Reader, Come Home by Maryanne Wolf

This book was an interesting meta read about reading itself. Wolf makes a good case that the skills required for deep reading are the same skills needed to be an informed citizen who thinks for himself, and that our increasingly digital lifestyle is chipping away at those skills.

Although Wolf dedicates several chapters to her ideas to help children be “bilingual” readers, fluent in both traditional reading and digital reading, I was a bit disappointed that she doesn’t talk more directly about what adults like me, who feel their deep reading skills slipping, can do to turn things around. I did come away from the book determined to change my reading habits a bit, though; I’d like to immerse myself in a novel every once in a while and read some harder-to-parse books as well. Hopefully that additional practice will strengthen my deep reading muscles.