College English majors can’t read.

That is incredibly sad. Obviously true as well. The depressing part is that Bleak House is not a particularly challenging text. Of the ~20,000 books or so I’ve read in my life, I’d say it’s in the bottom 30% of difficulty. I do remember that work, though, as I enjoyed it; I read that one over the summer after eighth grade in a couple of days even though it was as mentioned in the piece around a thousand pages long.

The truth is most people are mostly illiterate, even the “smart” people. And smartphones/social media have made it so much worse.