Author Topic: Rate the last book you read.  (Read 194365 times)

pixote

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Re: Rate the last book you read.
« Reply #1770 on: July 10, 2017, 12:27:35 AM »
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales  (Oliver Sacks, 1985)

In the preface to this collection of neurological case studies, Sacks writes, "The scientific and the romantic... come together at the intersection of fact and fable, the intersection which characterises... the lives of the patients here narrated." Reading that, I completely underestimated the equal weight he gives to the romantic and to fables. I thought I was reading non-fiction, but I'm not convinced that's the case. Sacks is too unreliable a narrator. He fancies himself equal parts "theorist and dramatist," and his failings at the latter undercut for me his efforts at the former.

This first becomes clear in the self-aggrandizing tone that seeps into his writing, especially in the portrayal of himself as a renaissance physician — the humble servant of medicine with an encyclopedic knowledge of all of Western literature and classical music, who spends his evenings playing chess and reading Horace in the original Latin. I'm exaggerating, of course, but I couldn't help but roll eyes every time he recounted how, mid-conversation with a patient, he thought of some random thing Dostoevsky or someone wrote. Each time, it struck me as an overly romantic view of himself, as if his mind was always working on multiple levels at once.

I was equally skeptical of Dr. Sacks' description of his patients. They're almost all "remarkable" in some way — not because of their rare neurological conditions, but for non-medical reasons. They're remarkable musicians or painters or writers; or they have a remarkable sense of humor; or they're remarkable courageous; or, like Sacks himself, remarkably humane. And they too will make literary references at the drop of a hat. "I feel like Zeno's arrow," says Mrs. S, knowing that the good doctor will know exactly what she means.

Perhaps the last straw, for me, was his description (in the chapter "The Possessed") of a street scene that "was so singular that it remains in my memory today as vivid as it was the day I saw it." He goes on to describe an older woman who was imitating, with remarkable precision, every passerby on the street:

Quote from: Oliver Sacks
I have seen countless mimes and mimics, clowns and antics, but nothing touched the horrible wonder I now beheld: this virtually instantaneous automatic and convulsive mirroring of every face and figure. ... Every mirroring was also a parody, a mocking, an exaggeration of salient gestures and expressions, but an exaggeration in itself no less convulsive than intentional—a consequence of the violent acceleration and of all her motions. Thus a slow smile, monstrously accelerated, would become a violent, milliseconds-long grimace; and ample gesture, accelerated, would become a farcical convulsive movement. ... In the course of a short city-block this frantic old woman frenetically caricatured the the features of forty or fifty passers-by, in a quick-fire sequence of kaleidoscopic imitations, each lasting a second or two, sometimes less, and the whole dizzying sequence scarcely more than two minutes.

I call bullshit. There's no way that someone could stumble upon a chaotic scene like this and perceive events to this level of detail, at intervals of milliseconds. And even if he could, it's just not convincing that he could accurately recognize the woman's rapid-fire, convulsive, expressions as caricatures of the other passers-by — forty or fifty in a two minute span. That's, what, three seconds per imitation? And the good doctor, arriving late to the scene, is able to get to the front of the crowd and see both the woman's face as well as the target of her imitation? Okay, Sherlock Holmes. I believe you.

Quote from: Oliver Sacks
Suddenly, desperately, the old woman turned aside, into an alley-way which led off the main street. And there, with all the appearances of a woman violently sick, she expelled, tremendously accelerated and abbreviated, all the gestures, the postures, the expressions, the demeanours, the entire behavioural repertoires, of the past forty of fifty people she had passed. She delivered one vast, pantomimic egurgitation, in which the engorged identities of the last fifty people who has possessed her were spewed out. And if the taking-in had lasted two minutes, the throwing out was a single exultation—fifty people in ten seconds, a fifth of a second or less for the time-foreshortened repertoire of each person.

Okay, now you've gone too far. Maybe this is what you think you saw, but, dammit, Bones, you're a man of science. At least have the awareness to admit that your description of this scene is at least seventy percent your interpretation, projection, and imagination applied to a living and breathing Rorschach test.

Despite Sacks' unreliability as a narrator, there are still plenty of interesting nuggets in these tales, which at their best are Twilight Zone episodes of the human mind. That's where most of the book's merits lie. It's not very well edited, however, with, among other issues, multiple instances of the identical phrasings appearing in consecutive paragraphs.

Grade: C

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BlueVoid

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Re: Rate the last book you read.
« Reply #1771 on: July 13, 2017, 09:30:27 PM »
For We Are Many (Bobiverse #2) More of the same. I'm hooked in the sci-fi schlock and will probably continue on. On a whole I think the writing is slightly better, but the plot is getting sliced up between too many overlapping story lines.

3.5/5
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BlueVoid

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Re: Rate the last book you read.
« Reply #1772 on: July 15, 2017, 02:53:06 PM »
Twelfth Night This was probably the most I've enjoyed a Shakespeare play. Perhaps his comedies hold up better than his dramas.. or maybe they just fit my taste better. In any case I thought it was a fun farce and was mostly easy to digest. I usually watch movie adaptations of the play after I read it, but in this case it doesn't seem like there are any that are well regarded. I'll just assume that 'She's the man' is the apex of it's adaptation.
4/5
« Last Edit: July 15, 2017, 10:16:28 PM by BlueVoid »
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oldkid

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Re: Rate the last book you read.
« Reply #1773 on: July 15, 2017, 09:32:23 PM »
I once saw a theatre adaptation of 12th Night in sign language.  It was great.
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BlueVoid

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Re: Rate the last book you read.
« Reply #1774 on: July 25, 2017, 12:23:51 AM »
Don't Know Much About Geography - I really enjoyed most of this book and covered the basics of geography-- which is what I was looking for. Picked up a lot of useful trivia and enjoyed learning about different geography terms, history and oddities. These types of books can't help but dive into things like politics, religion and space, which are mostly contained towards the end, but honestly I could have done without.

3/5
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Sandy

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Re: Rate the last book you read.
« Reply #1775 on: July 26, 2017, 11:09:33 PM »


                                1
Well this happened.



Footnote 1:

hap·pen
ˈhapən/
verb
    1. take place; occur.
    2. be experienced by (someone); befall.

The reading of a story takes place and as this occurs, I find myself experiencing tedium. Not what I wished for, nor anticipated, but I cannot deny the slog-like state which befalls me. I stick with the book, because it's obviously an intelligent piece of work and the further I go, the further I'm invested in it, so finishing becomes a type of exercise in -- me against the book and to see who can outlast the other (...I win!). I'm 3/4's of the way through before I wish to finish it, not just for the sake of finishing it, but to know what happens. It takes a whole lot of pages to capture my interest, yet it wouldn't take so long, if the author was interested in helping me care about the characters. She chooses another route instead; one of cleverness and attention to detail. For all her love of the subject matter, how is it Susanna Clarke makes magic appear so dull?
« Last Edit: July 26, 2017, 11:43:20 PM by Sandy »

oldkid

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Re: Rate the last book you read.
« Reply #1776 on: July 27, 2017, 01:41:08 AM »
Thank you so much.  I slogged through about 30 pages or so and I just couldn't get excited enough to read more.  So I returned it to the library and watched the mini-series, which I enjoyed, but felt a little guilty because I should have read the book.

Now I feel no guilt at all.  Happy day!
"It's not art unless it has the potential to be a disaster." Bansky

DarkeningHumour

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Re: Rate the last book you read.
« Reply #1777 on: July 27, 2017, 04:25:23 AM »
You're both jelly-up bananas-crazy. Granted, the beginning is a bit dull, but when it gets going it's bloody cracking reading and it certainly does not take three fourths of the book to get to that point. Actually, around that mark the book even gets better, what, with the stakes being raised tenfold and all.
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Sam the Cinema Snob

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Re: Rate the last book you read.
« Reply #1778 on: July 27, 2017, 07:34:52 AM »
I could get anyone finding this book dull, but I love the use of language and the idea of magic being a very sensible, academic endeavor instead of the typical power fantasy that usually comes with stories about magic.

Sandy

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Re: Rate the last book you read.
« Reply #1779 on: July 27, 2017, 06:39:26 PM »
Thank you so much.  I slogged through about 30 pages or so and I just couldn't get excited enough to read more.  So I returned it to the library and watched the mini-series, which I enjoyed, but felt a little guilty because I should have read the book.

Now I feel no guilt at all.  Happy day!

Ah, my well read friend! You make me feel better too! No guilt for me either. whew.

You're both jelly-up bananas-crazy. Granted, the beginning is a bit dull, but when it gets going it's bloody cracking reading and it certainly does not take three fourths of the book to get to that point. Actually, around that mark the book even gets better, what, with the stakes being raised tenfold and all.

I read this on your recommendation and I wanted you to know, if ever my enthusiasm waned, I tried to read it through your perspective and it would pick up again. It's just like pixote said about me, "I'm so happy you liked it!" I was very impressed with so much of the book and I'm glad I stuck with it.

I could get anyone finding this book dull, but I love the use of language and the idea of magic being a very sensible, academic endeavor instead of the typical power fantasy that usually comes with stories about magic.

I admire her choice. It didn't fully work for me, but the dedication the author had, is commendable.