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    Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain
    Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain
    Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain
    Audiobook8 hours

    Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain

    Written by Maryanne Wolf

    Narrated by Kirsten Potter

    3.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    Reading is a miracle, because the brain was never wired for written language. This eloquent, accessible look at reading explores how it has transformed our brains, our lives, and the world.

    It took 2,000 years for written language to develop, and it takes 2,000 days for a child's brain to learn to read. During that time, the brain must literally rearrange itself in order to understand written symbols. What happens when a child has difficulty mastering these abilities?

    Using down-to-earth examples and personal anecdotes, a preeminent researcher and literacy lover embarks on a lively journey through the reading brain. Drawing on her vast knowledge of neurology, sociology, psychology, philosophy, and child development, she shows how the brain that read Sumerian cuneiforms on clay tablets is different from the brain that reads images on a computer screen. Just as writing reduced our need for memory, technology is reducing the need for written language-a change sure to have profound consequences for our future.

    Fascinating and revelatory for anyone interested in the science of the brain, for parents of young children learning to read, and for those who want to know more about dyslexia.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHighbridge Company
    Release dateAug 1, 2008
    ISBN9781598877441
    Author

    Maryanne Wolf

    Maryanne Wolf, the John DiBiaggio Professor of Citizenship and Public Service at Tufts University, was the director of the Tufts Center for Reading and Language Research. She currently directs the Center for Dyslexia, Diverse Learners, and Social Justice at UCLA, and is working with the Dyslexia Center at the UCSF School of Medicine and with Curious Learning: A Global Literacy Project, which she co-founded. She is the recipient of multiple research and teaching honors, including the highest awards by the International Dyslexia Association and the Australian Learning Disabilities Association. She is the author of Proust and the Squid (HarperCollins), Tales of Literacy for the 21st Century (Oxford University Press), and more than 160 scientific publications.

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    Reviews for Proust and the Squid

    3.5/5

    303 ratings23 reviews

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    • 3/5
      This book is about the early history of laungauge, how reading skills are developed, and what can go wrong (dyslexia). The book spends a large amount of time on the history of language and the learning process in children. It doesn't focus too much on adult reading skills, but it may be helpful to prospective parents or those with young children. One thing I take from this book, is multiple ways reading influences the way we think. We take this for granted now, but the unknownable question is how will the digital media affect the brain in the long term.
    • 4/5
      Parts II and III should be required reading for teachers. Part I was interesting, but if you are in a hurry you might not care about the origins of the first writing systems.
    • 2/5
      Pop linguistics always sounds good to me, then lets me down. Tremendously digressive, full of overstatement, and weird use of Strawman arguments.
    • 5/5
      This is a fascinating look at how humans developed reading and writing and what reading does to the brain. It is divided into 3 sections: the first a history of the development of reading, the second a look at how children learn to read and how it changes the brain, and the third looking at learning anomalies such as dyslexia and what they further tell us about the brain. I really liked this. The language can be a bit dense and scientific, especially in the latter sections, but it was very interesting. One of my big takeaways was the idea that reading is not an inherited skill but something that each human attempts to learn from scratch. I also was very interested to read about the way the skill of reading changes neural pathways and the implications for how these pathways can lead to a deeper way of thinking in many ways. Wolf briefly addresses her concerns about how an increasing digital age may again change our neural pathways, much as happened when the Greeks discussed the move to written word away from "dialogues" and memorization for oral retelling. This was a big concern for Socrates, at the cusp of this mental shift.
    • 2/5
      “Will the split-second immediacy of information gained from a search engine and the sheer volume of what is available derail the slower, more deliberative processes that deepen our understanding of complex concepts, of another's inner thought processes, and of our own consciousness?"In “Proust and the Squid by Maryanne Wolf”Why wouldn't Amazon publish the ebook I wrote in 1986 on a ZX81 and posted to them saved on a cassette tape? On the other hand, I once (1988, I think) did the work for a non-linear dynamics paper on my Sinclair Spectrum, and produced the diagrams using the Spectrum's printer, which used sparks to burn dots in the silver coating of the paper, then photographing and enlarging them. It was submitted to the very snooty college journal. They accepted it but wondered if I couldn't make better diagrams. They published anyway when I said I couldn't. How I wish I could recover this. It’s in one of the floppy disk in my attic at home…I’ve still got several programming nuggets I developed at the time. One of them was a chess compiler in C. If I had the hardware to read that kind of media (I’ve still got the floppy disks, but I no longer have the drive that went along with them…), I could recover most of them too if I really set my mind to it. But I wouldn't regard it as worth the effort, so they'll eventually get lost without anyone ever knowing whether they are worth saving. Only me…A lot of forensics software aims to keep old formats readable - so incompatibility is the least of our worries. Books last for hundreds, even thousands of years. Modern storage media do not. 'Bit rot' is going to become a serious problem...That might be part of the reason we have books like these. Or because of the people they were written for.Back in the day when I was attending The British Council, I treated myself years to a copy of the great Oxford English Dictionary, the full 20 volume version (I know what you’re thinking…; but this took place in the 80s). If I sat down to look up a word I could be there an hour later, reading the etymology of a completely unrelated word that I possibly didn't even know existed until that point. Because of that, I learnt to keep my discoveries to myself, on the whole, having seen the look of panic on other people's faces should I start with an enthusiastic recital of my discoveries. Whilst Wikipedia (and other online reference sources) do have a certain amount of serendipity, the joy of reading the next entry in a print encyclopaedia is hard to match. Ah, the joys of dictionary leafing! Also reminds me that, as a youngster, some of the encyclopaedia sets at home were one of my favourite things. Later on I bought the German equivalent. Oh, what joy! I must have clocked years looking up all sorts of wonders, tracing diagrams and designs and just having myself a proper party! Nevertheless, if I lose a book and it's gone, given a couple of minutes of WIFI and a mobile phone I can download any one of millions of books for free anywhere in the word, with paid-for Kindle type services. Plus, they're closing all the libraries, where is one supposed to go to get all this information and look things up? Especially if the required lookup is needed in the middle of the night for instance. Sadly, we're reaching a point where if it isn't on the net, somewhere, and indexed by a search engine, it may as well not exist. There is a sense of sensibility in this day and age for printed matter, but, as with the stone tablets Maryanne Wolf writes about (cuneiform, etc.), this will pass and soon. I think, in less than a generation (I probably won’t leave to see it), books will only be boutique gifts. There will come a time, possibly within the lifetime of you now reading this, when there will simply be no more books published. Novels, yes; collections of short stories; poems; plays; all manner of nonfiction--but it will all be electronic. Everything will be photonic, and when it is photonic and the cloud is a quantum entangled swarm of particles in orbit of the sun which powers that internet iteration, there will be legions whinging about the sad loss of electronics, and they will sound just as pathetic.But the problem is not that we moved on from the printed page. What will be an utter disgrace is that no one will read Proust anymore. Proust's sort of fun if you have the time and uninterrupted stamina: if you let a day go by without keeping up the momentum it abruptly just turns into gossip about people you'll never meet. That can be diverting, on a long bus journey (because otherwise the yammering of the people behind you becomes irritating noise, whereas making sense of it is at least a good mental exercise). A bit of concentration and the books resolve into exactly what people claim, a Great Work about time, loss and our attempts to make sense of it all, but then life gets in the way and it turns back into eavesdropping on “fin de siècle” Parisian random stuff (loved the quite right at the beginning of the book). What I didn’t like is the fact Wolf seems to be writing a book without the “science” to support it. Starting the book with a quote by Proust was a good touch, but it’s bone-in meat without the meat…
    • 4/5
      This book explores what the unnatural act of learning to read does to our brains, how that has affected human culture, and what is going on in the brains of people who have trouble putting together all the complicated cerebral processes of reading. Wolf's writing is accessible and her experience as a professor and a dyslexia researcher make her more than qualified to tell this story. The overview of the history of writing and reading over time and across cultures and the personal explorations of what reading means to an individual really hit home with me. I lost interest a bit in the (rather lengthy) sections on the brain and the physiological aspects of reading. The very end of the book raised the question of how reading on the internet and our phones may once again change our brains or shape the way we think, but Wolf pulls back from the implications of this idea and lands on something like "kids these days don't have a good attention span because of phones." I think that's a little too simple, and I wish the book had spent some of its anatomical real estate on current research into the impact of the Internet on the reading brain.
    • 5/5
      Thoroughly satisfying.
    • 4/5
      Our brains are not designed for reading. So it may seem remarkable that over thousands of years we gradually developed symbols and the rules for manipulating them that constitute a written language. Despite the fact that reading is not a natural ability, we obviously must gain a huge advantage through being able to communicate through written text. And it turns out that our brains adapt to this situation, deploying multiple abilities that work in concert and improve their efficiency dramatically over time in order to fully exploit our environment of written language. It is a story, both evolutionary and socio-cultural, that borders on the unbelievable. Yet it doesn’t come to the fore until we encounter and have to deal with individuals whose brains have not developed along the lines that lead to reading efficiency. For the dyslexic, reading can be a gargantuan challenge.Maryanne Wolf presents this story of reading from the perspective of a neuroscientist, but rooted both professionally and personally in working directly with people burdened with dyslexia. Of course that burden itself is culturally enforced. Since no brain is designed, as it were, for reading, it can hardly have been an evolutionary disadvantage (at least throughout most of history) to not develop this remarkable skill. And indeed the evidence suggests that many of those suffering from the stigma of dyslexia have brains that are better designed, in terms of their wiring, for artistic or conceptual work. And so the effort to understand precisely what is going on in the reading brain is both an effort to ease the path for those who do not quickly attain fluency and to acknowledge that there are a wealth of equally valuable other paths that a “successful” brain might take.This was a fascinating account told with humility and grace. It contains enough of the neuroscience to fully inform even the most ardent scientific reader, but enough of the humane aspects of what reading is and means to keep the reader focussed on what really matters. Recommended.
    • 4/5
      Loved this book on the "science of reading." Wolf, a professor at Tufts, delves into how reading shapes our brains and our thinking by looking at the evolution of reading and how it changed both our ability to order society and think independently, and how it actually shaped our brain development. She then tackles the neuroscience behind reading, which was fascinating--especially for those of us who work with children doing the difficult work of learning to read. Her book gives insight into how remarkable this ability actually is. Wolf closes by speculating on what changes will come in this century as we morph from print readers to digital consumers of information, with some cautionary ideas that were worth considering. Informing the entire book, was her revelation that her son is dyslexic, and her findings about how this reading "disability" actually shows the plasticity and adaptive qualities of our brains--and marks those with dyslexia as actually having some important traits that we need to nurture and value. Lots to consider here, especially for those of us working with children and literacy.
    • 4/5
      I'm not sure how successful Wolf is at presenting this information on reading in a manner that is accessible to the general public, but that shouldn't detract from the interesting aspects of the book. The more technical sections on brain anatomy, etc., can be skimmed without much loss.For me the major points were the consequences of the fact that, unlike language acquisition, there are no genetics for reading. We can do this only because we're reappropriated machinery designed for other purposes. That speaks to how difficult it can be to master this skill, although it is easier to day that it was originally, when it literally took years of intense training and study to acquire reading fluency. Children are today expected to attain this skill by third grade. She closes with some insightful observations on what the consequences of a generation who "reads" only what they find on the internet, thus eventually losing the ability to think for themselves. "Their insights are narrowed to what they see and hear quickly and easily, and they have too little reason to think outside our newest, most sophisticated boxes. These students are not illiterate, but they may never become true readers." They become instead mere "decoders of information, whose false sense of knowing distracts them from a deeper development of their intellectual potential."
    • 3/5
      A discussion of how reading makes physiological changes in the brain, and how the digital age will change the brain further. She raises the question of Socrates' objections to literacy with reference to the changes in reading causes by the digital instant access to information. However, she does not offer any significant suggestions to remedy the problem, nor does her very interesting work with dyslexics address the question. Indeed, it seems as if she has written two books with (related) content, but no real organic unity.
    • 4/5
      This book is divided in into three sections. In the first, Wolf focuses primarily on the history of writing and the evolution of different kinds of writing systems. Her main thesis seems to be that reading, unlike speaking, is a skill that does not come naturally to humans. It has to be learned, which requires us to rewire the neural circuitry of our brains. There's remarkably little actual brain science here, though, as she discusses said circuitry primary in very broad, vague terms. Which I found a little disappointing. Still there is some interesting stuff in here. I particularly appreciated the insight that the alphabet, with its representation of individual sounds, is actually a pretty brilliant invention, not one that's intuitively obvious at all. There's also some thought-provoking discussion of Socrates' opposition to written language, and the extent to which his arguments are relevant today, as the reading of print books becomes increasingly replaced by the very different reading experience of the internet.The second section focuses on how children learn to read. Again, not a lot of actual neurological science here, except for one section on what happens in the brain as we read, which she seems to half-expect readers to skip as "too technical." She spends a lot of time talking about the stages kids go through as they learn to read, which mostly contains nothing particularly surprising. More interesting, or at least more important, are the impassioned points she makes about the importance that reading to small children has to their later literacy development, and the fact that this puts impoverished children without much access to books (or to adults with the time and ability to read to them) at a huge disadvantage. She also contends that reading expands kids' horizons and makes them more capable of empathy. It's not at all clear to me how much of that is based on any actual science, and how much on her own biases as someone who grew up as a reader. But as someone who also grew up reading, I am naturally inclined to agree with it.Section three is about reading difficulties and dyslexia. This seems to be Wolf's biggest area of expertise, both personal -- she has a son with dyslexia -- and professional, and it's also the meatiest and most detailed. In this case, she does discuss a lot of what happens in the brain that (perhaps) causes dyslexia. There aren't a lot of answers here, as it's not all very well-understood, and dyslexia isn't even a very well-defined problem. But the questions themselves are interesting, as is her assertion that dyslexics tend to be creative in ways that would have put them at an advantage, rather than a disadvantage, in pre-literate societies and can still to some extent do so today.Bottom line: It's not quite the book I was hoping it would be, but it was worth reading.
    • 2/5
      I picked this up because I loved the cover and the title, but alas, the content did not measure up. The book was okay--not atrociously written, mildly interesting throughout--but the content just wasn't new enough for me I suppose. My continual reaction was, "Well, yeah, obviously." In addition to "nothing I didn't already know or could logically intuit" points loss, Wolf also seemed unable to decide whether she was writing a scientific or a personal book; she'd switch between personal anecdotes to APA-style restating of her thesis in unemotional language at the turn of a page. A commitment to either impulse would have served the book better.
    • 2/5
      This book is in three parts:1) How the brain learned to read2) How the brain learns to read over time3) When the brain can't learn to readThe first part focuses on the earliest forms of writing, and what neurological developments occurred as a result of using symbols. The author manages to keep this combination of history and neuroscience just a little too dry to engage the layreader. The second part deals with the child's mind and what leaps of association are required to progress, as reading is an acquired skill as opposed to an innate ability. It was the reason I bought the book, hoping to get a wider understanding of the process of learning to read and some tips and techniques of improving this process. Unfortunately the text remains partly a scientific explanation of what happens in the brain (which lobes are exercised in which circumstances) and partly a linguistic explanation of versatility of the English language and how different words are pronounced differently (bough, tough, through etc.). As a native English speaker, I already knew that and have long since ceased to be amazed by it.There is no mention of the Glen Doman theory of learning to read, which is in opposition to the standard process presented here
    • 4/5
      Brains are amazing. One of the most fascinating aspects of modern neuroscience (for a pop-science consumer like me) is that we are increasingly learning that things which seem very simple can actually involve multiple parts of the brain working in co-ordination. Apparently Capgrass syndrome, in which people believe that a close family member has been replaced with an identical imposter, comes about because the bit of brain which recognises that person is working, but the bit which provides the emotional connection has gone awry. Equally, it's only around the age of six that children can understand a phrase like 'left of the blue wall', and if you knock out an adult's language-processing ability by making them repeat nonsense phrases while they do the exercise, they can't locate something that's 'left of the blue wall' either.The relevance of all this is that Proust And The Squid is about what actually happens in our brains while we read, and it turns out to be tremendously complex. For readers of English, three different parts of our brains are involved in simply processing the words in front of our eyes (for more regularly-spelled languages like Spanish, it's two and for logosyllabic languages like Chinese or, apparently, ancient Sumerian, it's four). Even more incredible is what happens immediately after that. If we read a random collection of letters, say 'mbli', the brain processes the letters then goes quiet; if it's a real word - like 'limb' - all sorts of connections start to fire. "The difference between the two arrangements of the same letters ... was almost half a cortex." In fact, at one point in this fascinating book, Wolf describes the brain processes which take place in the first half a second after a word is read. It takes eight pages. And as fluent readers, we do this so quickly that we also have the mental space to think about what we are reading means - not just word + word + word + word. One of Wolf's points, in fact, is the way that reading helps the mind to open doors, to fire off other connections and thoughts. It's entirely appropriate, therefore, that this book made my mind spark trains of thought like fireworks.One note: Wolf is not a popular science writer but an expert in the subject who is trying to write accessibly. She does so very effectively, partly because she can make the subject so fascinating. (I found the third part of the book, which deals with dyslexia, the most 'sciencey', probably because I was less interested in it than the first two - about the history of written language and then about the brain processes). She also draws interesting conclusions from the science about childhood education, for example the long-term impact of 'word poverty' (by the age of five, some children from impoverished-language environments have heard 32 million fewer words than the average middle-class child) - important information for our educators in a week where it was discovered that almost 10% of eleven-year-old boys in the UK have reading problems.I could keep going for hours with interesting thoughts from this book, but instead I will suggest that you read it yourself!
    • 3/5
      Some interesting stuff on differences in written languages and how they affect reading in the brain, including problems with reading: dyslexia and similar problems manifest differently depending on how closely a written language correlates with sounds as pronounced. Wolf also focuses on the importance of “loving laps” for children learning to read, associating reading with good things, and argues that we’re doing a really bad job with struggling readers because we don’t pay enough attention to fluency/automaticity if it hasn’t already developed in the early grades.
    • 5/5
      What an incredible book. Supremely readable, it seems undignified to label this 'popular science', because the amount of references show clearly that this has been as thoroughly researched as any serious scientific book. The only thing, really, that puts it into the popular category is the lack of note markers in the text - which is nice, until you get to the notes and realise how hard it is to relate them back... a very minor gripe.Maryanne Wolf's title alludes to the different aspects of reading exemplified by Proust's description of the book, in 'On Reading', as a place to take refuge and explore other realities and ideas, and the part the squid has played in the historical study of the brain. If you like, it's the felt experience of the reader complemented by the mechanics behind the scenes. The book is divided into three main parts: how the brain learned to read - a retrospective of the history of reading and brain science; how the brain learns to read over time - what we know or believe now about reading acquisition; and when the brain can't learn to read - a survey of current research and developments in dyslexia.Wolf's style is delightful. Even when she is explaining the complexities of brain imaging and how that might relate to reading development, she is never less than fluid (though I suspect I fell into the trap that, she tells us, Socrates feared would arise through literacy: that of ceasing to question, and reading without truly understanding!). It's not the kind of book where you find yourself so bogged down in the technical descriptions you are unable to move forward. The science is leavened with anecdotes from her own research and family life, and seasoned with numerous interesting literary and historical references (personal favourite: Eliot's analogies for Casaubon's mind from Middlemarch).Wolf closes with a call to arms to urgently consider the implications for the current generation of schoolchildren of 'growing up digital', repeatedly worrying at the notion that the ease of access to information provided by the internet may produce a crop of children with little or no curiosity about exploring texts further than their surfaces.I found this completely fascinating from just about every perspective: the history of reading, writing and alphabets, which I knew very little about; the process of language acquisition, which was particularly interesting as my youngest child is at the stage of beginning to reliably recognise letters; dyslexia, which I knew absolutely nothing about (nice too that Wolf uses The Lightning Thief for an epigraph in one of these chapters); and her personal mission statement in the final chapter. Everyone with an interest in reading should seek it out.
    • 5/5
      This was a fascinating study of the “reading brain” with an added dash of a brief history of the rise of written language (so we would have something to read!). After reading this book I am in awe that anyone learns to read. Are brain is not “programmed” for reading. The brain of each individual has to start from scratch developing new pathways that eventually will lead to reading skills. This is why children who get a late start, not being introduced to books and stories at a very young age, often never get beyond the rudimentary level of decoding and seldom develop into expert readers. I think every parent and teacher of young children should read this book.Since I am a “squid” I was most fascinated by the last section of the book: WHEN THE BRAIN CAN’T LEARN TO READ. This section discusses the problems facing the dyslexic child. I was one of the lucky ones. I wasn’t diagnosed but I had two parents a some excellent teachers who worked with me and pushed me until I developed the skills I needed and by the time I was in third grade (the time when the dyslexic usually gets left in the dust) I had developed enough skill that I was able to keep up although no one could understand why I couldn’t seem to master spelling! However, I have always been a “slow” reader compared to my peers—those who read voraciously usually become quite fast. I now know why. Reading is a ‘Left Brain” activity for the most part, although the Right Brain does have some work to do in the process. For dyslexics, the left brain paths for reading never develop; our reading paths develop in the right brain, which does not work as quickly so there is always a “delay” in the process for us. This is also why most dyslexics—even the brilliant ones—usually don’t become expert readers. Albert Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci, and Thomas Alva Edison are three of the brilliant ones who developed their talents in other areas. This goes on my list of best books of the year and gets 5 stars!
    • 4/5
      Wow! I loved this book. Read it and be amazed at your incredible reading brain--even if you were someone who had a heck of a time learning to read. I especially liked the parallels Wolf draws between Socrates' objections to the transition, from the oral culture of ancient Greece, to the reading culture made possible by the revolutionary Greek alphabet, and the somewhat worrisome transition today, from a words-on-the-page reading culture that tends to encourage critical thinking, to a digital, hyper-linked, image-heavy, screen-reading culture.
    • 4/5
      An intriguing look at your brain on books. The book delves into both the evolutionary history of reading, the nitty-gritty of how the brain adapts itself to this very complex skill, and the ways in which that process goes wrong (ie, dyslexia). Most intriguingly, the author tries to draw an analogy between the transition from oral to written culture, to the transition between written and digital culture. Some things were lost (the ability to really Socratically question knowledge), but much was gained (the time to think deeply and keep a cultural history alive).
    • 3/5
      Wolff's book is clear, thoughful and compassionate. She herself is obviously a reader which shows in her many examples. I also appreciated that her inclusion of dyslexia in her exploration of the 'reading' mind.
    • 4/5
      The subject matter of this book is very interesting, and has that self-referential aspect to it that makes books about the brain and consciousness so fun. Like holding a mirror up to itself, Wolf's book is about whats going on in the brain when the reader is reading. Wolf also recapitulates the historical development of the written word and how our brains continually have to adapt and relearn this skill in each new individual. My only complaint about the book is that Wolf's writing feels clunky and redundant at times.
    • 2/5
      Despite some fascinating history and some very essential information about language development in young children, this book is a little heavy in its neuroscience content for the average reader.