It had honestly never occurred to me.

“You mean they actually stare blankly at a page in a book and periodically flip the page to stare at another?  They would do that. . .even with a self-selected text?  They actually prefer that to reading?. . .”

The questions kept coming (and still do) when I think back to that sunny June afternoon when my co-teacher, Evelyn Pine, dropped those two words on me: faking reading.

We're all pretty comfortable with the idea of movies based on books -- fiction, nonfiction, and even self-help books -- but what about books of poetry? Last week, Open Culture posted a fascinating film based on the poetry of Sylvia Plath. While it might seem surprising to see a film based on a poem, it's actually probably a lot more common than you think.

"The trouble with fiction... is that it makes too much sense. Reality never makes sense." - Aldous Huxley from The Doors of Perception

"For a country to have a great writer is like having a second government. That is why no regime has ever loved great writers, only minor ones." - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, author of Cancer Ward

"All art preserves mysteries which aesthetic philosophers tackle in vain." - …