Your Saturday basket:

A piece about Mosul, a very ancient city and a home for a millennium to Muslims, Christians Jews and many more peoples and ways of life.  An ancient city, much of it ruined (like the ruins of Nineveh nearby) during the reign of ISIS. (Don't get me started about Palmyra.)

Which children are likely to become "lifelong readers."  Hearing about "guides" to this always makes me sad, and maybe tempts me to a particularly ugly kind of smugness.  If you want your child to be a reader, I imagine the best way to get one is to be one.   

One hundred years of Protestant Fundamentalism, and a question: Did the birth of Fundamentalism (a self-proclaimed title) actually change public culture and cultural debate?  I'm interested in this question.

The "secret to shopping in used bookstores"?  What?  Are we condemned to decades of Millennials discovering things that everyone older than them knows about already and telling us about it?  Can't wait for Millennials to hit middle age, then.  Here's my secret advice to you about used bookstores: go in.  And look around.  You don't have to buy anything, but consider--for the price of a coffee-shop latte, that used book you're considering buying for $4 may end up giving you hours of pleasure at first, and years of enriching reconsideration to come.  So go in the bookstore, and buy one damn book.  Plus, you're helping the "used bookstore resistance" to stay alive, and they need that today.  They need your $4.  And you need them to be around, more than you need the $4.  

Happy news--students like libraries, even if they don't have "Idea Labs"! In fact, especially if they don't have "Idea Labs".  They want books, tables, quiet places in which to study.  Sounds legit to me.

And finally--monasticism and silence.  Books, libraries, reading--these were not always part of monasticism.  But, at least in the Christian tradition, silence has been a steady presence.  That's interesting in itself.