Really interesting book that I'll go back to. The artwork is amazing, but what would you expect from one of the best in the game. It gave me a better appreciation for graphic designers who create cover art, and how much thought goes into bringing a book to life. I know I've been guilty repeatedly of doing that thing that we were always taught not to do; judge a book by its cover. Fascinating book to think about and discuss. Feels like one where the rating will go up with subsequent readings. Hard to soak it all up in the first go. Mendelsun takes us, the readers, on a journey through how we experience reading. He starts with a couple of classic characters: Lily Briscoe, from Woolf's novel To the Lighthouse, and Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. He states that we experience reading as a sequence of pictures in our minds, and explores how our absorption in reading deludes us into thinking we have an accurate picture of what people and places look like. Lily paints a picture that we imagine, but never actually see; its description is only alluded to by another character. Mendelsund challenges us to describe Anna Karenina, but notes that there is very little description of her beyond a few key phrases that mention her curly hair, her slender hands. We don't know (or care) what color her eyes are, or how her nose is shaped, or how tall she is, but we fill in the details as we go along.In the end, we may think we have clear pictures of our favorite characters and what they experience, but we do not. Our images are blurred.The phenomenology of reading? I'm sold.
What do You think about What We See When We Read (2014)?
I give it two for the text and one more for design.There was nothing new here for me.
—teagan911
Brilliantly quirky, beautifully illustrated. A must for any reading teacher.
—midified
