I put out a tweet asking if anyone was interested in doing a guest post, which I’ve decided to do every Tuesday and Thursday of the month of October. Still trying to decide if I just want to feature just chick bloggers. No offense to the broz.

But never the less, Sarah aka SarahSpy was one of the first to reply. Having talked to Sarah before I was super flattered because 1. Sarah is super chill 2. Sarah is a dog-on good writer. So for once there is a good piece of writing on this site! So enjoy this anomaly of a very interesting review of a book I’ve been meaning to read myself for quite some time.

I appreciate the opportunity of this guest spot to continue pressuring every music lover I come across to read one of my new favorite books: Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain by neurologist Oliver Sacks (writer, also, of Awakenings, a true account of sleeping-sickness sufferers that was adapted into the 1990 movie by the same name, starring Robert De Niro and Robin Williams as Dr. Sacks). Many months after reading it, I’m still frequently puzzling over some of its details.

The collection of essays kicks off with a true tale of a musically untrained patient who suddenly develops complex composition skills after being struck by lightening. And from there, things only get weirder and more fascinating. Intriguing phenomena such as musical dreams, catchy “ear worm” melodies, synesthesia (in this case, associating colors with certain musical notes), and absolute pitch are explored through Sacks’s extraordinary patient case studies.

Some stories are highly emotional. The ones chronicling Dr. Sacks’s creative music therapy for those with amnesia, Parkinson’s disease, and dementia had me tearing up on the subway, in fact. My favorite of these came near the end, with the tale of a dementia-riddled man whose memory has disintegrated so fully that his brain fully refreshes as blankly and often as a goldfish’s. In this case, Dr. Sack observed that music was the one and only thing the patient could recall, bringing much-needed continuity and joy to this otherwise ineffective man’s life.

Prior background in neurological study is definitely not required to comprehend and enjoy this book, as Sacks effectively simplifies terminology into easily understandable language throughout. If you’ve any interest in music, I really think you’ll love the ride this book takes you on.

Sarah Lynn Knowles is the Brooklyn-based writer and pop culture junkie behind sarahspy.com and storychord.com.