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kimniz's review against another edition
informative
reflective
slow-paced
5.0
Super informative and interesting! I really enjoyed this!
winterfirestorm's review against another edition
challenging
informative
slow-paced
3.5
This book wasn’t what I was looking expecting, it was a lot heavier with the science which was interesting but made it hard going at times.
vaporvisions's review against another edition
informative
3.0
I liked this much better than Proust and The Squid. It did speak to some of the challenges I have faced myself with reading in recent years, much more so than Proust and the Squid did. I am curious about the challenges readers old and new face and I wonder how the challenge will truly be surmounted. There seems to be so much weighing against the deep reader these days. We value visual content, quick switching, and endless entertainment. Over the past year of beginning a reading habit I have read things much deeper than a lot of the content I was watching. I wonder though if the draw of the quick video clips will win out.
belem_ea's review against another edition
3.0
Este libro habla sobre el proceso de lectura, cómo ha evolucionado a lo largo de tiempo y qué podría pasar con nuestra forma de leer si seguimos por el camino en que estamos y para engancharnos usa el recurso de las cartas.
El libro empieza con una breve explicación ilustrativa de cómo damos significado a las palabras, luego a las frases y por último a lecturas completas. Las diferentes partes del cerebro que están implicadas en ese proceso y cómo la "lectura profunda" es el último peldaño de esa escalera que nos lleva a la sabiduría.
El argumento del libro es que estamos perdiendo la capacidad de la lectura profunda a cambio de una lectura rápida y superficial. En los lectores adultos, la lectura profunda podría recuperarse, pero en los nativos digitales, quizá nunca se desarrolle. La autora no dice que esto sea necesariamente malo, pero que si queremos que sea algo bueno debemos comenzar a trabajar en un alfabetismo dual: digital y analógico.
La autora no dice realmente cómo lograr de manera práctica ese alfabetismo dual, creo que ahí es donde se queda corta. Me parece que la autora, que es neuróloga, intenta desesperadamente, no hablar de cuestiones políticas y económicas. El único comentario relevante al respecto tiene que ver con cómo los directivos de las cárceles predicen cuál será su población futura con base en las tasas de analfabetismo del país.
Me gustó la forma en que traza el camino a la sabiduría: La información es el primer nivel y en el que estamos todos, luego el conocimiento, que es analizar la información y finalmente, la sabiduría, que es cuando conectamos nuestro conocimiento de formas nuevas para crear algo propio.
Además, la autora analiza algunos fragmentos de textos clásicos como ejemplo de los niveles de lectura, y me parece que eso le puede servir muy bien a los escritores. En fin, un libro interesante, pero que no hará una revolución, y es una pena.
El libro empieza con una breve explicación ilustrativa de cómo damos significado a las palabras, luego a las frases y por último a lecturas completas. Las diferentes partes del cerebro que están implicadas en ese proceso y cómo la "lectura profunda" es el último peldaño de esa escalera que nos lleva a la sabiduría.
El argumento del libro es que estamos perdiendo la capacidad de la lectura profunda a cambio de una lectura rápida y superficial. En los lectores adultos, la lectura profunda podría recuperarse, pero en los nativos digitales, quizá nunca se desarrolle. La autora no dice que esto sea necesariamente malo, pero que si queremos que sea algo bueno debemos comenzar a trabajar en un alfabetismo dual: digital y analógico.
La autora no dice realmente cómo lograr de manera práctica ese alfabetismo dual, creo que ahí es donde se queda corta. Me parece que la autora, que es neuróloga, intenta desesperadamente, no hablar de cuestiones políticas y económicas. El único comentario relevante al respecto tiene que ver con cómo los directivos de las cárceles predicen cuál será su población futura con base en las tasas de analfabetismo del país.
Me gustó la forma en que traza el camino a la sabiduría: La información es el primer nivel y en el que estamos todos, luego el conocimiento, que es analizar la información y finalmente, la sabiduría, que es cuando conectamos nuestro conocimiento de formas nuevas para crear algo propio.
Además, la autora analiza algunos fragmentos de textos clásicos como ejemplo de los niveles de lectura, y me parece que eso le puede servir muy bien a los escritores. En fin, un libro interesante, pero que no hará una revolución, y es una pena.
rhrousu's review against another edition
4.0
Lots to think about, an interesting exploration of how reading changes our brains and how technology is changing reading. Less tech-phobic than I expected, good info about kids and appropriate tech use at different ages and stages. There is a certain cultural narrowness to the premise equating the deep-reading brain to all human virtue. Highly recommended for librarians, teachers, and parents.
auroraboreyalis's review against another edition
5.0
Tremendously informative. If I hadn't decided to take a chance on this book, I would've gone on with an inkling of a certain truth I would longer deny to myself: That I became a victim to "passive cognitive complacency" as time went on and little did I do to make time for deep-reading, with the fervor and attention I used to as a child.
"To possess cognitive patience is to recover a rhythm of time that allows you to attend with consciousness and attention. You read quickly, till you are conscious of the thoughts to comprehend, the beauty to appreciate, the questions to remember, and, when fortunate, the insights to unfold." This book is more than a study of the advantages and detriments our digital world costs us compared to print media and I won't be forgetting the insights gleaned from these pages anytime soon.
"To possess cognitive patience is to recover a rhythm of time that allows you to attend with consciousness and attention. You read quickly, till you are conscious of the thoughts to comprehend, the beauty to appreciate, the questions to remember, and, when fortunate, the insights to unfold." This book is more than a study of the advantages and detriments our digital world costs us compared to print media and I won't be forgetting the insights gleaned from these pages anytime soon.
snarkhunting's review against another edition
Gather 'round, boys and girls! Today, we're going to learn about the brain regions involved in reading by comparing their act to that of a three-ring circus! Never fear! This insult to the method of loci can't be indicative of the author's intended audience considering more than several of the names sprinkled onto this circumlocutory text would be considered well-known only among the educated!
What an absolute waste of time.
What an absolute waste of time.
bioniclib's review against another edition
5.0
I had read, somewhere, that the brain retains info differently on a screen than it does on a printed page. This book unpacks that thought.
The brain is an amazingly complex:
"...there are as many connections in a single cubic centimeter of brain tissues as there are stars in the Milky Way galaxy.” 16.
and plastic thingie:
"Most important for this discussion, however, plasticity also underlies why the reading-brain circuit is inherently malleable (read changeable) and influenced by key environmental factors: specifically, what it reads (both the particular writing system and the content), how it reads (the particular medium, such as print or screen, and its effects on the way we read), and how it is formed (methods of instruction)." (18)
In her previous book, Proust and the Squid, I learned that there's no single area in the brain responsible for reading. In this book, I learned just how much of the brain we use to read:
"In essence, the combination of these three principles forms the basis of what few of us would ever suspect: a reading circuit that incorporates input from two hemispheres, four lobes in each hemisphere (frontal, temporal, parietal, and occipital), and all five layers of the brain (from the uppermost telencephalon and adjacent diencephalon below it; to the middle layers of the mesencephalon; to the lower levels of the metencephalon and myelencephalon). Anyone who still believes the archaic canard that we use only a tiny portion of our brains hasn’t yet become aware of what we do when we read." (20)
That staggeringly complex process of reading is also why a screen isn't as good to read on:
"reading isn’t only about our young children’s brains. It involves their whole bodies; they see, smell, hear, and feel books." (133)
Being able to involve the entire body isn't just kids stuff, either. We all do it. And one of the things we gain from it is knowledge of how people other than our tribe lives and this knowledge can help us develop empathy. But the skimming our brains fall back on when reading on a screen isn't suited for development of empathy and the reliance on Google and other external memory sources means deep reading and critical thinking isn't well developed when reading on a screen.
The good news is, as evidenced by Ms. Wolf's experiment on herself, the detrimental effects of screen reading isn't irreversible.
The second half of the book details her suggestions on how to prevent this from happening to the children of today and tomorrow. And, no, it does not mean we should shuck all digital reading.
I really can't say enough about this book.
The brain is an amazingly complex:
"...there are as many connections in a single cubic centimeter of brain tissues as there are stars in the Milky Way galaxy.” 16.
and plastic thingie:
"Most important for this discussion, however, plasticity also underlies why the reading-brain circuit is inherently malleable (read changeable) and influenced by key environmental factors: specifically, what it reads (both the particular writing system and the content), how it reads (the particular medium, such as print or screen, and its effects on the way we read), and how it is formed (methods of instruction)." (18)
In her previous book, Proust and the Squid, I learned that there's no single area in the brain responsible for reading. In this book, I learned just how much of the brain we use to read:
"In essence, the combination of these three principles forms the basis of what few of us would ever suspect: a reading circuit that incorporates input from two hemispheres, four lobes in each hemisphere (frontal, temporal, parietal, and occipital), and all five layers of the brain (from the uppermost telencephalon and adjacent diencephalon below it; to the middle layers of the mesencephalon; to the lower levels of the metencephalon and myelencephalon). Anyone who still believes the archaic canard that we use only a tiny portion of our brains hasn’t yet become aware of what we do when we read." (20)
That staggeringly complex process of reading is also why a screen isn't as good to read on:
"reading isn’t only about our young children’s brains. It involves their whole bodies; they see, smell, hear, and feel books." (133)
Being able to involve the entire body isn't just kids stuff, either. We all do it. And one of the things we gain from it is knowledge of how people other than our tribe lives and this knowledge can help us develop empathy. But the skimming our brains fall back on when reading on a screen isn't suited for development of empathy and the reliance on Google and other external memory sources means deep reading and critical thinking isn't well developed when reading on a screen.
The good news is, as evidenced by Ms. Wolf's experiment on herself, the detrimental effects of screen reading isn't irreversible.
The second half of the book details her suggestions on how to prevent this from happening to the children of today and tomorrow. And, no, it does not mean we should shuck all digital reading.
I really can't say enough about this book.
villainous_hoopdreams's review against another edition
2.0
Wolf makes good points about the way reading digitally changes our processing and ability to attend (Covid taught us all about that whether we were ready for that lesson or not), but fundamentally I disagree with her view that young people have less empathy. I hope she has revised that view in this years since this was published.
I also think students are more “biliterate” than she is giving them credit for. There’s a lot of code switching going on, and my general sense is that students are pretty impatient with adults who haven’t noticed that already.
Overall I found her reference points and literature dated and a little elitist (Proust, Middlemarch, and Derrida, oy vey), and maybe it speaks to the speed with which this change is happening, but I found her points either pretty bland or pearl-clutchy.
Overall, like Proust and the Squid, it was repetitive, circuitous, fails to strike a good balance between its elements, and would have been better as an article.
Suggested snarky title for this review: Boomer, Calm Down.
I also think students are more “biliterate” than she is giving them credit for. There’s a lot of code switching going on, and my general sense is that students are pretty impatient with adults who haven’t noticed that already.
Overall I found her reference points and literature dated and a little elitist (Proust, Middlemarch, and Derrida, oy vey), and maybe it speaks to the speed with which this change is happening, but I found her points either pretty bland or pearl-clutchy.
Overall, like Proust and the Squid, it was repetitive, circuitous, fails to strike a good balance between its elements, and would have been better as an article.
Suggested snarky title for this review: Boomer, Calm Down.