Currently reading
The Lonely Sea: Collected Short Stories
Her Benny
Vedere din Parfumerie
Mysticism and Logic (Western Philosophy)
The Analects of Confucious
Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking
Does Anything Eat Wasps?: And 101 Other Unsettling, Witty Answers to Questions You Never Thought You Wanted to Ask
Mutual Aid
City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi
The Brothers Karamazov
The Island of the Colorblind
I KNEW, KNEW that Oliver Sacks wouldn't give me informative details on the epidemiology of islands. His chatty, superficial, and self-absorbed style made me drop both his Hat and Awakenings books and give it 4 stars anyway, out of what, charity? But this one I bought new, with high hopes anyway, and it quickly became apparent that there is something seriously wrong with this man. By page 30 he'd spent several pages talking about his prowess as a swimmer, being a Victorian reader who always picked out adventure stories high on style, light on substance, etc., etc.Well, as Wikipedia so pointedly put it, Oliver Sacks is the man who mistook his patients for a book --about himself. Not only is there, according to the New York Times, doubt about his clinical accomplishments, but the man is pushing on, full steam ahead, with an autobiography about his greatness. Look at his profile page. Look at it! This man would write about truckdriving if it gave him some kind of celebrity. Look at the weightlifter! That's not him lifting the weights!
If this fool doesn't define an era of self-centred pretense over genuine accomplishment, I'll eat my hat.
