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hflh 's review for:
The Reader's Brain: How Neuroscience Can Make You a Better Writer
by Yellowlees Douglas
This is not a book on the neuroscience of reading. It is poorly written, generic writing advice with a sprinkle of science.
Douglas uses research in neuroscience and psychology to explain why her writing advice works, but she incorporates the research so infrequently that it doesn’t stand out. And, you can get similar insights on reader habits from other writing books. What makes this book stand out is Douglas’s horrible writing style. Every paragraph, there’s only one or two sentences explaining the advice. The rest of the text is filled with quirky, obscure metaphors and references that are annoying at best and nonsensical at worst (see example below). She is also inconsistent in her explanations, either not explaining terms at all or simplifying them too much to be useful.
You may like this book if you have a good understanding of English but are new to writing advice. I do not recommend this book to professionals or people learning English.
Example of writing style:
Example of writing style:
Moreover, different types of restaurants require different categories of understanding. If you waltz into a Mickey D’s and expect to be waited on, you could wait until you’re past childbearing age before anyone strolls over to your table. But you’d also be confused if you walked unsuspectingly into an antipasti restaurant in Italy and waited for a menu to arrive. Antipasti restaurants avoid menus. Instead, diners or waiters pass platters around, and you help yourself to whatever you fancy, then own up to what you’ve eaten at the end of the meal. (Antipasti restaurants also have their distinct benefits. Occasionally, the waiter toting up your bill will give you a break by refusing to believe you’ve had six glasses of the house white and three desserts). To understand the meaning of what happens to us moment by moment in any situation, we have both to understand the entire context and be able to predict what’s coming next.