Happy New Year, dear reader! In the previous Book Letter, I expressed my sadness that I did not read “The Lord of the Rings” when I was young, and still had the ability to disappear completely inside a literary universe. Now I have heard a podcast which suggests that it may not be about age, but about the way of reading. A tip from a good colleague has led me headlong into two of the New Year’s books, which you will hear about. Do you have the coffee ready? When I was a child, I disappeared so deep into the books that my mother had to call out my full Christian name for me to react. – SISSEL KRISTIN, CAN’T YOU HEAR THE PHONE? If my friends rang the doorbell in the middle of an exciting story, I told her to say I wasn’t home. I would rather live on in my book than in reality. This no longer happens. On the contrary, I myself am responsible for the distractions when I read: Where is the mobile phone? Aren’t I a little hungry? Should I install a sink? Many adults I talk to say they feel the same way. Many young people today have never experienced the immersive reading of a book. But what causes it? There is a lot of research into reading and the brain at the moment, and I have just listened to a podcast that gave me new perspectives. Ezra Klein is a journalist for the New York Times, and is super smart. Even he is struggling to find his way back to the good reading experience. That is why in 2023 he invited a brain researcher to his weekly podcast where he investigates important topics of the time. American Maryanne Wolf does research in cognitive neuroscience. She has written two books on reading and speaks passionately and simply about her research. Maryanne Wolf is internationally recognized and collaborates, among other things, with a research environment in Stavanger. Photo: Harper Collins Wolf began his conversation with Klein by saying something startling: Reading is unnatural to the brain. The human baby is born with a language center in the brain, which is ready to formulate the first ma-ma and pa-pa. But the researchers have not found a corresponding reading center in the brain. Reading is not innate. Even if reading is “unnatural” for the brain, it can be learned, and it should be learned, because this is how we move the world forward. Our civilizations are based on reading and writing, says Wolf. Just think of Plato’s “The State”, Karl Marx’s “Das Kapital”, Adam Smith’s “The Wealth of Nations”, or Mary Woolstonecraft’s manifesto for women’s rights. As children spell their way through SIRI SER SEL in the ABC book, the decoding of letters constitutes the simplest level of reading. Only after several years of reading will the human brain develop new paths and connections that provide the basis for proper reading. FIRST STEP: Learning letters and words Photo: Frank May / NTB scanpix In what Maryanne Wolf calls deep reading, your brain activates several different fields: The linguistic of course, but also what you have of theoretical and practical knowledge, events you have experienced and – not least – your feelings. This complex process reinforces itself the more you read and creates new pathways in your brain. I imagine a network of paths forming in a dense forest. These new paths help you to think critically, to think anew, and it increases your capacity for compassion. Good stuff, right? But deep reading is not like riding a bike. The skill can be weakened or lost if not used. The paths in the forest grow again. As Wolfe puts it: “Use it or lose it.” DEEP: According to his wife Michelle, Barack Obama has the ability to lose himself in reading, anytime, anywhere. Despite a busy job as president, every year he published a list of around 20 favorite books, both novels and non-fiction. Photo: Pete Souza / Wikiemedia Commons With the internet and e-books, all of humanity gained access to knowledge: A victory for democracy. But with access to such large amounts of knowledge, we are changing the way we read. We hunt for quick information, and the brain favors the ability to skim, at the expense of in-depth reading. This scares me. On their own behalf and on behalf of humanity. Last year I thought I had found a good life hack: Listening to an audiobook while playing mobile games. Then I got to do two favorite things at once, and I thought that now I’m stimulating my brain really well, since it both listens and solves tasks in the game! After hearing Wolfe, I realize that was self-delusion. According to her and her colleagues’ research, the brain does not get the same challenge from listening to a book as from reading it, and not from reading a book electronically as reading on paper. In the podcast, Ezra Klein says that his dream is to be able to load books directly into the brain, as they do with Neo in “The Matrix”, via a plug in the neck. But there Maryanne Wolf has to disappoint him. It is the very process of in-depth reading that makes you understand the text properly. The road is the goal, as the saying goes. A brain that is overloaded with skimming and sorting information will turn to familiar and simple things to rest. Do you recognise your self? I turn to cat videos when my brain is tired of information. Photo: Screenshot YouTube If humanity throws in-depth reading out with the bathwater of the information society, we as a species may reduce the ability for critical thinking and empathy, Wolf fears. Could it be that the tendency to vote for politicians who offer simple solutions is a result of this development? Modern life makes each individual a kind of manager of their own life. There is so much every day that needs to be remembered, arranged, ordered, clarified and fixed. Maryanne Wolf addresses each one of us when she says: I wish everyone to find a room of their own, an opportunity to put down this manager, and find a book. For a brief moment we can be a thinking human being, with a heart, a mind and a soul. This appeals to something deeper in me than trendy diets and new forms of exercise do. The first week in January I deleted all my mobile games. It has actually led to me reading more – and for longer at a time. I have now ordered both of Wolf’s books, on paper. I will read them slowly, with a critical sense and open feelings. Now reading – Dear Knut, do you have any tips to increase my enthusiasm for books in the new year? Colleague Knut Hoem was sprawled out on the sofa outside the radio studio and yawned for the New Year. He basically looked like the least energetic colleague I could find on the third of January. But, appearances were deceiving. – Yes, I have! You just have to read something that is really good. Like this classic, he said, waving Alfred Döblin’s “Travel in Poland” from 1925. It was finally published in Norwegian in 2023 and was Knut’s contribution to the Classics broadcast in Åpen bok. I went through the publishers’ spring lists and found two promising candidates. Everyone I know who has read “Koke bjørn” by Mikael Niemi is dismayed that I have not yet read that book. Now the Swede is current with a new novel from Tornedalen, “Stein i silke”, which is a family chronicle from 1920–2017. I had also heard a lot of good things about “In memoriam”, an American debut novel about two English boarding school boys who fall in love with each other. Then comes The Great War, and both enlist in the trenches. Love and war, there you have two eternal themes. Photo: Oktober forlag/Gyldendal We were out of wood when the blast came, and the apartment became freezing cold. I crawled under woolen blankets and duvets and alternated between reading Swedish labor history and British war history. Knut’s tip worked. Both novels are so good that I was energized and excited for the book spring 2024. “Stein i silke” and “In memoriam” will be published in Norwegian during January and can be pre-ordered in bookshops and libraries, unless you want to wait and hear what news’s critics say mean! Start shot for the Novel Prize The time for the Listeners’ novel prize has now been set. The broadcasts start with author interviews on Friday 2 February and run every Friday until the finale on 1 March. Put it in your calendar right now! I think it’s cool that three rather nondescript magazines have been nominated this year: Debutante Signe Holm, Dordi Strøm, and the much talked about young debutante Oliver Lovrenski. Dordi Strøm’s slim novel “Odel” was one of the big surprises for me last year. The book offered some mysterious and magical things that I’m not sure how to interpret. Among other things, there is a landscape painting on the wall in the house, where the motif changes on different days! I was totally hooked on the mysterious painting. Perhaps the fascination with moving images arose when I saw the super scary painting in “The Dahl Brothers and the Spectral Stones”, for those of you who remember 1980s children’s TV. Both Cille Biermann and I experienced Dordi Strøm as an original author’s voice. (Dordi’s nice cardigan is an heirloom and the pattern is called Nordkapp, for those interested in knitting). Photo: Karin Bye Stensø / news When Dordi Strøm was on news this week to be interviewed for the Novel Prize, I threw myself at her to ask about the painting. I won’t reveal any details, but “The Witches” by Roald Dahl contributed some of the inspiration, said the author, who also works as a set designer. I am looking forward to hearing the jury discuss the book and shed light on several mysterious events. Rumor has it that this year’s listening jury offers both a priest, a midwife and a financier. It bodes well for the breadth of the discussion. Now I hope to have infected you with a desire to read in the new year. Stay warm and read a good book, dear reader! Siss Comment What about you, are you afraid we are losing the ability to read thoroughly in the digital age? Hello! Welcome to dialogue at news. Since you are logged in to other news services, you do not have to log in again here, but we need your consent to our terms of use for online dialogue
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Bokbrevet #27 Reading is unnatural for the brain – news Culture and entertainment
