Showing posts with label Book Beginnings: On the Move: A Life by Oliver Sacks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Book Beginnings: On the Move: A Life by Oliver Sacks. Show all posts

Friday, May 20, 2016

Book Beginnings: On the Move: A Life by Oliver Sacks


"When I was at boarding school, sent away during the war as a little boy, I had a sense of imprisonment and powerlessness, and I longed for movement and power, ease of movement and superhuman powers."
The above is the first sentence from Oliver Sacks' autobiography "On the Move", and as a young man he discovered a feeling of movement and power when riding his motorcycles in England and America.
On page 56 he wrote about his brother Michael, and Michael's first psychosis event. "He felt a magical and malignant world was closing about him."
Here is a review I posted on Amazon.


"This is one of the most compelling autobiographies I have read, and I read a lot of them. I admire Oliver Sacks who was a brilliant neurologist and researcher who helped many patients. This is a glimpse in to the life of a man who was a gifted physician. The movie Awakenings was based on his work with patients. He lived alone and had long friendships with respected poets including W.H. Auden, and medical researchers including Francis Crick (who won a Nobel Prize for revealing the secrets of DNA). Sacks was unconventional, broke rules to help patients, and had a passion for his motorcycles and weight lifting in his younger years. I was pleased that when he was 77 he finally fell deeply in love and found a partner. All of this is told in a way that is entertaining and thought provoking, as Sacks himself surely was."
I am linking to Rose City Reader for book beginnings.
I am also linking to Fredas Voice for project 56 where bloggers share something from page 56 of a book we are reading.