I interviewed Oliver Sacks during the week, and the piece is in today’s paper. So, it meant an early chance to read his fascinating Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain.

You can see Sacks’s influence on a lot of recent books. Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point - and the slew of similar books (Freakonomics, The Wisdom of Crowds, etc) - seem to have picked up on the way in which he has always presented cases by humanising the subject before expounding on the science.

He still has an ease, clarity and narrative drive to his writing that makes it very difficult to put down. Those qualities are all centred around his relentless curiosity, and his obvious sympathy for his patients, plus his reputation as a magnet for unsusual neurological cases. Like his classic The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat (one of the few books I would recommend everybody read) Musicophilia examines how the brain works by looking at the variety of ways it can go wrong (the ability to “see” or “taste” music; musically-triggered epilepsy; musical hallucinations, etc). It would make for a good alternative gift for music lovers in the family, if the old record vouchers are growing tired.