The Story

This is an entertaining way to educate yourself and exercise your brain at the same time. Not only are there tidbits about the history of brain science, but also puzzles, brain teasers, personality tests, random definitions of random phobias, and more.

Yeah, there’s really not much more to the book than that.

The Response

I picked up the ARC for this at San Diego ComicCon because it looked like something that was way totally different than what I normally read, and yet it looked like so much fun. And then I knew I would get a kick out of this book from the point in the introduction when the author said, “… but before you take the blogosphere like a winged monkey…” Not only did this give me a flavour of what was to come, I think it shows that he gets who his main audience will probably be.

So, the book starts off with a bit of history on brain science – and information on some of the first neuro-surgeries, going back to around 3500 BC. And I don’t even know how to describe how this is organized, because basically every little topic is about 250 words long, and some of them are related to the others around it, but others just seem a little out of place.

Anyway, there are puzzles interspersed in the book! Mazes, brain teasers, patterns to recognize, all sorts of things to make your brain think – and those were a lot of fun to figure out. And there was some handwriting analysis (even Jane Austen’s handwriting was involved).

And then of course there are random facts about everything. For example, did you know that Parkinson’s disease is due to dopamine neurons in the midbrain dying? Or the fact that, statistically speaking, jocks get better grades in school than nerds? Apparently it’s because of grooming habits, not just because of looks or study habits. Go figure, eh?

This book, entertaining as it was, felt about 50 pages too long. Yes there was a lot of interesting stuff, but… the format got a little old a little quickly. Actually, if I didn’t read it straight through, it probably wouldn’t have felt like it was getting old. So perhaps I just should’ve read a couple of sections, put it aside for a while, then come back to it. (I am, however, trying to actually get the TBR quite a bit smaller before the end of the year, and being in the middle of a whole bunch of books at the same time would not, sadly, help with that.)

The Bottom Line

Entertaining and informative in one? Is that possible? Apparently, yes. People who like trivia about random subjects would enjoy this book, though I would recommend spreading out the reading and not going through the whole book at once.

Other Reviews

Have you reviewed this book on your blog? Let me know and I’ll add your link.