Disappointing - no insightsJanuary 22, 2010 Oron Zachar 2 out of 6 found this review helpful
The book is just a collection of short documented field observations. The author does not provide any significant or thought provoking insights stemming from his experience. No questions are asked and hence no major answers are provided to anything. It is just psychology as curiosity and oddities of the human species. The author may be a compassionate therapist but not a deep thinking intellectual.
Musicophilia (paperback, 2008 expanded edition)January 18, 2010 Dr. Greg(CA, USA) 2 out of 2 found this review helpful
If you've enjoyed the PBS DVD "Musical Minds," you'll enjoy even more an extension and development of those stories in Sacks' expanded version of the hardback MUSICOPHILIA. This text contains more than 29 stories regarding various psychological and musical disorders. Sacks' style of writing is both precise and descriptive, and he has the power of bringing to life, through emotional discourse, each subject he discusses analytically. You cannot help but come away from the book knowing more about the tremendous healing and regenerative power of music in the lives of people challenged by physical and emotional disabilities. Heady and hearty reading!
music-o-pathologyJanuary 4, 2010 R. Crolene(Encinitas, CA) 0 out of 3 found this review helpful
Musicophilia suggests a scientific revelation of the benefits of loving music--neurogenesis, neural synchrony, increased intelligence, joy and happiness--but what we get is a dry, monotone recitation of one pathology after another involving music, not musical at all.
Interesting heady and thickJanuary 1, 2010 John Hauer(Hawaii) 1 out of 2 found this review helpful
This is a big book. I would not expect to read and finish it as my only book at the time. It's like having two dinners on Thanksgiving. Music itself lives in a part of the mind that is all its own. Music has flavor and color. This book looks at all that in terms of current research mixed with an anecdotal approach. Reading this book is like taking a college course in meta-physics - the physics of vibrations and pressure. It is heavy. I expect to need to re-read it to understand the finer points. If you like chewy thoughts and you want to move your music study into the other (more representational and word centered) parts of your mind -- go for it.
Musicophilia tickled my brainDecember 11, 2009 Edward J. Schmahl(Boulder, CO) 2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This book is good for music lovers, and even those, thankfully few, music-haters among us. While Oliver Sacks doesn't tell us why music is so universally loved by the human species, he does tell the myriad ways in which the human brain switches on or switches off the love.
From his many case studies over the decades, as well as his own personal experiences, the reader learns how people internalize music, recalling it in diverse ways. Some, like Sacks himself, can replay complete concertos in their heads, and many people dream music, and some even compose music completely internally. The rest of us play music on iPods, go to concerts, hum tunes to ourselves, and make music of various sorts. At the end of the book, having learned what Sacks means by "Musicophilia", I was left bewildered at how music has taken over our lives.
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