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A review by villainous_hoopdreams
Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World by Maryanne Wolf
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.