January Reads Recap: The Prestige, True Grit, Oliver Sacks & The Brain

Reading recaps are mini-reviews of the books I’ve read each month.

Books-now-movies The Prestige and True Grit were easy weekend reads and a good break from a month of unplanned non-fiction thanks to putting books on hold at the library and forgetting about them.

Hallucinations was the lightest non-fiction and, while entertaining, certainly left me looking for more. I immediately followed-up with Believing The Brain which answered all the questions Sacks left me with and provided an abundance of neurological information. I rate this very close to On Being Certain that I read last year.

True Grit was a fun reading experience which I then completely ruined by watching the awful movie. On the other hand, The Prestige is great as both a book and a movie.

The odd-man-out this month was Diamond’s The World Until Yesterday which takes a sociological and anthropological look into comparing traditional & modern societies.

Pick of the Month

Hallucinations
Author: Oliver Sacks
Genre: Non-Fiction, Neurology
Source: NYPL
Rating: 4/5
Summary: Numerous case-studies of medical, drug, and psychological induced hallucinations

And The Rest…

The Prestige
Author: Christopher Priest
Genre: Period Fiction, Mystery
Source: NYPL
Rating: 4/5
Summary: A rivalry between two English magicians told via multiple monologues

True Grit
Author: Charles Portis
Genre: Western
Source: NYPL
Rating: 3/5
Summary: A fun weekend read about a 14 year old girl avenging her father’s death

The Believing Brain
Author: Michael Shermer
Genre: Non-Fiction, Neurology
Source: NYPL
Rating: 3/5
Summary: Author’s argument, “beliefs first, explanations second”

The World Until Yesterday
Author: Jared Diamond
Genre: Non-Fiction, Sociology/Anthropology
Source: NYPL
Rating: 4/5
Summary: Traditional societies and what we can learn from them