Hallucinations by Oliver Sachs

[Drunk Monk]

Waaaaaaaaaaaat? Dm read a book? srsly? Well, in my shameful defense, I read a lot of work - a lot of CRAP - so it tends to put me off reading sometimes. Plus my eyes are growing dim so I have to wear glasses sometimes and I still haven't quite figured them out yet. They often make me sleepy. I know, I know, most of you have worn glasses most of your lives but have pity on poor dm and his slack reading habits. It probably doesn't help that it took my like two years to read this damn book. But I lost the clothbound edition in the move (surely in storage somewhere) and it took me a long time to give up on that and spring for the paperback.

Actually I do read books for work a lot (got to keep up with the latest, donchaknow?) but like TQ's romances, I don't bore you with them.

But on to the book, if you don't know Sachs, he changed my life. His book The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat had a profound influence on my choice to study psychology, and many of his later works, like Awakenings, were also very influential. So I was very excited when he was taking on Hallucinations, as it is one of my fav topics. The book freaked me out. I started having really weird dreams after reading it, which is another reason why it took so long. He opened with Charles Bonet Syndrome (CBS), an hallucination where you see people, often random people, like ghosts. It was strangely disturbing. In another chapter, he reveals his own prolific acid daze, something we always figured he indulged in, which comes off as a sort of weak confessional, disruptive of the rest of the survey. Some of the other stuff was wacky - doppelgangers (hallucinating yourself following you about) and hypnopompic hallucinations (really disturbing visions upon waking) were downright creepy. Still, a good read, accessible by anyone. It really needed a conclusion because it just ends. Well, that and a sword fight.

[Drunk Monk]

As I said above, his writings were tremendously influential upon me.

[cranefly]

I met Lady Cranefly circa 1987 up in Eugene OR. I'd moved there to do some writing and met her in a writer's workshop I joined.
Lady Cranefly was working at the University of Oregon bookstore at that time.
A year later, we decided to move down into the Bay Area (for me, it was a return; for Lady Cranefly, all new).
The rest is notoriety.
Anyway, before Lady Cranefly quit her job, she suggested we buy some books through her employee discount. So that's what we did. I think we got about ten books, most of them science or technology related, rather than fiction.

One of those books was The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, by Oliver Sachs.

I started the book, loved it, but am ashamed to say I somehow got waylaid by other things and never finished it. I really need to finish it soon, because Lady Cranefly is starting to grow a brim.

In all seriousness, thanks for all your research and insights, O.S. I promise to do some catching up.

[Drunk Monk]

Not that I read all his stuff, but that one was the most digestible and wildly entertaining.

I really need to finish it soon, because Lady Cranefly is starting to grow a brim.

This is probably a TMI-inducing question, but where?