This book is excellent! I like most books I review, but this one is definitely a starred review. It's the kind of book that takes root in your mind and finagles its way into your daydreams and conversations with unsuspecting friends. I was emailing a friend I hadn't seen in years about something, and somehow a paragraph about mammals' sleep patterns appeared. He was cool and worked some weird facts into his reply.
Diane Ackerman blends science, art and everything into this book in a beautiful and playful manner. She reminds you what a fun adventure thought is. Based on reading this book, I'd recommend anything by this author. She reminds me of my favorite professors-- I didn't care what they were teaching because their teaching was enough. I hated Greek, but Prof. Wooten made Lysius' court cases come alive and seem completely relevant and fascinating. She's a curious teacher-- what's not to like?
The book is well crafted from the macro level of organization to the micro of sentences. It's witty and wise. Even the Table of Contents is delightful:
MIRACLE WATERS
(Evolution)
Chapter 1. The Enchanted Loom
Imagining the brain.
Chapter 2. This Island Earth
Evolution; the world's tiniest reptile; our brain and other animals.
Chapter 3. Why We Ask "Why?"
What happens in the right brain vs. the left brain; why we're driven to tell stories.
Chapter 4. The Fibs of Being
Consciousness; some definitions and theories.
Chapter 5. Light Breaks Where No Sun Shines
The unconscious; how it collaborates with the unconscious mind.
SWEET DREAMS OF REASON (The Physical Brain) Chapters 6-12
PAVILIONS OF DESIRE (Memory)13-19
NEVER A DULL TORMENT (The Self, and Other Fictions) 20-24
THE WORLD IS BREAKING SOMEONE ELSE'S HEART (Emotions) 25-26
THE COLOR OF SAYING (Language) 27-30
THE WILDERNESS WITHIN (The World We Share) 31-34
Aren't those fascinating, enticing titles? My job already finished because you're already dying to read it.
The book is worth owning solely for Chapter 30: Shakespeare on the Brain. The chapter's epigraph: "[He understood]... the quality of the real universe, the divine, magical, terrifying and ecstatic reality in which we all live." - C.S. Lewis
There's a plethora of worthwhile quotations: for instance: "... the spirit of inhabitable awe... Edward Hirsch, The Demon and the Angel
The book's epigraph:
my mind is
a big hunk of irrevocable nothing which touch and
taste and smell and hearing and sight keep hitting and
chipping with sharp fatal tools
in an agony of sensual chisels i perform squirms of
chrome and execute strides of cobalt
nevertheless i
feel that i cleverly am being altered that i slightly am
becoming something a little different, in fact
myself
Hereupon helpless i utter lilac shrieks and scarlet
bellowings. e.e. cummings, Portraits, VII
Another Chapter's epigraph:
“We die containing a richness of lovers and tribes, tastes we have swallowed, bodies we have plunged into and swum up as if rivers of wisdom, characters we have climbed into as if trees, fears we have hidden in as if caves. I wish for all this to be marked on by body when I am dead. I believe in such cartography - to be marked by nature, not just to label ourselves on a map like the names of rich men and women on buildings. We are communal histories, communal books. We are not owned or monogamous in our taste or experience. All I desired was to walk upon such an earth that had no maps.”
― Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient
She even weaves alchemical symbols into the book. This book is engaging, beautiful and fun. It lives up to its title. You will be altered by reading it. What more can you ask from a good book?
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