Inspirations: Oliver Sacks, Leonard Cohen and Alain de Botton

The books of Oliver Sacks became compulsive reading after I was diagnosed with a cerebral cavernous angioma at the rear of the front left lobe of my brain early in 2009. I had my own neurological condition, which was quite dramatic at its onset, with what I discovered to have been a major seizure with anterograde amnesia, 'a partial or complete inability to recall the recent past, while long-term memories from before the event remain intact'. I see from the photograph that I have ended up with three copies of The Mind's Eye', and two copies of 'The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat', but that was because I was keen not to miss a single back by him. I felt I got to know him through his books, and was pleased to read his autobiography. The final volume, 'Gratitude', was a slight disappointment in that I think I had read all its contents already in different formats, but it was an attractive small volume. I should add to this section the book 'Do No Harm' by the neurosurgeon Henry Marsh, which gave another aspect of our understanding of the human brain. I also took a delight in that both these writers were Jewish.

Jewish too of course was Leonard Cohen. I always enjoyed Leonard Cohen from the day in 1968 that my university roommate Pete Mercer played his first album 'Songs of Leonard Cohen. Through the past forty years songs by Leonard Cohen have entertained and moved me, through to his final song 'Hineni'. The words did not always make complete sense, any more than the words of his poems - I have his poems 1956-1968. I had another volume of his poems that I cannot find at the moment, and also his first novel 'The Favourite Game' that I haven't read.
The third author on this shelf is Alain de Botton who, curiously, is also Jewish. I enjoyed his insights on various issues.