Awakenings
Oliver Sacks
While browsing through my shelves a few months ago, I rediscovered Oliver Sacks’ Awakenings, the account of his years working with post-encephalic patients in the 1960s. Rendered profoundly Parkinsonian (almost cadaveric) by a disease of unknown aetiology, they were dramatically ‘reawakened’ by L-DOPA decades after falling ill.
The first half of the book presents a series of case histories that are as much as individual memorials as they are medical records, while in the second half Sacks examines the physiological and metaphysical questions about identity and consciousness that their experiences raise.
It is a fascinating book on multiple levels, not least because the nature of the disease, which disappeared as suddenly as it appeared, remains a mystery. But what resonated most for me was the ethical dilemma presented by L-DOPA itself, a drug with side effects rapidly became worse than the original condition, but without which the patient is condemned to living death.
The Name of the Wind
Patrick Rothfuss
The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss is one of the best fantasy novels I have read for some time. It has everything that you would expect from a story of this genre; pre-industrial, everywhere setting, a young, talented and poor boy who wins his way through training as a wizard by wit and skill, a mysterious evil, a quest for revenge, a capricious and enchanting woman…
It is the memoir by an infamous magician told at a time of growing threat, a narrative that sparks with energy and interest, interrupted by events of the present that arise from this history in ways we don’t yet know. Perhaps it is just the length of time since I last read fantasy (put off by David Eddings’ interminable Belgariad), but there was something fresh and exciting about this book that totally captivated me. I am awaiting the sequel with anticipation.
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