On Musicophilia

”Have you read Oliver Sacks’ Musicophilia?”

“I haven’t finished it. Read about 120 pages.”

“But you’re currently reading it?”

“Ehrm. That’s a matter of definition. I still keep a bookmark in it.”

“And when did you last move this bookmark?”

“Sometime late 2009? December? Or February-ish 2010?”

“So you’re not really reading it, currently?”

“You know, it’s a quite long book. A lot of pages. Non-fiction pages. With a lot of examples on them.”

“Sure. But you knew this when you bought it, right?”

“I bought it at Harvard!”

“Sorry?”

“Harvard! I can verifiably say that I went to Harvard!”

“To the Harvard bookstore, yes. But they don’t give you a Harvard degree just because you visited the bookstore.”

“Duh. But I don’t have to specify that.”

“Very well. You went to Harvard. But back to Oliver Sacks. You like him, don’t you?”

“Very much. Which is why I bought the book in the first place. At Harvard.”

“If you like the author so much, why didn’t you finish the book?”

“It took me about a decade to finish The Island of the Colorblind, another of his books. I really liked that one.”

“So you’re a pretty slow reader?”

“Not really. I just read a whole lot of other stuff in between. There is a limit to how much non-fiction I can be bothered to read.”

“Don’t you have a history degree..?”

“I have. Don’t see your point.”

“So are you saying that you like Musicophilia, but that it is a slow read?”

“It’s not a page turner. But it’s very interesting. And funny. And occasionally slightly repetitive. But definitely entertaining.”

“And you’re definitely going to finish it?”

“I definitely might do that.”

“Why write a review about a book you haven’t finished anyway?”

“This is a review?”

From better times