Lisa H’s Reviews > Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World > Status Update

There must be some irony in the fact that I read the letter on deep reading and attention both in the brief moments I could grab in the break room at work and then in a more sustained way in a coffee shop. I have far too many thoughts on this chapter to fully explore them in the limited number of characters given here... It has given me so much to think about...

"[D]eep reading provides our finest vehicle to travel outside of our lives". It helps us build empathy and background knowledge (while simultaneously processing and analysing the background knowledge we already have). Without these skills we are, Wolf posits, we are more likely to fall for incorrect information and generally be less informed citizens. This chapter has given me a lot to ponder.

I read Wolf's previous book and was entranced by the way the brain reads then and was reminded when I read the first letter in this book. Using a circus act to explain it was amazing though it broke my brain to think of how much work goes on to read a single word... And then for a brain to be reading about how a brain reads a single word... Reading is such a complex and wonderful thing.