How was this thing a National Bestseller? by Henry Gold

Diane Ackerman's Natural History of the Senses, weaved with personal anecdotes and spades of literary examples does plenty to set of my Sixth Sense, the whole thing is a zany experience. There are some small and quiet, yet profound moments, my favorite is probably when she speaks of her memories of eucalyptus, out in the fields with butterflies, and back being a sick child, being smeared in Dr. Vicks. The idea of smell to memory association and how it can change and evolve was the part of the book I was most on board with, where the prose just come to Ackerman.

And then there's the rest of the filler non-sense. There were whole pages that were just list examples of other writers weaving the senses into their works, which just made me want to read those instead.

Depending on how one would describe the book to a friend, it could either be a series of short stories based on the human reality and how we actually experience the world with literary comparisons and scientific research, which is what the book wanted to be; or, what it turned out to be, a mishmash of ideas and paragraphs about the senses, with racist and oddly sexual overtones, for christ sake she described her own answering machine as a slut.

With these critiques in mind there is one thing I'd give credit to the book for that most wouldn't think to bring up in class discussion, it works better being read aloud then in one's head. One night, Renee was feeling rather under the weather, which made her feel especially dyslexic. So I kept her company, but she needed to do her homework for class, and knowing that I likely won't read the book otherwise, she asked me to read it to her. I added my own flair when I saw need be and made the complaints I wrote before as we read, but the way she put it together: the run on sentences naming other writers, the personal stories, and the science to get us to where we are today; we find some thing brilliant, a book that was made to be heard rather than seen, even when we rag on it in class, discussing the racist tones and Ackerman's obvious horniness, it's far better heard from the voices of that are being pushed up through our throats then the monologue in our head, so guess what, this is my hearing post.