Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain by Maryanne Wolf

Proust and the Squid is an interesting look at the history of literacy and the evolution of the written word, and how the brain has evolved and adapted in order to learn how to read. Using multiple disciplines – psychology, history, linguistics and neuroscience to name a few – Maryanne Wolf takes us through what has happened over human history and how reading ability develops over a lifetime.

The first section on the development of writing and reading through history was fascinating, well-informed and researched and written in an engaging, always easy to understand style. Socrates was concerned about how knowledge defined by the written word would impact the tradition of orally learned knowledge; but he was also concerned with the ways in which the written word would prevent the ability to engage in dialogue in order to critically approach information. Wolf makes some interesting points about how the historical apprehension about the move from oral to literate culture mirrors that of our change from a literate to a multi-literate culture, or whatever you want to call the information overload nature of the world we exist in at the moment. The manner in which we receive and process information is changing rapidly again, and so what ways will the brain have to adapt in order to make sense of this world? How will it lead to further changes in the brain?

I believe that reading, in its original essence, [is] that fruitful miracle of a communication in the midst of solitude.
- Marcel Proust

The second section on reading development in young children is equally fascinating, bringing insight into just how complex an act it is, amazing that so many of us have managed to do it!, it gave me fresh appreciation of the act of reading itself. The third section on dyslexia is Wolf’s prime area of study and you can tell it is something she is knowledgeable about, and her writing here is passionate, but it lacked the immediate interest of the first two parts of the book.

Overall, Wolf has produced a book in which the writing is engaging, insightful and informative. It will make readers consider the act/art of reading and give a new admiration and understanding of the pleasures that reading offers.