Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain (original 2007; edition 2008)

by Maryanne Wolf (Author)

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antao's review

“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… (

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antao | May 8, 2018 |

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This was an interesting look at the topic, but a bit technical for the casual reader.
Most enjoyed the history of the evolution of the reading brain (

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cspiwak | Mar 6, 2024 |

3.5. I agree with some of the other reviews of this book that it fails at being either nonfiction for general readers or an academic text, fitting into neither box. But I still appreciated it. As an English teacher, it was helpful to learn about the development of reading and its related neuroscience. I learned some things about dyslexia and how reading shapes our brains. Yes, it was a bit repetitive and vague in some areas but has some good information. (

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Aidan767 | Feb 1, 2024 |

This is a very dense book, but the author manages to make the "science" and "educator" language accessible to the layman. I found this interesting in an academic way, not a lot of practical use to someone who isn't studying the brain, etc. It was interesting to read about the development of a child's brain on the path to reading and gives inspiration if you have a young one in your life to interact verbally and visually with children using words, letters, song and rhyme. (

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MrsLee | Jan 5, 2024 |

Really good read if you are interested in how our brain came to be able to read and write.

Please follow the link to my blog page to read the review.

https://polymathtobe.blogspot.com/2023/10/book-review-proust-and-squid-by.html (

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pw0327 | Oct 15, 2023 |

I gotta say, I don't know when the squid was supposed to make an appearance, but it was fleeting if it happened at all.
This is very neuroscience heavy, which I found fascinating, but it was more on how our evolutionary brains picked up reading in the history of our species rather than about the brains of non-readers vs readers. There is a little of that, but we quickly get derailed but dyslexia for the remainder of the book. Again, still fascinating, just not what I was expecting. I think her fearfulness of information being acquired via new technology is hilarious after she showed how Socrates was terrified of people picking up on reading. (

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KallieGrace | Sep 11, 2023 |

About reading, including brain diagrams. Quite interesting, especially on the dyslexic brain. I had read some of the information before - the origins of written language in A is for Ox and Palimpsest; and reading being based on the same neural program as the one used for tracking, in Atwood's book Burning Questions. This book goes into more scientific detail on those subjects, and has an extensive section of notes. I enjoyed reading about Socrates' resistance to reading as opposed to reciting and discussions. (

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AChild | Apr 30, 2023 |

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. (

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PattyLee | Dec 14, 2021 |

Just added this to my DNF shelf. I know this has gotten high ratings from quite a few people, but after reading the first chapter and then skipping around to places that looked like they could have been interesting, I just couldn't go on. Dry, dense, textbook-like and perhaps suitable for experts in the field or educators, but definitely not for me. (

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Jennifer708 | Mar 21, 2020 |

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Jennifer708 | Mar 21, 2020 |

Pop linguistics always sounds good to me, then lets me down. Tremendously digressive, full of overstatement, and weird use of Strawman arguments. (

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Eoin | Jun 3, 2019 |

The author first discussed the invention of writing with emphasis on alphabetic systems. Then she went into the details of the reading brain and the neuroscience of the pathways used when a person reads. The central sections focused on how children learn to read and the necessary background they need in order to be successful. The last chapters are about dyslexia, what it is and why it occurs and the research about it. Very good.

hailelib | May 3, 2019 |

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. (

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japaul22 | Mar 1, 2019 |

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antao | May 8, 2018 |

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. (

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kristykay22 | Dec 20, 2017 |

Thoroughly satisfying. (

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Mithril | Jun 27, 2017 |

I have found it a very pleasant book to read. All three sections (already mentioned in other reviews) are very interesting and brought me many insight on a subject I did not know much about before. I have particularly liked the second section, the one connecting the act of reading with the developing and functioning of the brain.
I think it also brings important messages to parents who want their children to grow enjoying reading, living the act of reading as the wonderful and fulfilling activity we, as human, have been blessed with. (

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ferrarini_luca | Dec 6, 2016 |

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. (

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RandyMetcalfe | Jul 18, 2016 |

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. (

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judiparadis | Jul 16, 2016 |

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." (

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dono421846 | Mar 4, 2016 |

No answers, not even advice about dealing with dyslexia. The book reports on the science behind the phenomenon. Not what I was looking for.

2wonderY | Jun 30, 2014 |

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. (

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KirkLowery | Mar 4, 2014 |

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. (

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bragan | Aug 11, 2013 |

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. (

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aliceunderskies | Apr 1, 2013 |

An enjoyable essay that combines reasonably technical information about brain function in reading and its acquisition with literary references and examples. It flows well and gives a good overview. I found it entertaining to read it as an audiobook, and to identify the researcher or writer whose work she was describing before she named it. I knew all that Goodglass and Geschwind would resurface some day long after my college course on aphasia. (

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OshoOsho | Mar 30, 2013 |

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1885234.html

A very readable book about how acquiring the skill of reading actually changes the way the human brain works, which I must admit I skimmed a bit because one bit of brain highlighted in a diagram looks much the same as any other bit of brain to me. Also investigates dyslexia and other reading disorders. (

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nwhyte | Feb 12, 2012 |

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