Braddy (Finally) Reads Musicophilia

Well, that took a while.

About once a year or so, I decide I should read something non-fiction, especially now that I'm no longer in school. The PROBLEM with non-fiction, especially something specialized like Oliver Sacks's Musicophilia, is that it takes me a long frickin' time to read.

I'm at an additional disadvantage with Sacks's writing. He's a brilliant man and a great writer, but he's primarily a neurologist. He draws from a vocabulary I'm not entirely familiar with, so reading his books takes a lot of concentration (and a lot of time, since I don't have all that much concentration).

Now, I don't know how accurate Mr. Sacks's science is. That said, Musicophilia was well worth the read. The different cases Sacks describes -of individuals who are unable to feel emotion from music, of amnesiacs who only seem to remember themselves when they sing, or of individuals who experience seizures upon hearing certain tunes - I found genuinely fascinating.

I've sometimes wondered why we need to read fantasy stories, or even fiction in general, when so much of what goes on within certain areas of the "real world" appears so fantastic to the uninitiated. I guess, as a species, we're drawn to invention. The more I learn about the "real world" by studying it through different lenses (say by looking at music from the point of view of a neurologist), the more my own imagination gets fired up. A lot of the ideas I encountered in Musicophilia have made their way into the fiction I'm writing/planning to write.

I guess that's why you read - keeps your mind agile.