A review by shanaqui
The Man Who Tasted Words: A Neurologist Explores the Strange and Startling World of Our Senses by Guy Leschziner

informative reflective medium-paced

3.0

The Man Who Tasted Words sounds like it's going to be about a lexical->gustatory synaesthete, and the blurb also calls out that part, so I just want to say up front that it's not really like that. There's one chapter that discusses synaesthesia, and it doesn't give it an especially long consideration or something.

In the end, it's a book in the vein of many other similar books: the author's a neurologist, and he draws stories from his practice to illustrate how the brain works, and how it fails to work. It's always fascinating to read that kind of thing, but at the same time, this isn't new at all. It has all the predictable beats (here's the patient he failed, here's the worst thing he's ever experienced as a doctor, here's the fascinating case), and the stories don't particularly illustrate anything surprising and new.

So if you don't read a lot of these, or conversely if you absolutely love them and read every single one you can get your hands on, this might be worth some time. I thought it was just OK, though.