Wednesday, August 5, 2020 – Reading

I have seen several signs stating “A Reader Lives Here,” a promotion from the local library. But, reading has always been important to me. I have been in many different book clubs and writers’ groups where the power of the written word is celebrated. I just finished “A Single Thread” by Tracy Chevalier, the latest selection for the Addison Book Club. It is a timeless story of friendship, love and a woman crafting her own life in the town of Winchester, England. My sister Julie is a librarian and a fast reader.

Whether or not children can read — and read well — can make a significant difference in their lives. When I lived in East Texas, I once tutored a 20-year-old man who had never learned to read, under the auspices of the local literacy council. He was very adept at mechanical things, working on cars and even fixing my lawnmower. I realized he had no trouble ordering parts because the parts catalogs had drawings or photos of the part and a part number — no reading. I managed to pique his interest in reading when I told him he could bring his copies of Playboy magazine, as long as all he did was read the articles to me out loud.

Mailbox of house on my walking route

According to Wikipedia, the history of reading dates back to the invention of writing during the 4th millennium B.C. Although reading print text is now an important way for the general population to access information, this has not always been the case. With some exceptions, only a small percentage of the population in many countries was considered literate before the Industrial Revolution began in 1760. Some of the pre-modern societies with generally high literacy rates included classical Athens and the Islamic Caliphate.

Michel de Certeau

Scholars assume that reading aloud was the more common practice in antiquity, and that reading silently was unusual. In his “Confessions,” Saint Augustine remarks on Saint Ambrose's unusual habit of reading silently in the 4th century A.D.

During the Age of Enlightenment, elite individuals promoted passive reading, rather than creative interpretation. Reading has no concrete laws but allows readers escape to produce their own products introspectively, promoting deep exploration of texts during interpretation. Some thinkers of that era believed that construction or the creation of writing and producing a product was a sign of initiative and active participation in society — and viewed consumption or reading as simply taking in what constructors made. Also during this era, writing was considered superior to reading in society. They considered readers of that time passive citizens, because they did not produce a product. Michel de Certeau argued that the elites of the Age of Enlightenment were responsible for this general belief. He believed that reading required venturing into an author's land but taking away what the reader wanted specifically. This view held that writing was a superior art to reading within the hierarchical constraints of the era.

In 18th-century Europe, the then new practice of reading alone in bed was — for a time — considered dangerous and immoral. As reading became less a communal, oral practice and more a private, silent one — and as sleeping increasingly moved from communal sleeping areas to individual bedrooms, some raised concern that reading in bed presented various dangers, such as fires caused by bedside candles. Some modern critics, however, speculate that these concerns were based on the fear that readers — especially women — could escape familial and communal obligations and transgress moral boundaries through the private fantasy worlds in books.

Reading is the complex cognitive process of decoding symbols to derive meaning. It is a form of language processing. Language processing refers to the way humans use words to communicate ideas and feelings, and how such communications are processed and understood. Language processing is considered to be a uniquely human ability that is not produced with the same grammatical understanding or systematicity in even human's closest primate relatives.

Success in this process is measured as reading comprehension. Reading is a means for language acquisition, communication and sharing information and ideas. The symbols are typically visual — written or printed — but may be tactile like Braille. Like all languages, it is a complex interaction between text and reader, shaped by prior knowledge, experiences, attitude and the language community — which is culturally and socially situated. Readers use a variety of reading strategies to decode — to translate symbols into sounds or visual representations of speech — and comprehend. Readers may use context clues to identify the meaning of unknown words. Readers integrate the words they have read into their existing framework of knowledge or schema.

Other types of reading are not speech-based writing systems, such as music notation or pictograms. The common link is the interpretation of symbols to extract the meaning from the visual notations or tactile signals (as in the case of Braille).

Success in this process is measured as reading comprehension. Reading is a means for language acquisition, communication and sharing information and ideas. The symbols are typically visual —written or printed — but may be tactile like Braille. Like all languages, it is a complex interaction between text and reader, shaped by prior knowledge, experiences, attitude and the language community — which is culturally and socially situated. Readers use a variety of reading strategies to decode — to translate symbols into sounds or visual representations of speech — and comprehend. Readers may use context clues to identify the meaning of unknown words. Readers integrate the words they have read into their existing framework of knowledge or schema.

Other types of reading are not speech-based writing systems, such as music notation or pictograms. The common link is the interpretation of symbols to extract the meaning from the visual notations or tactile signals — as in the case of Braille.

Initially most comprehension teaching was based on imparting selected techniques for each genre that when taken together would allow students to be strategic readers. However, from 1930s testing various methods never seemed to win support in empirical research. One such strategy for improving reading comprehension is the technique called SQ3R introduced by Francis Pleasant Robinson in his 1946 book “Effective Study.”

Between 1969 and 2000, many "strategies" were devised for teaching students to employ self-guided methods for improving reading comprehension. In 1969 Anthony V. Manzo designed and found empirical support for the Re Quest or Reciprocal Questioning Procedure in traditional teacher-centered approach due to its sharing of "cognitive secrets." It was the first method to convert fundamental theory such as social learning into teaching methods through the use of cognitive modeling between teachers and students.

Since the turn of the 20th century, comprehension lessons usually consist of students answering teacher's questions or writing responses to questions of their own, or from prompts of the teacher. This detached whole group version only helped students individually to respond to portions of the text — content area reading and improve their writing skills. In the last quarter of the 20th century, evidence accumulated that academic reading test methods were more successful in assessing rather than imparting comprehension or giving a realistic insight. Instead of using the prior response registering method, research studies have concluded that an effective way to teach comprehension is to teach novice readers a bank of "practical reading strategies" or tools to interpret and analyze various categories and styles of text.

Eye tracking

A requirement for reading is a good contrast between letters and background — depending on colors of letters and background, any pattern or image in the background and lighting — and a suitable font size. In the case of a computer screen, it is important to see an entire line of text without scrolling.

The field of visual word recognition studies how people read individual words. A key technique in studying how individuals read text is eye tracking. It has revealed that reading is performed as a series of eye fixations with saccades or quick, simultaneous movement of both eyes between two or more phases of fixation in the same direction between them. Humans also do not appear to fixate on every word in a text, but instead pause on some words mentally while their eyes are moving. This is possible because human languages show certain linguistic regularities.

The process of recording information to read later is writing. In the case of computer and microfiche storage there is the separate step of displaying the written text. For humans, reading is usually faster and easier than writing.

Reading is typically an individual activity, though on occasion a person reads out loud for other listeners. Reading aloud for one's own use, for better comprehension, is a form of intrapersonal communication: in the early 1970s has been proposed the dual-route hypothesis to reading aloud, accordingly to which there were two separate mental mechanisms — or cognitive routes — that are involved in this case, with output of both mechanisms contributing to the pronunciation of a written stimulus.

Reading to young children is recommended by educators and researchers. It helps to stimulate imagination, increase knowledge of the world and encourage a love of reading; and it builds skills in language, expression, vocabulary, comprehension of text and spoken language sounds — phonemic awareness. It also is a good introduction to guided reading which can be done at home as well as at school.

Many studies show that increasing reading speed improves comprehension. Reading speed requires a long time to reach adult levels. The table above shows how reading rate varies with age, regardless of the period (1965 to 2005) and the language (English, French, German). The Taylor values probably are higher, for disregarding students who failed the comprehension test. The reading test by the French psychologist Pierre Lefavrais — "L'alouette", published in 1967 — tested reading aloud, with a penalty for errors, and could, therefore, not be a rate greater than 150 wpm. According to Carver in 1990, children's reading speed increases throughout the school years. On average, from grade two to college, reading rate increases 14 standard-length words per minute each year — where one standard-length word is defined as six characters in text, including punctuation and spaces.

Rates of reading include reading for memorization (fewer than 100 words per minute), reading for learning (100–200 wpm), reading for comprehension (200–400 wpm) and skimming (400–700 wpm). Reading for comprehension is the essence of the daily reading of most people. Skimming is for superficially processing large quantities of text at a low level of comprehension (below 50%).

Advice for choosing the appropriate reading-rate includes reading flexibly, slowing when concepts are closely presented and when the material is new, and increasing when the material is familiar and of thin concept. Speed reading courses and books often encourage the reader to continually accelerate; comprehension tests lead the reader to believe his or her comprehension is continually improving; yet, competence-in-reading requires knowing that skimming is dangerous, as a default habit.

Scientific studies have demonstrated that reading — defined here as capturing and decoding all the words on every page — faster than 900 wpm is not feasible given the limits set by the anatomy of the eye.

Truman Capote as a child

Learning to read in a second language, especially in adulthood, may be a different process than learning to read a native language in childhood. There are cases of very young children learning to read without having been taught. Such was the case with Truman Capote who reportedly taught himself to read and write at the age of five. There are also accounts of people who taught themselves to read by comparing street signs or Biblical passages to speech. The novelist Nicholas Delbanco taught himself to read at age six during a transatlantic crossing by studying a book about boats.

Brain activity in young and older children can be used to predict future reading skill. Cross model mapping between the orthographic and phonologic areas in the brain are critical in reading. Thus, the amount of activation in the left dorsal inferior frontal gyrus while performing reading tasks can be used to predict later reading ability and advancement. Young children with higher phonological word characteristic processing have significantly better reading skills later on than older children who focus on whole-word orthographic representation.

Of course, adults’ and children’s reading has increased during the pandemic. According to Aria Bendix’s May 18, 2020 article “13 books Bill Gates recommends reading this summer to get you through the pandemic” in Business Insider, Gates's summer reading list for 2020 offers both distractions and important lessons for coping with crisis.

In addition to his typical five summer book recommendations, the Microsoft founder recommended eight additional titles this year — including a few comic books.

The Choice by Dr. Edith Ava Edgar

Dr. Eger was sent to Auschwitz with her family at age 16. Her book details her battle with survivor's guilt — and learning to forgive herself — after her parents were killed during the war.

Bill Gates defines the book as "partly a memoir and partly a guide to processing trauma. I think many people will find comfort right now from her suggestions on how to handle difficult situations."

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

When Gates started reading "Cloud Atlas" last year, he wrote that it was "amazingly clever but a bit hard to follow." Now that he's done, he describes it as "the kind of novel you'll think and talk about for a long time after you finish it."

The book begins in New Zealand's Chatham Isles in 1850, flashes forward to Belgium in 1931, then sharply transitions to the West Coast in the 1970s — all before jumping back to the place where it started. Gates's favorite story in the book is about a young American doctor in the South Pacific in the mid-1800s.

The novel was first published in 2004, then adapted into a movie starring Tom Hanks in 2012.

The Ride of a Lifetime by Robert Iger

Igor's memoir gives an inside look at his experience as CEO of The Walt Disney Co. from 2005 to 2020.

He shares his four leadership principles — optimism, courage, decisiveness, and fairness — and his strategy for turning Disney into the largest media company in the world. He also offers anecdotes about his friendship with Steve Jobs and his “Star Wars” obsession.

According to Gates, it's "one of the best business books I've read in several years."

The Great Influenza by John Barry

The current pandemic bears many striking similarities to the 1918 flu — the subject of John Barry's 2004 nonfiction book.

"If you're looking for a historical comparison, the 1918 influenza pandemic is as close as you're going to get," Gates wrote on his blog.

“The Great Influenza” is a good reminder that we're still dealing with many of the same challenges."

Barry's book also offers lessons on how to respond to viral outbreaks.

"Those in authority must retain the public's trust," he wrote. "The way to do that is to distort nothing, to put the best face on nothing, to try to manipulate no one."

Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer

Foer won the U.S. Memory Championship, a tournament that asks participants to memorize numbers, names, faces and more. His book details his experience working with "mental athletes," who helped train his mind to quickly recall facts.

"If you're looking to work on a new skill, you could do worse than learning to memorize things," Gates wrote in his blog.

The Martian by Andy Weir

The 2011 science fiction novel was turned into a film in 2015. Gates said there's a connection between the movie and the current pandemic.

"Matt Damon — playing a botanist who's been stranded on Mars — sets aside his fear and says, 'I'm going to science the sh-t out of this,'" Gates wrote. "We're doing the same thing with the novel coronavirus."

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

"A Gentleman in Moscow" is fiction, but it draws much of its inspiration from historical events. The book tells the story of a Russian count who is sentenced to house arrest in Moscow's Metropol Hotel following the Bolshevik Revolution.

The book came out in 2016, but Gates got around to reading it last year, after his brother-in-law sent him a copy. Gates said he and his wife, Melinda, pored over the title at the same time.

He added that he teared up at one of the plot lines while he was a few chapters ahead of Melinda, tipping her off that something bad was about to happen.

The Rosie Trilogy by Graeme Simsion

Gates is longtime fan of Simsion's work. The trilogy follows the life of Don Tillman, a genetics professor with Asperger's syndrome.

Gates sent the first book, "The Rosie Project," to about 50 friends. The second book, "The Rosie Effect," taught the billionaire a lesson about relationships. Gates recommended the third and final installment, "The Rosie Result," last year.

"In the back of the mind, you're thinking about the relationships you have," Gates said in a conversation with Simsion, which he documented on Gates Notes. "You get to laugh, but you also get to think, 'Hey, some people are good at this stuff naturally. And some people are good at this stuff because they put the energy in.'"

The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui

Gates said he usually doesn't read comics or graphic novels, but he's a fan of Bui's illustrated memoir, which tells of her family's escape from war-torn Vietnam in the 1970s.

"It's a deeply personal book that explores what it means to be a parent and a refugee," Gates wrote. The visuals, he added, are "striking."

Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh

"You will rip through it in three hours, tops," Gates wrote of the book. "But you'll wish it went on longer, because it's funny and smart as hell. I must have read Melinda a dozen hilarious passages out loud."

The novel is part comic, part blog-style essays that draw from author's life in rural Idaho and struggles as an adult. Throughout the book, Brosh is depicted as a stick figure in a pink dress.

"It takes a few hours trying to get it right," she told Mother Jones of her sketches. "I don't have any reference material for this creature that I've made to represent myself, aside from what's in my head."

What If? by Randall Munroe

Monroe, a former NASA engineer, uses stick figure drawings to discuss major topics like science, technology and language. His book "What If?" answers absurd questions — like how long humanity would last in a robot apocalypse — and slightly realistic ones, like how fast you could reasonably drive over a speed bump and still live.

Gates also recommended Monroe's webcomic-turned-book, "XKCD: Volume 0." In the future, he wrote, he plans to tackle the author's latest book, "How To: Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems."

The Headspace Guide to Meditation and Mindfulness by Andy Puddicombe

Puddicombe is an ordained Buddhist monk who went on to cofound Headspace, a popular meditation app featuring guided practices, animations, articles and videos.

Gates refers to Puddicombe as "the person who turned me from skeptic to believer." He even asked Puddicombe to spend a day and a half walking his family through meditation exercises.

"I'm not sure how much meditation would have helped me concentrate in my early Microsoft days," Gates wrote. "But now that I'm married, have three children and have a broader set of professional and personal interests, it's a great tool for improving my focus."

The billionaire now meditates up to three times a week.

Good Economies for Hard Times by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo

Gates calls Banerjee and Duflo "two of the smartest economists working today." They won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2019.

Their book offers solutions to critical economic questions, like whether international trade works for everyone or immigrants from poorer countries take jobs away from low-income native workers.

According to Gates, the authors are "very good at making economics accessible to the average person."