Why is it that many educated people aren’t reading books anymore? Is it because our brains have forgotten to function in longform? Not really, writes one critic. Today’s literary writers – at least those in Canada, anyway – want to write about states of being, rather than action in the real world. “I think this disconnect, more than the slow and inexorable frittering away of our collective intelligence, explains why we don’t read much any more. It’s not our brains that have turned to mush, it’s the books.”