Proust and the Squid by Maryanne Wolf

I mostly enjoyed this book. I’m not sure exactly what I had in mind – the subtitle is “The Story and Science of the Reading Brain” – but it felt a bit more academic than I was hoping for. I enjoyed the less technical bits but found the more neuroscience-y parts dull.

One of my favorite parts of the book was the explanation of Socrates’s reasons for being wary of the introduction of the written word. I know very little about Greek history and was entirely unaware that anyone had ever seriously argued against adopting reading and writing. Wolf points out that Socrates was primarily advocating for the pursuit of deep understanding and posits that his arguments are relevant today as we continue to navigate the much more recent shift towards ever-increasing amounts of digital media.

I also enjoyed learning about how children develop the ability to read, probably especially because it brought to mind my own kids. It’s amazing to realize how complex of a process reading is and how good we can get at it with sufficient practice. I found it particularly remarkable to learn that the skills and brain pathways responsible for reading are different for different languages. It makes sense, but I’d never considered it before.

I’d love to read a follow-up book focused specifically on how adults can harness the full power of reading. I think that I read more than your average adult, but I still feel like I have plenty of room to grow in terms of vocabulary and general comprehension. Wolf claims that one of the biggest benefits of reading well is that it gives us more time to think about what we read, to go from words on the page to novel ideas, and I’d like to do more of that.