Do you remember when the last time you read and thought deeply and focally was? Reading the book “Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World” can be used as a test of our “concentration” and “deep reading ability”.

Combining rigorous science, literary sensibility, and shared experience, this book illustrates an intriguing road map, pointing out a cautionary but hopeful way out for how technology affects the brain and the intelligence that matters most to us, and how this will shape our future.

Will paper die? Is the era of digital reading coming? What are the advantages and disadvantages of digital reading and paper reading? The author, Maryanne Wolf, a cognitive neuroscientist who specialises in children’s reading and educational development, tells that reading is not born or gifted, but an unnatural cultural invention that has existed for less than 6,000 years only. She further emphasizes that paper books can facilitate “deep reading” which is the power of image association and the origin of creativity.

Now that the digital age has come. Socrates worried that the invention of books would lead to humans no longer thinking; two thousand years later, the invention of digital media brought this concern to a new peak. Wolf does an amazing job describing what happens in the brain when reading a book and how this process changes when we read from digital sources. She leads readers to rethink how the traditional “literate brain” and its various important cognitive functions including attention, memory, and knowledge organisation, are being challenged by the digital reading environment.

Nevertheless, Wolf sets out useful guidelines, making it clear that she is not against technology. On the contrary, she acknowledges that books and screens will continue to co-exist. We must learn to be bi-literate as she claims it.