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

Author: Maryanne Wolf

Narrator: Kirsten Potter

Unabridged: 6 hr 52 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: HarperAudio

Published: 08/07/2018


Synopsis

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 us—her beloved readers—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 children—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 capacities—and what this could mean for our future.

About Maryanne Wolf

Maryanne Wolf, the John DiBiaggio Professor of Citizenship and Public Service at Tufts University, was the director of the Tufts Center for Reading and Language Research. She currently directs the Center for Dyslexia, Diverse Learners, and Social Justice at UCLA, and is working with the Dyslexia Center at the UCSF School of Medicine and with Curious Learning: A Global Literacy Project, which she co-founded. She is the recipient of multiple research and teaching honors, including the highest awards by the International Dyslexia Association and the Australian Learning Disabilities Association. She is the author of Proust and the Squid (HarperCollins), Tales of Literacy for the 21st Century (Oxford University Press), and more than 160 scientific publications.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Carmen on April 10, 2019

The unsettling reality, however, is that unbeknownst to many of us, including until recently myself, there has begun an unanticipated decline of empathy among our young people. 50 This quote is a good jumping-off point for the review - it not only demonstrates Wolf's "OMG, think of the CHILDREN!" pov......more

Goodreads review by Manny on November 18, 2024

I've seen a lot of speculation about the bad effect that smartphones and social media might be having on people's thinking; the other day, I asked clever o1-preview if it could recommend anything which looked at it in more depth, and this book was top of its list. I've just finished it; Reader, Come......more

Goodreads review by Rose on March 20, 2025

Usually this reader isn't easily overwhelmed, but with this treasure chest of a book -- this truly life-changing book -- it's hard for me to know which gems to pull out first. Okay, how about this? No question, this is hands down the best book I've read all year. Actually, it's one of my favorites ev......more

Goodreads review by Bon Tom on November 19, 2019

This whole book is a tribute to something called Deep Reading. That's the skill, real magic you once had, probably as a child, when membership in local library meant entry to the worlds beyond the senses. That was your first pay-per-view service. Except, you didn't have to pay for any cheap shit ent......more

Goodreads review by Kathryn on March 15, 2019

I kind of proved this book's point by my reaction to it. First, I felt like Wolf was taking too long to make her point in each "letter" (each chapter is written in the form of a letter to her reader). I am used to business communication, which is all about bullet points, visuals and not wasting your......more