The Song Behind Today’s Review Title

Today’s title comes from the infectious pop tune that was the second most played song on the radio in the US in 2006 - Unwritten. It is the first track on the debut album of the same name from British singer Natasha Bedington. The song’s lyrics focus on the wide-open potential of the future, comparing the rest of your life to a book yet to be written. The song has gone on to become a staple at graduation parties.

Two music videos were prepared for the song. One played in the UK and had a bookish theme. You can see that version here. The version that played in North America focused more on the wide-open potential of life and can be seen here on YouTube.

I love to read, and reading books in particular has been a favorite pastime since I was a young boy.

We tend to think that it’s a new phenomenon that people walking the sidewalks staring into their phones are in danger of stepping off the curb into oncoming traffic. But it’s not that new - I have a distinct memory, as a child, of my older sister warning me against bumping into things as I wandered from one room of the house to the next reading from an open book in my hands.

Perhaps that’s not something to brag about. But it is something to give you an idea of why I picked up today’s book.

In Joel Halldorf’s Reading Matters he traces the story of reading and writing from earliest times right up to the present. He takes us from clay tablets to scrolls, from bound, handwritten manuscripts to bound books of hand-pressed pages, and from there to mass produced books, newspapers and magazines and on to the internet and social media. He traces writing materials from clay to papyrus, to calfskin, to paper, and then to the digital screen.

Halldorf is Swedish, and he focuses on the European history of writing and reading. He is also a Professor in Church History, so it’s not surprising that he spends a good deal of time exploring writing by medieval Christian monks and the beautiful manuscripts they produced.

His insights into reading in the Digital Age are interesting too - they caused me to contemplate changes to my own approach to reading.

Throughout the history he traces, Halldorf contrasts the concepts of deep reading and skimming. The former has become progressively less common and the latter more so as time has gone on and technologies have changed.

Medieval monks penned their manuscripts in something called “scriptio continua”, which means that the letters all immediately followed each other - with no spaces between words nor any punctuation. To read such a work was of course more challenging than a modern text, and the reader had to sit with those continuous letters and actively slow down to pull out the words and phrases.

This approach encouraged concentration and engagement with the text and encouraged readers to re-read to contemplate what they had read and ensure their understanding. This is deep reading. Books were scarce at the time, meaning few other written materials were lying around competing for the reader’s attention.

Today in the digital age, with hundreds of thousands of books published each year, and other written materials in abundance, writing is anything but scarce. Writing appears on many subjects, and readers consume written works for their practical relevance more than for edification. This makes skimming to get the relevant points out more common now.

Halldorf has produced a wide-ranging exploration of the history of reading and writing. Book lovers will enjoy this one!

RATING: Four Stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐

OVERALL COMMENTS: Halldorf traces the story of reading and writing from earliest times right up to the present. Wide ranging history and insights into reading in today’s Digital Age.

WHERE I GOT MY COPY: I received an advance reviewer’s copy of the ebook through NetGalley, and courtesy of the publisher NYU Press. The book will be available to the public in two weeks, starting on June 9, 2026.

CURRENT BOOKS & STUFF

WHAT’S NEXT

Next week I’ll be reviewing No Adult Left Behind by George Pillari. It’s an independently published book available only on Kindle, that’s meant to teach adults who haven’t a clue (like me) how to use AI tools. Here’s a bit of the description of the book from it’s Amazon page: