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Mar 28, 2018sgcf rated this title 3.5 out of 5 stars
This was a challenging collection of essays, probably out of my depth, but I’ve always been fascinated by the workings of the mind. Sacks brilliantly cruises through the mental lives of plants and worms, earlier scientific discoveries that were “premature” because the world zeitgeist was not ready, and the brain’s problem-solving ability while in a semi-conscious state. But I was most intrigued by his essays that deal with memory – how we continually reconstruct memories through imagination, or how some memories may never have happened or happened to someone else. ”Our only truth is narrative truth, the stories we tell each other and ourselves – the stories we continually re-categorize and refine.” (p.121) Despite all the footnotes and studies quoted, his abundance of anecdotal evidence was the most engaging for me.