Musicophilia

Dr. Oliver Sacks has sat in my pile of books since Christmas. A gift from Kathryn, it is something I probably would never have picked up on my own. My 3 oldest kids had all read an essay in The New Yorker that appears in this 2007 collection of essays by noted author/neurologist.
Musicolphilia: Tales of Music and the Brain kind of freaked me out for the first couple of weeks. Part I: Haunted by Music is a fascinating collection of the brain's capacity to expand or (truly frightening) limit one's musical perception and appreciation. But the collection on the whole is a tremendous display of the amazing human brain, specifically as it relates to musical phenomena.
Some of it is fairly technical - though even then Dr. Sacks has an extraordinary talent for communicating to laypersons. Thus his impressive list of well-known titles: Awakenings, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, and An Anthropologist on Mars, just to list 3 titles with which I was familiar before receiving this gift. I'm not sure I will take on any of the other titles on my own, though I'm sure that if for some reason I had to they would be engaging and entertaining reads.
Lately I have taken to saying that my adult children take me places I'd never go on my own. Thanks, Kathryn, for this trip to my worst fears ... and the glories of the brain.
Well, then I took Kathryn some place she'd never go on her own, either. To Lou Mitchell's for breakfast. Gotta love Lou's. That is it's own adventure, the same last Friday as it was 25 years ago ... with the exception of the late lamented Lou.