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Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain | 
 enlarge | Author: Oliver Sacks
Publisher: Picador
Category: Book
List Price: £8.99
Buy New: £3.75
You Save: £5.24 (58%)
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Rating:  3 reviews
Sales Rank: 1272
Media: Paperback
Pages: 425
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 7.7 x 5.1 x 1.2
ISBN: 0330418386
EAN: 9780330418386
ASIN: 0330418386
Publication Date: October 3, 2008
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 Musicophilia (2008) by Oliver Sacks January 6, 2009
Whigwood (Durham, UK)
It has taken me nearly six weeks to wade through only the first third of this marathon of almost 400 pages. And the reason? I can only take Sacks' writing style, which is almost Victorian in nature, in small doses. Each time I pick up the book again, I wonder if the marker has been misplaced, since similar anecdotal stories seem to make up the entire literary content. It is a bit like reading later Aldous Huxley; a rambling series of musings, arbitrarily subdivided by chapter headings. In describing the interactions between music and "the brain", Sacks does not provide anything which is not already known, and often experienced, by many people and I am left wondering what is the point of this book. It could certainly have been written in half its current length. It is of note that the list of individual acknowledgements at the back of the book amount to almost 250 names, which is almost a work in itself. I might add that I found this list almost as interesting as the rest of the book! br /I will persevere with this tome for a couple more weeks, but I doubt if I will ever finish it. br /
Interesting, yet disappointing in many ways January 2, 2009
Lazy Lee
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Oliver Sacks tells wonderful stories about how patients with severe brain dysfunctions manage to recover their faculties through new treatments of various kinds, and his previous books, notably Awakenings and The Man who Mistake His Wife for a Hat made Sacks famous for their revalatory and interesting nature. br / br /This one, unfortunately, only goes part way to exploring the unusual appreciation that humans have for music, and goes too far in documenting cases of patients from the 1800s who lost all their faculties due to some sort of brain trauma, yet were able to retain their singing, instrument playing or musical appreciation capabilities. br / br /Interesting topics such as synesthesia and perfect pitch are explored, but the book focuses almost entirely on the effect of either clasical music or basic traditional songs on people, and it does so by rendering citation after citation - many of them Sacks' own publications - and also has many pages where the footnotes compete for dominance with the main text. br / br /Where is the impact of modern popular music on people? There is a brief reference to what Sacks calls "brainworms" (otherwise known as jingles), that can infuriate one for days and nights, but scant commentary on what - aside from well tested marketing campaigns - makes certain music so appealing to people. br / br /Towards the end of the book, I tired of the countless permutations of syndromes in which, guess what, musicality survives where all other interaction fails, but by then I wasn't being told anything new or interesting. br / br /A shame, since an up to date volume on this subject, based on a large body of new research, would be most interesting.
 Worth a read November 10, 2008
Fredward Beasley (Galway, Ireland)
13 out of 15 found this review helpful
This is a pretty good book, of interest to anyone who feels themselves somewhat musicophiliac and wants to know more about how music has the effect it does. Musicophilia isn't particularly focused and doesn't really go too deep into how music works on the brain, it's mostly just a string of case studies of people and conditions involving strange and intense relationships with music. It's well-written and accessible, and worth a read, though it doesn't attempt to give any major insights into why music is so important to people in general. br / br /"Musicophilia" is preferable to "This is your Brain on Music" by Daniel Levitin, which was released around the same time and deals with somewhat similar themes, though Levitin's book includes much more technical info on music and neurology. This info is presented in a style that is dry, unengaging and lacking in clarity. Sacks on the other hand is an effortlessly good writer. For that reason, this book is worth reading, though, I repeat, it's basically a string of case studies
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