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bak8382's review against another edition
4.0
In a series of letters to the reader [a:Maryanne Wolf|167825|Maryanne Wolf|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1536498436p2/167825.jpg] discusses the ways that our brains have changed since the introduction of digital reading. There's a lot of research behind this, and almost surprisingly it's not all bad. Wolf advocates for more education on digital reading, and a more nuanced and deliberate approach to rolling out these technologies to children. There's a lot to think about here, especially in the letter about reading and children. I feel one thing that I've done well in my house is create a culture of reading, and Wolf validates my choices there.
jerihurd's review against another edition
5.0
This book should be given to every prospective parent along with their prenatal vitamins. It should be required reading in every teacher education course. I expected something along the lines of the usual "we're losing our attention span" diatribe, but I was so wrong. Wolf writes a thoughtful, persuasive and far-reaching analysis of how our distracted, online lives impact our ability not just to focus, but to build stores of internal knowledge that affect our ability to make analogies, personalize learning, analyze deeply and build empathy. Far from a luddite screed, however, her final chapters explore ways to harness the best of both the digital and physical worlds, as well as some future-gazing into where this all may lead us.
A thought-provoking read that I plan to revisit within the year.
A thought-provoking read that I plan to revisit within the year.
mezekial's review against another edition
informative
reflective
medium-paced
2.25
I sought this book out for somewhat selfish reasons: to see if I could conduct a self-diagnosis on my own reading habits, and to try and determine if I too had fallen into the trap of technology-based skimming that sapped many adult reading brains from higher-level cognitive functioning. It turns out that this a) is not a reasonable test one can conduct on themselves, and b) that this book only partially deals with adult reading brains, and how to "come home" to that reading brain (the answer? Big surprise here: scroll less, read more). While I appreciate Wolf's experience as a scientist, educator, and fellow reader, the book was mostly interested in young readers and developing an "ideal reading world" where we can teach kids a biliteracy in reading digital text as well as physical text. Some bad practices snuck in here--it is popsci, after all--which soured overall tone of the book. This is most notable in a section where she takes a handful of newly-released, critically-acclaimed novels off her shelf and compars their sentence/clause density with that of 18th and 19th century novels, trying to make a point about how we, as a culture, have lost a level of language complexity and thus lost access to more complex cognitive functioning. She concedes that this is not by any means a scientific approach, nor should it be taken as such, but the spirit of it felt contrived and anachronistic for an era where the debate of "long words = good, short words = bad" has long been settled as narrow-viewed and culturally insensitive. The book itself, having come out in 2018 (meaning it was most likely written and researched over the course of 2014-2017), already feels like it belongs in a different decade--the early 2000's, maybe--where we could all be hopeful about the state of the internet. Obama and religious leaders are mentioned as important cultural touchstones (and, importantly, that have some merit in cultural commentary), Musk and Bezos make appearances as "successful tech figure" examles, and hope for our digital age is still alive and well. Could you even imagine?
As a final, petty note: Hemingway's infamous six-word story is cited and put on a platform as something novel and exhilarating, which feels like its own testament to Wolf's lack of terminally onlineness (and good for her, honestly).
For all her intelligence, research credit and bibliophilia, this book strangely feels like it is targeting a much younger audience, or at least an audience who still has hope for the internet and takes stock in the purported wisdom of a former president. Perhaps I am just cynical.
As a final, petty note: Hemingway's infamous six-word story is cited and put on a platform as something novel and exhilarating, which feels like its own testament to Wolf's lack of terminally onlineness (and good for her, honestly).
For all her intelligence, research credit and bibliophilia, this book strangely feels like it is targeting a much younger audience, or at least an audience who still has hope for the internet and takes stock in the purported wisdom of a former president. Perhaps I am just cynical.