Read a book.

I'll say this more than once: Facebook is lovely and Facebook is grand. It helps me meet strangers and keep up with people that I didn't know that I missed.

It's nothing like a book.

The printed word is right up there with the electric light and indoor plumbing. It civilizes us and keeps us from misery.

A good book, put together with thought and care and, yes, a scattering of words that perhaps we don't know? That book ennobles us.

It asks us to care enough to push through the difficult parts.

It feeds our imaginations.

It gives us something clever to say.

It makes our brains a little bit bigger.

And, I hope, it does the same for our hearts.

Conversations on Facebook are mostly disposable. The same goes, doubly, for exchanges on Twitter. Most news published online is barely coherent -- just enough to get the point across. And if we're lucky, that Wikipedia article gets all its facts straight.

If the Internet is all you read, then almost certainly you're a little bit dim.

Please. For the sake of your mind. For the sake of your soul. For the sake of conversation, if for no other thing:

Read a book.