Carl Irwin Irwin itibaren Veresniki, Kirovskaya oblast', Errusia, 613400
A moving account of various aspects of losing one's normal vision and other senses. Oliver Sacks' own experience -- his lack of ability to recognize faces and his near blindness -- is one of the most personal accounts. I am also relieved to know that many people have limited "visual imagery" while they have perfect "visual perception". I can not imagine a single line when I close my eyes. It has troubled me since I discovered that others can, and can manipulate fully imaged objects dynamically. I wonder if I am deprived of a particular experience, and thus the knowledge from such experience. I have wondered if I am among the very few. In this book, Sacks indicated that he himself has no "visual imagery" either. Many researchers have tried to connect the "thinking in pictures" versus the kind that relies largely on abstraction (such as language) to how we think, and how we experience the world. To me, the sensory world is a wonder. But we rarely appreciate it fully because what we are given seems to be perfectly entitled. Sacks constantly remind us that it is not so; in the full spectrum of sensory experience, we can also learn to be grateful and be truly aware.
A timesaver, a face/embarrassment saver, a comfort object, this book is a survival guide! Along with a lot of what some people might derisively say is "common sense" ("how do you get that if you've never been around children", says me?) this book answers a lot of questions you don't like to ask anyone else, and it is there to refer to at 4 o'clock in the morning. Provides good answers and reasons/research behind the answers too, which is very handy for dispelling old wives tales and repelling unwanted "advice". Cannot recommend this book highly enough.