Proust and the Squid is one of my favorite books and is a “must read.” The subtitle of this book is “the story and science of the reading brain.”  It’s unique title refers to the famous 19th Century French author, Marcel Proust.  Proust’s most famous work is Remembrance of Things Past (which has now been retranslated as In Search of Lost Time).  This highly influential, massive work — 7 volumes and over a million words — was written in a stream of consciousness style.  Proust talks about a complex mix of things — creativity, social class, sexuality, among others — but it his insightful personal mediations on the experience of reading that Dr. Wolf alludes to in the title and quotes from in the text.  The remarkable neurology of the squid and its astonishing adaptability became a major post-WWII area of study.  The juxtaposition of the two in the title, along with the subtitle, gives you a clue what the book is about: what the experience of reading does to our brains.

There is a lot of hard science about what happens to the brain when you read in this book.  And there is a lot of historical research about the historical development of the written word from many cultures.  And Dr. Wolf manages to correlate the two.  She also provides graphic maps of the different parts of the brain involved in reading.  It is quite an eye opener to see that the brain uses different parts to read Chinese characters than it does to read English letters. The amount covered in such a small book is simply dazzling.  

Far from being dry, however, the book has a warm, upbeat tone.  Dr. Wolf is clearly a person who not only is a dedicated reading researcher, she herself is an avid reader and she shares her enjoyment.  She also shares her motivation for her life’s work:  her son is dyslexic.  There is a lot about the how a dyslexic brain differs from a “normal” one.

Reading physical changes the brain.  Dr. Wolf points out that reading is not “natural” and that because of the brain’s plasticity, reading has the effect of physically expanding the brain and its complex connections.  

You will come away from this book realizing how incredibly good for you it is to read.  It was written in 2007 — before smartphones and their accompanying addiction and elimination of reading for many people in their lives.  

So much as happened since this book was written — most notably, the proliferation of smartphones and the further development of addictive technology, especially social media.  And there been so much research since this book was written.  Dr. Wolf. has continued to be an active researcher and her subsequent work confirms the tragic effects of not reading and the damage to people’s brains and personalities that the screen-based life has inflicted.