Reading a book is like seeing a movie. Word-images pass across our brain screen at a speed of 5 and more words per second and create mental images of things and events. We were too young – 4 to 8 years old – when we acquired this skill, and our memory of this seminal event has faded away. So please sit back for a few seconds, close your eyes and realise what an extraordinary ability reading is: recognising and endowing with meaning, effortlessly and within a fraction of a second, any single subset of 50,000 and more words that inhabit your word brain. This is not.
