Part art book, part poetry, part lecture on literary technique.

Neat little book. I must admit I had the wrong idea about what this book *was* when I got my hands on it (I was not familiar with Mendelsund's work) and was overjoyed when I saw the size of it and actually got to hold it in my hands. After examining the flip side of the spine (the side the book opens up to) and an exploratory, rapid fire flip through the pages, I realized that this probably would NOT be an exploration of what synapses in your brain fire off to create the sensation of reading, or what your brain does when its imagining.

Not really a let down, the book never pretends to be such a thing beyond a semi-vague title.

There's some interesting thought exercises about the way the mind works nonlinearly to create sights, sounds and characters as we read. As a writer, there's more than a few take-aways I'll consider when I sit down to create vivid characters as a result of this book.

I didn't find anything that fundamentally changed the way I will read or analyze books in the future. Many of the books revelations can be boiled to "Huh. I guess that IS what I do when I read. Never thought of that." That is to say, these aren't especially mind melting concepts, just putting ideas in a new frame, an idea that Mendelsund will loop back to by the end and sort of justify the book's own existence.

Very stylish and a pleasure to look at. Conversation starter. It's fun to flip through a 400 page book in a day.