"What we read, how we read, and why we read change how we think," writes Maryanne Wolf in Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World. In an age of constantly accessible information and ever-shorter attention spans, when substantive writing too often receives responses of "tl;dr," (too long; didn't read), literacy and dyslexia researcher Wolf seeks to understand the evolution of the reading brain.
Wolf (Proust and the Squid) has dedicated her career to the study of reading, but shifts her focus here to why it matters that reading increasingly happens via screens. At the heart of Wolf's research is the simple but critical notion that "human beings were never born to read." Yet we do--and, increasingly, on digital devices. The implications of this shift are various, vast and at times troubling. Wolf asks, "Do you, my reader, read with less attention and perhaps even less memory for what you have read?"
Feathers may ruffle with any questioning of technological advancement, but Wolf assures readers she is in no way against the digital revolution. Instead, she faces it head on, with wide eyes and a curious mind. She resists judgments of good and bad, citing writers, thinkers and philosophers the world over, in accessible language studded with approachable metaphors: see the reading brain as Cirque du Soleil.
Wolf wields her pen with equal parts wisdom and wonder. The result is a joy to read and reread, a love letter to literature, literacy and progress. --Katie Weed, freelance writer and reviewer