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jazzy_daveMaryanne Wolf "Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain" (Icon Books)
What an incredible book. Supremely readable, it seems undignified to label this 'popular science', because the number of references shows clearly that this has been as thoroughly researched as any serious scientific book. The only thing, really, that puts it into the popular category is the lack of note markers in the text - which is nice, until you get to the notes and realise how hard it is to relate them back... a very minor gripe.
Maryanne Wolf's title alludes to the different aspects of reading exemplified by Proust's description of the book, in 'On Reading', as a place to take refuge and explore other realities and ideas, and the part the squid has played in the historical study of the brain. If you like, it's the felt experience of the reader complemented by the mechanics behind the scenes. The book is divided into three main parts: how the brain learned to read - a retrospective of the history of reading and brain science; how the brain learns to read over time - what we know or believe now about reading acquisition; and when the brain can't learn to read - a survey of current research and developments in dyslexia.
Wolf's style is delightful. Even when she is explaining the complexities of brain imaging and how that might relate to reading development, she is never less than fluid (though I suspect I fell into the trap that, she tells us, Socrates feared would arise through literacy: that of ceasing to question, and reading without truly understanding!). It's not the kind of book where you find yourself so bogged down in the technical descriptions you are unable to move forward. The science is leavened with anecdotes from her own research and family life and seasoned with numerous interesting literary and historical references (personal favourite: Eliot's analogies for Casaubon's mind from Middlemarch).
Wolf closes with a call to arms to urgently consider the implications for the current generation of schoolchildren of 'growing up digital', repeatedly worrying at the notion that the ease of access to information provided by the internet may produce a crop of children with little or no curiosity about exploring texts further than their surfaces.
I found this completely fascinating from just about every perspective: the history of reading, writing and alphabets, which I knew very little about; the process of language acquisition, which was particularly interesting as my youngest child is at the stage of beginning to reliably recognise letters; dyslexia, which I knew absolutely nothing about (nice too that Wolf uses The Lightning Thief for an epigraph in one of these chapters); and her personal mission statement in the final chapter. Everyone with an interest in reading should seek it out.
What an incredible book. Supremely readable, it seems undignified to label this 'popular science', because the number of references shows clearly that this has been as thoroughly researched as any serious scientific book. The only thing, really, that puts it into the popular category is the lack of note markers in the text - which is nice, until you get to the notes and realise how hard it is to relate them back... a very minor gripe.
Maryanne Wolf's title alludes to the different aspects of reading exemplified by Proust's description of the book, in 'On Reading', as a place to take refuge and explore other realities and ideas, and the part the squid has played in the historical study of the brain. If you like, it's the felt experience of the reader complemented by the mechanics behind the scenes. The book is divided into three main parts: how the brain learned to read - a retrospective of the history of reading and brain science; how the brain learns to read over time - what we know or believe now about reading acquisition; and when the brain can't learn to read - a survey of current research and developments in dyslexia.
Wolf's style is delightful. Even when she is explaining the complexities of brain imaging and how that might relate to reading development, she is never less than fluid (though I suspect I fell into the trap that, she tells us, Socrates feared would arise through literacy: that of ceasing to question, and reading without truly understanding!). It's not the kind of book where you find yourself so bogged down in the technical descriptions you are unable to move forward. The science is leavened with anecdotes from her own research and family life and seasoned with numerous interesting literary and historical references (personal favourite: Eliot's analogies for Casaubon's mind from Middlemarch).
Wolf closes with a call to arms to urgently consider the implications for the current generation of schoolchildren of 'growing up digital', repeatedly worrying at the notion that the ease of access to information provided by the internet may produce a crop of children with little or no curiosity about exploring texts further than their surfaces.
I found this completely fascinating from just about every perspective: the history of reading, writing and alphabets, which I knew very little about; the process of language acquisition, which was particularly interesting as my youngest child is at the stage of beginning to reliably recognise letters; dyslexia, which I knew absolutely nothing about (nice too that Wolf uses The Lightning Thief for an epigraph in one of these chapters); and her personal mission statement in the final chapter. Everyone with an interest in reading should seek it out.
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