I advocate and promote reading. I do it through my columns, in the classroom and every opportunity I have. Of course, not of just any reading material; there is too much junk out there — remember Snooki and The Situation from "Jersey Shore"? They have six books between them — and not just any way of reading either, but deep, contemplative, reflective reading, of the kind where the reader plays an active role, engaging the author in a conversation.

Reading, it is no secret, has been on the decline. People read less; surf, skim and scan more; comprehend and retain less, and are increasingly becoming passive consumers of the written word. The reasons and consequences of these changes are engagingly discussed by Nicholas Carr in his New York Times bestselling book "The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains." The "ecosystem of interruption technologies," Carr contends, has wired our brains for less attentive reading, producing diminished learning, weakened understanding and blunted imagination.

I also blame the K-12 education system with its obsession with learning facts to be returned undigested in standardized tests; and even graduate programs where students are often advised to only bother with the introduction, conclusion and topic sentences of a few paragraphs here and there. This "CliffsNotes" way of reading invites students to focus on an author's thesis and a few book details, rather than a more intimate, reflective engagement with the author. The result: graduate students get to know many authors and books, but superficially so; as superficially as so-called friends on social media.

On Facebook, I just learned, celebrities have followers, not friends — not quite sorry to pick on her again, Snooki has 10 million "followers," and "follows" only 25. She has more so-called followers than the entire populations of either Austria, Serbia or Sierra Leone.

Did I choose the right profession? I believe I did. I cherish being an author and college professor. I don't know about followers, but I have friends, real people, of the sort one has coffee with.

I invite students in my Cuban, Puerto Rican and Caribbean history courses to rewire their brains, to read beyond the facts — I don't test for facts — to read for interpretation, for style, for voice and tone, for literary value, for beauty and enjoyment.

To get them to think differently about authors and books, I start most book discussions posing questions I often ask myself: "Would you like to have coffee with this author? Why? Why not?"

I ask those questions when discussing assigned books and readings by Jose Marti, V.S. Naipaul, Jamaica Kinkaid, Fernando Pico, Esmeralda Santiago and other Caribbean writers.

When discussing "History of Puerto Rico" by the late Fernando Pico, students usually say yes to coffee (even if they have not read his book); some are indifferent ("whatever"); out of courtesy or inertia, no one says "no."

Would I have coffee with Pico? Well, he was my mentor at the University of Puerto Rico. My classmates and I had coffee with him, many times, and fresh-made passion fruit juice, and pizza, and veal patties (80% breadcrumbs) with spaghetti... I distinctly remember the last coffee we had shortly before his passing at a small cafeteria one block from the National Archive in San Juan.

Having known Fernando (as he like to be called) personally, actually intimately, gives me privileged insights on him as an individual and a historian, some of which I share in class.

We start with the first chapter of his "History of Puerto Rico" (geological formation and geography). I remember him telling me, over three decades ago, that he was almost done with the book, except for that part. Rather than expecting students to learn facts about Puerto Rico's geography, I invite them to get to know Fernando. "What geographic aspects does Pico focus on?" I ask. "Swamp mangroves and mogotes (calcareous hillocks)," someone responds. That is my prompt to go on the offensive armed with the Socratic method. "And why does he focus on those particular ecosystems?" I push on. Fewer hands go up this time but invariably, a sharp student responds: because those were places of refuge for surviving natives and maroon slaves. More Socratic method: "And what does that tell us about Pico and the rest of the book?"

More on Pico and other Caribbean writers and their books in my next column(s).

Luis Martinez-Fernandez is the author of "Revolutionary Cuba: A History" and "Key to the New World: A History of Early Colonial Cuba." Readers can reach him at [email protected]. To find out more about Luis Martinez-Fernandez and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www. creators.com.