Assembling My Atheneum: Oliver Sacks

If I had unlimited funds, which authors would I want to see filling my bookshelves? That question originally arose from my musings about my home library, and I decided to start a new series to answer it. In Assembling My Atheneum, I’ll discuss the authors whose entire works I’d love to possess, as well as which books of theirs I’ve read, which I already own, and which I’d recommend to those wanting to give them a try. So far, I’ve featured A.S. Byatt, Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie, and Larissa Volokhonsky & Richard Pevear.

It’s been ages since I’ve done one of these! When I conducted my poll to help figure out a blogging schedule, this was the only feature that received a significant amount of votes for the ‘once a month’ option at 38% (once a fortnight came next with 32% and once a week received 28%). I took this into account when planning things, and my unexpected blogging break encompassed when I’d thought to do my December AMA. So I’ll probably do two this month catch up. ;)

Anyway, this time I feel like gushing about Oliver Sacks (particularly since I just learned that The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat was on the NYT bestseller list the week I was born), a British-born, American-based neurologist. My first exposure to him was in an introduction to psychology class I took in the winter of my freshman year of college, when I was seventeen. While the class as a whole was incredibly unfortunate, I remember loving the essay our professor had us read. I think at the time I vaguely noticed that it was an excerpt from a book, but I didn’t bother investigating further (as I recall, most of my free time that term was consumed in boy drama). Flash forward to 2007, when I discovered Book Mooch thanks to other bloggers; one of the first titles I requested was The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. In November of that year I got around to reading it and loved it. I decided I’d have to track down more of Sacks writing.

The following year I read Musicophilia, which cemented his place as one of my favourite nonfiction writers. And then in 2009, I read both his travelogue Oaxaca and his memoir Uncle Tungsten. Along the way, I ended up a starry-eyed convert and upon discovering that Sacks isn’t married, began referring to him as my future husband (that brain! that voice! that beard! who cares that there’s a fifty-three year age gap?). Last year, I returned to his neurological-focused writing with An Anthropologist on Mars and adored it (the only reason it wasn’t on my best-of list is that I knew I’d be posting this a couple of days later), although apparently I didn’t write about it. At this point, I’ve read about half of his backlist and am drawing out the rest so that I don’t run out too soon. The ones I have yet to get to, in published order beginning with the earliest: Migraine, Awakenings, Leg to Stand On, Seeing Voices, Island of the Colorblind, and The Mind’s Eye (published just a couple of months ago!). I only have my own copies of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and An Anthropologist on Mars (yet another example of my bookshelves not necessarily reflecting my reader-self!).

If you’d like to know more about Sacks (or attempt to understand my crush on him) , you can watch a TED talk he delivered last year, as well as explore his nicely laid out website. If I’ve already convinced you to read him, allow me to help you decide where to start. If you’re most intrigued by his neurological case studies, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat is the classic place to begin (although, if your life is touched by autism, the title essay of An Anthropologist on Mars is an incredible piece on that). But if you’re most interested in getting a taste of his marvelous writing, which combines the personal and the scientific so well, Uncle Tungsten is one of the best books I’ve ever read. Seriously. And for those of you who love travelogues but aren’t sure about popular science, Oaxaca Journal is a slim little volume detailing Sacks’ trip there with a group for the purposes of fern collecting. Trust me: it’s more interesting than you might expect. ;)

Do you have a favourite popular science author? And who’s your strangest author crush?