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ageorgiadis 's review for:
Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain
by Maryanne Wolf
Wish that I had read the physical volume. This was a rare audio book for me, and it often draws the “reader’s” attention to the cadence of particular text, or the mental processes as one's eye pass along words, or other phenomena. The effectiveness of this was blunted by an audio experience.
Still, fascinating stuff. Wolf delves into the development of reading within humans. She does a great job tracing the historical genesis of script, beginning with Sumerian cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphs. Socrates was famously opposed to knowledge being transmitted in written form, because it removed the first-person experience from understanding (viz. allows for shortcuts by its very nature). Wolf then proceeds to the neurological development of a reading brain within an individual person, because that cognitive machinery is actually not “natural”.
Humans have the genetic and anatomic architecture for language and vision, but not for reading. There are many nodes along a complex neural pathway which can go awry and lead to pathology, or the big interest of Wolf’s: dyslexia.
Leonardo da Vinci was likely dyslexic, and his private notes were written right-to-left via a mirror (he was left handed. Other guesses about this: he wanted to keep his hands clean).
Anyway, pretty good, and a nice lead-in to her next work: [b:Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World|38508644|Reader, Come Home The Reading Brain in a Digital World|Maryanne Wolf|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1531864614l/38508644._SX50_.jpg|57403747]
Still, fascinating stuff. Wolf delves into the development of reading within humans. She does a great job tracing the historical genesis of script, beginning with Sumerian cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphs. Socrates was famously opposed to knowledge being transmitted in written form, because it removed the first-person experience from understanding (viz. allows for shortcuts by its very nature). Wolf then proceeds to the neurological development of a reading brain within an individual person, because that cognitive machinery is actually not “natural”.
Humans have the genetic and anatomic architecture for language and vision, but not for reading. There are many nodes along a complex neural pathway which can go awry and lead to pathology, or the big interest of Wolf’s: dyslexia.
Leonardo da Vinci was likely dyslexic, and his private notes were written right-to-left via a mirror (he was left handed. Other guesses about this: he wanted to keep his hands clean).
Anyway, pretty good, and a nice lead-in to her next work: [b:Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World|38508644|Reader, Come Home The Reading Brain in a Digital World|Maryanne Wolf|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1531864614l/38508644._SX50_.jpg|57403747]