REVIEW: The Soloist by S. Lopez

Title:  The Soloist
Author:  S. Lopez
Genre / Pages:  Nonfiction,  Mental Health/ 304
Publication: Putnam, 2008
Rating:  4th shelf  
Source:  Borrowed from a dear friend
lj's plot in one pot: A gifted and troubled musician's journey, and the friendship with a columnist (Lopez) that changed both their lives.

Normally, I can be a bit of a snob when it comes to people raving about books (especially when these books have been made into movies).  I always feel like the hype overwhelms me and I am usually let down.  So true to form, I hadn't planned on reading, let alone enjoying The Soloist.  A friend lent it to me without a word and it sat on my pile of books to read for about a month.  When I finally made my way to it, I was pleasantly surprised!  

The Soloist takes the reader on a journey, not so much through the world of classical music, but rather through the rabbit hole that is mental illness.  Lopez befriends the musician, Nathaniel (who has schizophrenia) and learns a lot about mental illness, how it looks in daily life, and the grip it takes on everyone surrounding the person who is mentally ill. 

The writing can be lengthy at times, I felt myself skimming sections until the plot picked up (for example, during Nathaniel's various rants) and I found Lopez to carry on too long in his moments of self-reflection. 

"His first offering is a Beethoven cello sonata, and this drab concrete corner of downtown Los Angeles, with its nearby settlement of bug-bitten denizens and moving clouds of noxious vehicle exhaust, is transformed into a place of lilting repose." p.37

For more information on the LAMP program, please click here.  

To help artistically gifted people with mental illness, visit the Nathaniel Anthony Ayers Foundation here.  

The author, Steve Lopez's website can be found here.

Review: The World in Six Songs - How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature by D.J. Levitin

Title:  The World in Six Songs - How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature
Author:  D.J. Levitin
Genre / Pages:  Nonfiction,  Science / 358
Publication: Penguin Group Canada, 2009
Rating:  4th shelf
Source:  Chapters Indigo
lj's plot in one pot:  Levitin's research indicates that six songs (friendship, joy, comfort, religion, knowledge, and love) are the foundations of human society as we know it.

This book fed my love of music, science, human nature - quite a feat for just one text!  As I'm not a huge scientifico (yes I made that one up), I was a little concerned that I would be needing to look a lot of terms / theories up while reading this book.  However, the terms were very easy to understand and the theories were well explained...a little too well explained.  Levitin rehashes (on seemingly EVERY PAGE) the theory of spontaneous mutation.  I'm sure the author was trying to ensure that we all understood the fact that the mutation doesn't happen as a result of the environment, but rather spontaneously occurs and then happens to be favourable to the environment.  (Hey, I sound like I know what I'm talking about!  Thank you "Intro to Genetics" in undergrad!)  Moving along, aside from my irritation with Levitin's repetition, I really enjoyed this book.  Music is inherent in us all - just look at what babies do when they hear a good beat; and this book gives us the science to back it up. *If you want to learn more before you buy the book, check out this website.

The book gives each of the six songs a chapter, my favourite of which was Joy, where Levitin explains that the natural / biochemical reaction to joy is to sing, dance, jump or shout.  The author mixes scientific fact (i.e. the act of singing produces endorphins - which make us feel good ) with his, often hilarious, musical experiences (i.e. Sting and Levitin decide that probably the first "song" sung was a caveman making sounds and other cavemen joined in because it felt good). We sing for many reasons and we are many things because of song. 

"Music...is not simply a distraction or a pastime, but a core element of our identity as a species, an activity that paved the way for more complex behaviors such as language, large-scale cooperative undertakings, and the passing down of important information from one generation to the next." p.3