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massivepizzacrust 's review for:
Everything in Its Place
by Oliver Sacks
informative
reflective
medium-paced
I've always heard about Oliver Sacks and his case descriptions, and I thought picking up his essays would be an approachable way to read his work. I think that was a bad choice on my part because this would have been a more enjoyable read had I already been emotionally attached to the author. Together with how late in Sacks' life this was written (and maybe therefore didn't have the opportunity for a lot of editing), I felt like there was no overarching thread to the essays. Some of them were interesting, some of them were barely a couple of pages long and made me wonder why they were included at all. I do think Sacks has a place in normalizing neurological conditions in how nonjudgmental and empathetic he is of the patients he describes, but I feel like sometimes he falls into the medical curiosity side more than realizing that these are real people with real lives and real pain.
The other thing that really rubbed me the wrong way was his "young people these days" attitude towards anything to do with technology (including computers?). It comes off as really ignorant to rave about science and how important it was to his life without realizing that the technology he hates so much has brought science to many people who would never have had access to it otherwise (as opposed to a child of two doctors in Great Britain), as well as helping bring about so many modern scientific achievements. That was a pretty weird take in my opinion, though I agree it would be better for accessibility to keep providing large print books instead of expecting everyone to own an e-reader. (but can we please stop judging people for using their phones in public?)
The other thing that really rubbed me the wrong way was his "young people these days" attitude towards anything to do with technology (including computers?). It comes off as really ignorant to rave about science and how important it was to his life without realizing that the technology he hates so much has brought science to many people who would never have had access to it otherwise (as opposed to a child of two doctors in Great Britain), as well as helping bring about so many modern scientific achievements. That was a pretty weird take in my opinion, though I agree it would be better for accessibility to keep providing large print books instead of expecting everyone to own an e-reader. (but can we please stop judging people for using their phones in public?)