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A review by theforereffect
Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World by Maryanne Wolf
3.0
Oh dear.
This book suffers from the format and it's unfortunate because Maryanne Wolf's research and insights are incredibly important. While I agreed with the crux of everything she said and I am fully behind her theory of the bilitterate brain, getting to her point was an arduous process that had me wanting to rage quit this book despite it being about one of my most favorite topics.
I feel like she had planned to wrote a very different book. I feel like she got the research ready and was geared up to wrote a book fully about the bilitterate brain, but she didn't have enough material so decided to parent down to a more informal format.
This could have worked well if the letters to the reader were... you know... letters.
Have you ever got an email from that aunt? You know which aunt I mean. The one that has all these thoughts, all these opinions, and she doesn't care who she's talking to or why she says what she is saying. She just pours her heart out I'm a big wall of text as if you, the recipient of her email, does not exist. Then at the end she actually gets to the point sorta and signs off and you are like... should I even respond? How?
That's what this was like. The chapters, framed as letters, were only letters in that they were signed at the end. It was just the author sounding off without any thought about the reader or any attempt to engage or carry on the conversation.
Because that is what a letter is, correct? An asynchronous conversation? But I did not feel part of this conversation. I felt like I was ready part 2 of her first book, which is fine because that is what I wanted to read, but since she didn't commit to either format it just left me confused and wanting.
The problem is, it ends up being very pompous and over-done. The "letter" format allowed the author to go flowery with her language, but paired with the science (which is the good part) it gets a little... pretentious.
And the pretentiousness contradicts her very point. It's very frustrating.
Overall, a worthy topic and she does present a lot of interesting ideas I had not read elsewhere. I wish Wolf had gone all in on epistolary and made it very conversational and accessible. Of she had, I would have recommended it to a lot of people who bulk at brain science. Or on the other hand, I wish she had gone all in on the brain science and given me all the facts.
The in-between, however, means this entry into all pantheon of books related to the science of reading popping up lately is forgettable. Other than the idea of the biliterate brainbit was all kind of useless.
Oh well.
This book suffers from the format and it's unfortunate because Maryanne Wolf's research and insights are incredibly important. While I agreed with the crux of everything she said and I am fully behind her theory of the bilitterate brain, getting to her point was an arduous process that had me wanting to rage quit this book despite it being about one of my most favorite topics.
I feel like she had planned to wrote a very different book. I feel like she got the research ready and was geared up to wrote a book fully about the bilitterate brain, but she didn't have enough material so decided to parent down to a more informal format.
This could have worked well if the letters to the reader were... you know... letters.
Have you ever got an email from that aunt? You know which aunt I mean. The one that has all these thoughts, all these opinions, and she doesn't care who she's talking to or why she says what she is saying. She just pours her heart out I'm a big wall of text as if you, the recipient of her email, does not exist. Then at the end she actually gets to the point sorta and signs off and you are like... should I even respond? How?
That's what this was like. The chapters, framed as letters, were only letters in that they were signed at the end. It was just the author sounding off without any thought about the reader or any attempt to engage or carry on the conversation.
Because that is what a letter is, correct? An asynchronous conversation? But I did not feel part of this conversation. I felt like I was ready part 2 of her first book, which is fine because that is what I wanted to read, but since she didn't commit to either format it just left me confused and wanting.
The problem is, it ends up being very pompous and over-done. The "letter" format allowed the author to go flowery with her language, but paired with the science (which is the good part) it gets a little... pretentious.
And the pretentiousness contradicts her very point. It's very frustrating.
Overall, a worthy topic and she does present a lot of interesting ideas I had not read elsewhere. I wish Wolf had gone all in on epistolary and made it very conversational and accessible. Of she had, I would have recommended it to a lot of people who bulk at brain science. Or on the other hand, I wish she had gone all in on the brain science and given me all the facts.
The in-between, however, means this entry into all pantheon of books related to the science of reading popping up lately is forgettable. Other than the idea of the biliterate brainbit was all kind of useless.
Oh well.