Thursday, September 8, 2011

The Mind's Eye by Oliver Sacks


This book continues the series of interesting neurological case studies. This time the emphasis is on visual perception and sight.
The book describes some interesting cases, among others a musician who lost her ability to read sheet music, but was ably play from memory, and a man after a stroke lost his ability to read written text, but was still able to write (without being able to read his own writing!). The last part of the book describes Sacks’ own experiences when he lost his sight from his better eye.
The first half wasn’t as good as his earlier books. The writing felt somewhat more complex but at the same too “loose” and it was not as entertaining as the earlier books. The latter half was better and very personal. There was one pretty bad irritant in this book: there were a great number of footnotes, on some pages there was more text on footnotes than in the body text. And many of the footnotes were very redundant and little would have been lost if they were omitted.

As a whole a pretty interesting book, but probably worst book by Sacks I have read.
260 pp.

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