The New York Times reports on the rise of smartphones as reading devices, despite the existence of dedicated reading devices like the Kindle.

At least half of my reading now takes place on my iPhone, mostly within Stanza (an eBook-reading application) or Instapaper (a wonderful app for saving and reading long articles found on the Web). Which is why I was surprised to see this quote from an Amazon exec:

But in the meantime, Amazon executives say that the limitations of the Kindle actually make it more attractive for reading.

“The Kindle is for people who love to read,” Mr. Freed of Amazon said. “People use phones for lots of things. Most often they use them to make phone calls. Second most often, they use them to send text messages or e-mail. Way down on the list, there’s reading.”

Perhaps I’m strange, but my habits are the exact opposite. I use my phone first for reading, second for email, and third for music listening. Phone calls are a distant fourth. In fact, the phone part of the iPhone is my least favorite function. All it ever does is interrupt my use of the device for other things.

Related: Laptops and smartphones give rise to watching porn in public.

William Giraldi, a prose writer and fiction editor of AGNI, provides this lovely bit about the transformative power of reading in an interview by Jessica Pitchford at The Southeast Review:

Literature helps salve the wound, the wound every one of us has, the original sin Augustine stuck us with. Of course the Augustinian notion of original sin is a metaphor for how imperfect and damaged our species is, how much work we need to do in order to live honest and productive lives. Emotional truths are waiting for you in literature, and I honestly don’t know how people travel through this world without Wordsworth. I would have hanged myself years ago if I couldn’t have sought refuge in him and others. Reading is transformative—I love that word—because it forces a reckoning, a confrontation with truth in a way that few other art forms can do. Run the other way if you find yourself on a date and the person says that he doesn’t have time to read, because what he really means is that he doesn’t have time to think or feel.

The rest of the interview is well worth the time. Now I have to go and search out all of Giraldi’s short stories and essays. At least the review offers this sample essay to help get me started.

Random trivia: I went to high school with Jessica. No lie.