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

4.0

A reader's book if ever there was one, "Reader, Come Home" rings the alarm bell and reminds us of the profound danger that the digital reading style poses to the more contemplative reading life many "good readers" cherish. Even the latter (even the author, for that matter!) find that we struggle to slow down and digest complex written material when, as has become ubiquitous, we are bombarded with stimuli of all kinds, including what might amount to 100,000 words (words alone, not images, etc.) per day. The author prescribes not the rejection of digital media (an acknowledged impossibility), but rather the intentional development of "bi-literal" readership, capable of transitioning between print and digital forms and drawing from each the information, knowledge and wisdom necessary for the preservation of a democratic polity.