Have we lost the art of reading? | It's Been a Minute
November 14, 2025
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23:28Now PlayingHave we lost the art of reading? | It's Been a Minute
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as posted by the channelNo disrespect, but...when President Trump threw a Great Gatsby-themed party for Halloween, it kind of missed the point of the book. And, it's not just Trump. A quick search online, and you'll see a lot of people increasingly misinterpreting other famous books.
Are people just bad at reading? Are we just laying our own biases on top of classic texts? Or is something else going on?
Andrew Limbong () , host of NPR's Book of the Day, and writercritic Princess Weekes () join Brittany to dissect novel interpretations of literary fiction. They look at what these reinterpretations say about our current momentfrom what we want from a book to how books lose meaning online.
(0:00) Why 'The Great Gatsby' gets misread
(6:07) How 'Lord of the Rings' became a Christian Nationalist text
(12:46) Literary Interpretation vs. Media Literacy
(16:34) The rise of BookTok
(19:28) The consequence of missing the point of a book
Follow Brittany Luse on Instagram@bmluse ()
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