The hottest Reading Substack posts right now

Many kids today are missing out on classic books, which is worrying. Reading habits are changing, and it's important to encourage children to engage with literature.
Protocol fiction can explore themes of technology and creativity, like in the story about an artist and her AI assistant. It raises questions about how technology influences our work and connections.
Balancing personal life, work, and friendships is tough. It’s often a choice between two out of three, and it's good to be okay with that limitation.

Books are a great way to learn quickly from experts. They can save you time and give you new ideas.
Reading can be fun and personal. It’s okay to skip around and read only the parts that interest you.
If you have specific goals or needs, asking for book recommendations can help you find the right read.

There's a poetry reading event in Chicago on September 5th. It will be at RLM Studio from 6 PM to 8:30 PM.
Featured poets include Simone Muench, Virginia Bell, and Molly Sturdevant. There will also be an open mic for contributors.
It's a celebration of the 25th anniversary of _After Hours_ magazine and the release of its 50th issue.

Active reading is a hands-on way of reading where you annotate, flip pages, and mentally converse with authors to really understand ideas. Only a small slice of people have trained their brains to do this well.
Large language models can act like ‘author bots’ that let readers have interactive dialogues with texts, summarise arguments, and answer questions, providing a shortcut to the benefits of active reading. They can serve as tutors so people don’t need years of training to think like hyperliterate readers.
The practical path is many domain-specific, lean AI assistants that summarise material, use RAG, and act as bespoke tutors offering competing voices. This approach is likely more useful and economically viable than just building ever-larger general-purpose models.