Friday, January 18, 2013
Being my first review, I probably should have picked an
easier book. I mean really, who picks a non-fiction book of case studies? It is incredibly difficult to figure out
where to start on a non-fiction book. Not to mention that this is basically a
book of case studies. It makes it hard to try and depict what the author was
“trying to do” or "analyze the story". All I can do is ramble on about the
writing style and my opinion on how the history was presented, so here it goes.
If I were
to have to describe the book in one “sound bite” phrase, it would have to be
intriguing and wonderfully difficult. Thank god there was a glossary in the
back, and if you are going to tackle this book, you might want a dictionary
with you as well. Awakenings by Oliver Sacks is a non-fiction view of the
mysterious sleeping sickness epidemic that was present during and after World
War I. Oliver Sacks, a doctor at Mount Carmel Hospital, uses a lot of tricky
medical terms and very advanced language to describe his patients. Once you get
through all of the fancy terms and get used to having to look something up
every other sentence it is an incredible story. It is amazing, and sad, to read
about all the different patients, and the effects of this new “miracle” drug
L-DOPA. The case studies are a rollercoaster ride of emotions to read through.
Most are only a few pages long, but are extremely effective in showing the
struggles of each individual patient.
I probably
would never have picked this book up without having it recommended to me during
my senior year in college. I was researching Parkinson’s disease for my senior
thesis and the librarian mentioned this book. The sleeping sickness was
discovered to be a form of Parkinson’s disease and this book describes the
initial trials with the drug L-DOPA in trying to cure it. The history is
amazing, as are the stories of these people. It was a difficult read, and I
probably would not recommend it to anyone who doesn’t have an interest in the
history of Parkinson’s. I am not sure how to give a rating to books because
most books I have only read once, with the exception of the Harry Potter books,
and I am not very good at trying to rate things to the general public, sorry.
