The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales by Oliver Sacks review

Title: The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales

Author: Oliver Sacks

My Rating:3.5/5

Part of a series? : No

Genre(s):  Psychology, Non-fiction, Medicine, Anthology

Description/Blurb:

Oliver Sacks's The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat tells the stories of individuals afflicted with fantastic perceptual and intellectual aberrations: patients who have lost their memories and with them the greater part of their pasts; who are no longer able to recognize people and common objects; who are stricken with violent tics and grimaces or who shout involuntary obscenities; whose limbs have become alien; who have been dismissed as retarded yet are gifted with uncanny artistic or mathematical talents. 

My review: 

This is an interesting collection of one man’s experiences with patients with various neurological disorders. Some of them happen to be quite humorous while others are simply stories of interest to those who are interested in human behaviour. I would love to give it a higher star writing but I felt that some of the editing was below par with a few of the sentences not making complete sense (yes I know I have that problem too but I don’t have an editor!).  Also sometimes Sacks uses terms which somebody with no previous experience of psychology may struggle to understand without a quick google though I do admit most of the time you can just skim over the term without understanding it as the detail would only be of interest to somebody with an interest in psychology, if you’re just reading the collection for some unusual real life stories then you won’t really lose anything by just skipping over it, I’d recommend doing the same for some of the explanations of the disorders as again they can be a bit confusing for somebody who hasn’t really looked into psychology before though some of Sacks’ explanations and theories are really quite interesting.

Blood, Sweat & Tea by Tom Reynolds Review

Title: Blood, Sweat & Tea: Real-Life Adventures in an Inner-City Ambulance

Author: Tom Reynolds (aka Brian Kellett)

My Rating: 4/5

Part of a series? Yes, there is a second book 'More Blood, More Sweat & Another Cup of Tea'

Genre(s): Non-fiction, Memoir, Medicine, Humour

Description/Blurb:

Is there anyone who hasnt wondered about the state of the occupant of an ambulance, screaming along with its sirens on and blue lights flashing? And have you wondered about the other people inside the ambulance? Meet Tom Reynolds, an Emergency Medical Technician who works for the London Ambulance Service in East London. He has kept a blog of his daily working life since 2003 and his award-winning writing is, by turn, moving, cynical, funny, heart-rending, and compassionate. From the tragic to the hilarious, the stories Tom tells give a fascinatingand at times alarming picture of life in inner-city Britain, and the people who are paid to mop up after it.

My review: 

I should start off by pointing out that this book is basically a collection of blog posts from the blog 'Random Acts of Reality' which is no longer updated as the author no longer works for the ambulance service full time and has moved onto other things. 

As you can probably tell from the rating, this is one of those books I truly enjoyed. Ok, I read it over a couple of weeks during the breaks between lectures when I had nothing better to do but just because I didn't get so sucked in I couldn't put the book down it doesn't mean this book wasn't gripping. The blog post type format made it easy to find a place to stop as the stories weren't really related so you're not compelled to turn the page to find out about what happened to the person you were just reading about.

This one can get a bit depressing at times, nobody thinks reading about sick children and dying patients is fun and games but there's enough humour (sometimes quite dark humour) to offset this. Oh, and reading about some of the reasons people call out the emergency services can make you lose a little bit of faith in humanity (I don't seem to be conveying how much I enjoyed the book very well here) but all those moments are worth it just to read the descriptions of traffic dodging and the weird panicky things people seem to do when they hear a siren.