callief

So there was a Nova special not too long ago that featured Oliver Sacks rather prominently and ran through some quick highlights of the research he's done regarding music and the brain. The program was interesting enough for me to make a note to look him up and 448 pages later, here's what I can say. I've no idea who the audience for this book is. There were certainly parts where I had neither the musical nor medical vocabulary necessary to understand what exactly was being related or its importance. Most of the 'essays' are simply descriptions of case studies or personal experiences and though some of the core topics are fascinating (ear worms, musical hallucination, amusia) they weren't presented in a way that I found particularly accessible. Since there's not much of a central structure here other than the rather broad "music and the brain," nothing really moved the book forward for me. I took in a remarkable amount of information regarding neurology, music and perception but none of it hung together in any substantive way. It's not that it wasn't (in parts) engaging and in fact, several chapters challenged some preconceived notions I had about how we experience the world. But it was a slog and I barely made it. (3/5)

2020-09-11 16:48