington Beats \u2018Supergirl\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

Bastion America<\/strong><\/p>\n

Suffergirl<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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