Want your kids to improve their reading skills? Just get them to play Minecraft. In Wired, Clive Thompson makes the case that the “secret lies not inside the game itself but in the players’ activities outside of it. Minecraft is surrounded by a culture of literacy.” Here’s another trick to get your kids to read more. Hand them a Kindle and tell them it’s the new iPad.

+ And hold on tight to your device for a second, because we’re gonna segue from Minecraft to this year’s Nobel Prize winner in literature: French author Patrick Modiano. According to Peter Englund, the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy: “His books are always variations of the same theme about memory, about loss, about identity, about seeking. I don’t think he’s difficult to read. You can read him easily, one of his books in the afternoon, have dinner, and read another in the evening.” If that’s considered a key attribute, where do I apply?