Friday 4 December 2020

100 Books to Read Poster - No 23



So, this one was The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks. 

This is a well known account by a world famous neurologist about some of the patients he encountered and as well as giving a description of their various conditions he uses their cases as the basis for brief meditations on the nature of what it is to be human, whether there is such a thing as a soul, and how the rest of society should treat those who suffer from what he describes as neurological 'deficits and excess'. 

It's quite an old book now (1970s) in terms of science writing and it shows. It was written as a popular science book but compared to say  Ben Goldacre's Bad Science, which was about the fourth book I read from the poster, it's a lot less accessible. A lot of technical vocabulary, a lot of references to doctors who went before, without a precis of their work, which would have been helpful, and a lot of assumed knowledge which the lay person would not have. 

Interesting and I'm glad I have read it just because it is so famous, but in places it was just unfathomable for me, so I have to rate it as a miss. I didn't get an awful lot out of it, but to change a common phrase slightly, 'It's not the book, it's me'. 





 

1 comment:

  1. I’ve had this forever, but not read it. I feel less guilty about that now 😁

    ReplyDelete