HomeGroupsTalkMoreZeitgeist
Search Site
This site uses cookies to deliver our services, improve performance, for analytics, and (if not signed in) for advertising. By using LibraryThing you acknowledge that you have read and understand our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Your use of the site and services is subject to these policies and terms.

Results from Google Books

Click on a thumbnail to go to Google Books.

Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a…
Loading...

Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World (edition 2019)

by Maryanne Wolf (Author)

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingMentions
5221346,246 (3.88)9
Grammar & Language Usage. Language Arts. Science. Nonfiction. HTML:

From the author of Proust and the Squid, a lively, ambitious, and deeply informative epistolary book that considers the future of the reading brain and our capacity for critical thinking, empathy, and reflection as we become increasingly dependent on digital technologies.

A decade ago, Maryanne Wolf's Proust and the Squid revealed what we know about how the brain learns to read and how reading changes the way we think and feel. Since then, the ways we process written language have changed dramatically with many concerned about both their own changes and that of children. New research on the reading brain chronicles these changes in the brains of children and adults as they learn to read while immersed in a digitally dominated medium.

Drawing deeply on this research, this book comprises a series of letters Wolf writes to usā??her beloved readersā??to describe her concerns and her hopes about what is happening to the reading brain as it unavoidably changes to adapt to digital mediums. Wolf raises difficult questions, including:

  • Will children learn to incorporate the full range of "deep reading" processes that are at the core of the expert reading brain?
  • Will the mix of a seemingly infinite set of distractions for children's attention and their quick access to immediate, voluminous information alter their ability to think for themselves?
  • With information at their fingertips, will the next generation learn to build their own storehouse of knowledge, which could impede the ability to make analogies and draw inferences from what they know?
  • Will all these influences, in turn, change the formation in children and the use in adults of "slower" cognitive processes like critical thinking, personal reflection, imagination, and empathy that comprise deep reading and that influence both how we think and how we live our lives?
  • Will the chain of digital influences ultimately influence the use of the critical analytical and empathic capacities necessary for a democratic society?
  • How can we preserve deep reading processes in future iterations of the reading brain?
  • Who are the "good readers" of every epoch?
  • Concerns about attention span, critical reasoning, and over-reliance on technology are never just about childrenā??Wolf herself has found that, though she is a reading expert, her ability to read deeply has been impacted as she has become, inevitably, increasingly dependent on screens.

    Wolf draws on neuroscience, literature, education, technology, and philosophy and blends historical, literary, and scientific facts with down-to-earth examples and warm anecdotes to illuminate complex ideas that culminate in a proposal for a biliterate reading brain. Provocative and intriguing, Reader, Come Home is a roadmap that provides a cautionary but hopeful perspective on the impact of technology on our brains and our most essential intellectual capacitiesā??and what this could mean for our… (more)

    Member:Bookends02
    Title:Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World
    Authors:Maryanne Wolf (Author)
    Info:Harper Paperbacks (2019), Edition: Reprint, 288 pages
    Collections:Your library, To read
    Rating:
    Tags:None

    Work Information

    Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World by Maryanne Wolf

    None
    Loading...

    Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book.

    No current Talk conversations about this book.

    » See also 9 mentions

    English (10)  Spanish (1)  German (1)  Italian (1)  All languages (13)
    Showing 1-5 of 10 (next | show all)
    Read for my book club. Easily the worst book I've read this year. (All the other book club members agreed.)

    Super-repetitive. Weirdly on-topic and off-topic. And repetitive. And did I say it was repetitive? Many paragraphs were filled with unnecessary words and unnecessary name dropping. Not just research was quoted by name but phrases had to be cited. She even quoted the Pope for some phrase that she felt needed his name attached.

    The writing was so bad that I tried skimming some of her text, exactly what she railed against. For me, skimming is a self-defense mechanism to deal with too much info or too many words to express something. In other words, skimming has its merits; she did not give it its due. Alas, skimming her text was equally unsatisfying. While faster, it didn't work either.

    Have read the whole thing, I feel less intelligent for having done so. Her editor was clearly asleep on the job (Recommendation to publisher: Fire editors who do not know how to edit.) For a book about the science of books and reading, it is laughable that it could be so bad. (I'm not even motivated to spend more time going into detail on why it's bad. That's how bad it is.)

    I will temper my review with one positive: She wrote well when she described the experience with her own son having trouble in school - and how the school didn't understand his problem and didn't handle it well. Alas, the rest of the book isn't worth reading for that one positive. ( )
      donwon | Jan 22, 2024 |
    This is an important book to be read today because it stresses the importance of reading in forming a "well-shaped" person able to walk into the world with civic sense, compassion, empathy and critical abilities, exactly what we're currently about to lose because of the speed and superficiality of the new medias. The book is nicely constructed as a series of letter and even if it predictably indulges a bit too much (at least for me) in neuro-science data, it does well its job and should be a suggested read especially for parents, since big part of the book is focused on issues related to education and how to raise children in a technologically-driven society. ( )
      d.v. | May 16, 2023 |
    I picked up this book expecting an exploration of the neuroscience and physiology of the effects of reading on the brain, and how reading in print and digital formats differ. I got that, and so much more.

    Wolf presents a balanced account of the different effects of different mediums, both negative and positive, and how we might use this knowledge to do better for our children and ourselves. It's a welcome perspective.

    It's also a deeply humanist and moral meditation of the capacities of the human mind and the importance of storytelling. It's a clarion call to fulfill the responsibility we all bear toward our fellow human beings and to the future. This is a work of tremendous empathy and passion.

    It may well be one of the most important works of our age. ( )
      johnthelibrarian | Aug 11, 2020 |
    "It would be a shame if brilliant technology were to end up threatening the kind of intellect that produced it." - Edward Tenner

    I think I was expecting an argument similar to 2010's The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. Which is to say I was expecting a lot of finger wagging and bemoaning of how this new digital world is just terrible. But while Shallows feels overly luddite-ish, Maryanne Wolf's Reader, Come Home seems more intent on adapting to the future rather than fighting it. There's more of a "Let's figure this out" approach going on here.

    The Edward Tenner quote above sums it up well. Humanity's collective brilliance built this wonderous, breathtaking modern world, but we now risk undermining ourselves. Reader, Come Home is, on its surface, about the reading brain and the challenges posed, but the book's broader message is about the potential dangers of our technological innovations, especially if left unchecked. We risk getting swallowed by our own good intentions.

    Reader, Come Home is a candle, a way forward. We can have the best of all futures if we want, but not if we're thoughtless about who we want to be. ( )
      Daniel.Estes | Jul 17, 2020 |
    I would have thought this book would have a great cheering section at LibraryThing. Prowling around online reviews I found that most of the critical ones seemed to either shoot wide of the author's point or actually establish it while defying it. For example, one critical review took the author to task for having an old (10 ancient years out-of-date) view of social media, because now through Twitter and Facebook we are having interactive, deep conversations. Yes, well... I found the book fascinating, and think it makes a very important point. It does take a fairly sharp turn into pedagogy, and that was not really my interest. I was most interested in the act of reading and the broader sociological discussion about what shallower reading is doing to us as a civilization. There are easier books to read, but I would recommend this one highly and I'm very glad this author is on the job. ( )
    1 vote rsairs | Jul 7, 2020 |
    Showing 1-5 of 10 (next | show all)
    no reviews | add a review
    You must log in to edit Common Knowledge data.
    For more help see the Common Knowledge help page.
    Canonical title
    Original title
    Alternative titles
    Original publication date
    People/Characters
    Important places
    Important events
    Related movies
    Epigraph
    Dedication
    First words
    Quotations
    Last words
    Disambiguation notice
    Publisher's editors
    Blurbers
    Original language
    Canonical DDC/MDS
    Canonical LCC

    References to this work on external resources.

    Wikipedia in English

    None

    Grammar & Language Usage. Language Arts. Science. Nonfiction. HTML:

    From the author of Proust and the Squid, a lively, ambitious, and deeply informative epistolary book that considers the future of the reading brain and our capacity for critical thinking, empathy, and reflection as we become increasingly dependent on digital technologies.

    A decade ago, Maryanne Wolf's Proust and the Squid revealed what we know about how the brain learns to read and how reading changes the way we think and feel. Since then, the ways we process written language have changed dramatically with many concerned about both their own changes and that of children. New research on the reading brain chronicles these changes in the brains of children and adults as they learn to read while immersed in a digitally dominated medium.

    Drawing deeply on this research, this book comprises a series of letters Wolf writes to usā??her beloved readersā??to describe her concerns and her hopes about what is happening to the reading brain as it unavoidably changes to adapt to digital mediums. Wolf raises difficult questions, including:

    Will children learn to incorporate the full range of "deep reading" processes that are at the core of the expert reading brain? Will the mix of a seemingly infinite set of distractions for children's attention and their quick access to immediate, voluminous information alter their ability to think for themselves? With information at their fingertips, will the next generation learn to build their own storehouse of knowledge, which could impede the ability to make analogies and draw inferences from what they know? Will all these influences, in turn, change the formation in children and the use in adults of "slower" cognitive processes like critical thinking, personal reflection, imagination, and empathy that comprise deep reading and that influence both how we think and how we live our lives? Will the chain of digital influences ultimately influence the use of the critical analytical and empathic capacities necessary for a democratic society? How can we preserve deep reading processes in future iterations of the reading brain? Who are the "good readers" of every epoch?

    Concerns about attention span, critical reasoning, and over-reliance on technology are never just about childrenā??Wolf herself has found that, though she is a reading expert, her ability to read deeply has been impacted as she has become, inevitably, increasingly dependent on screens.

    Wolf draws on neuroscience, literature, education, technology, and philosophy and blends historical, literary, and scientific facts with down-to-earth examples and warm anecdotes to illuminate complex ideas that culminate in a proposal for a biliterate reading brain. Provocative and intriguing, Reader, Come Home is a roadmap that provides a cautionary but hopeful perspective on the impact of technology on our brains and our most essential intellectual capacitiesā??and what this could mean for our

    No library descriptions found.

    Book description
    Wolf considers the future of the reading brain and our capacity for critical thinking, empathy, and reflection as we become increasingly dependent upon digital technologies. A decade ago, Wolf's Proust and the Squid revealed what we know about how the brain learns to read and how reading changes the way we think and feel. Now that we are completely immersed in the internet and digital devices, our ways of processing language have altered dramatically. In a series of letters, Wolf describes her hopes and concerns about what is happening to the brain as it adapts to digital mediums, illuminating complex ideas with anecdotes and down-to-earth examples. Wolf considers the future of the reading brain and our capacity for critical thinking, empathy, and reflection as we become increasingly dependent upon digital technologies.
    Haiku summary

    Current Discussions

    None

    Popular covers

    Quick Links

    Rating

    Average: (3.88)
    0.5
    1 2
    1.5
    2 3
    2.5 1
    3 12
    3.5 2
    4 16
    4.5 1
    5 19

    Is this you?

    Become a LibraryThing Author.

     

    About | Contact | Privacy/Terms | Help/FAQs | Blog | Store | APIs | TinyCat | Legacy Libraries | Early Reviewers | Common Knowledge | 203,187,852 books! | Top bar: Always visible