This brings us to the deeper point: the value of reading lies less in retention than in integration. A good book tweaks your internal models and you begin to see a familiar problem in a new frame. You revise the assumptions behind a mental shortcut or you absorb a phrase that becomes part of your vocabulary of thought.

These changes are easy to... See more

This happens a lot, that feeling when I can’t remember if I thought a thought or if a book planted it in my brain, and it’s just now popped up from wherever it was hiding. Part of my fate as a greedy, acquisitive reader is that I can never escape the overbearing presence of books, whether in the mind or on the shelf. I wonder if, without them, I’d

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