Why Books Don't Work is making me mad! It suffers from two problematic assumptions. One, in discussing what it means to understand the author uses the word ABSORB when discussing the comprehension process, but a far better term is CONSTRUCT understanding. When I write the words, "the cat crossed the street", then the color and size and appearance of the cat, the time of day, the type of street (cities? suburbs?), the relative safety or danger of the crossing - all these you as the reader CONSTRUCT to make your own understanding. Absorb is what our body does with foods, not what our mind does as we read. Second, the author conflates understanding with recall. Mark (or the AI author) references the amazing book by Ocean Vuong titled, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous. I also really liked that book - but could I recall it? Maybe I could recall how it made me feel. Did I "understand" it? Probably not in the way the author intended, but that is why reading is a transaction. Did I learn from it? Yes, I learned a ton about the human condition through the brilliant writing. A book is just a bunch of white pages with black letters until we read it and construct our own understandings meaningful to us. This author is asking books to be something they are not. Grrrr.
Why Books Don't Work is making me mad! It suffers from two problematic assumptions. One, in discussing what it means to understand the author uses the word ABSORB when discussing the comprehension process, but a far better term is CONSTRUCT understanding. When I write the words, "the cat crossed the street", then the color and size and appearance of the cat, the time of day, the type of street (cities? suburbs?), the relative safety or danger of the crossing - all these you as the reader CONSTRUCT to make your own understanding. Absorb is what our body does with foods, not what our mind does as we read. Second, the author conflates understanding with recall. Mark (or the AI author) references the amazing book by Ocean Vuong titled, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous. I also really liked that book - but could I recall it? Maybe I could recall how it made me feel. Did I "understand" it? Probably not in the way the author intended, but that is why reading is a transaction. Did I learn from it? Yes, I learned a ton about the human condition through the brilliant writing. A book is just a bunch of white pages with black letters until we read it and construct our own understandings meaningful to us. This author is asking books to be something they are not. Grrrr.
Great edition this week. I liked the idea of using AI. I still need to reread and figure out which one or two.