how to read critically in the age of bad media literacy

I personally really agree with Susan Sontag's idea on this. She writes about in her essay Against Interpretation that sometimes when you go only digging for the meaning behind what you're seeing, you are kind of excavating the work of art.

When I read Fourth Wing, my personal lens said, "That was incredibly fun. I had a great time." But my critical lens said, "Okay, but all of the side characters were formulaic. They didn't have any layers. The world building didn't have any layers."

1984 is a great example where your critical lens might see that this is a book criticizing authoritarian government, but your cultural contextual lens will take into account that this was written in the 1940s. It's not just about some random madeup fictional future dystopian.

A great example for me is the Shadow and Bone series, which I've often talked about not finding that good anymore, but it was the very first fantasy book that I ever read. So, it has a lot of meaning to me. I will cherish it forever as being my introduction into big magic and like other worlds.

For example, when I read Fifth Season, the plot twists in there were amazingly foreshadowed, and if you reread the book, you will see all the foreshadowing.