My Science pick for Bingo could easily be my I Love It selection, because behavioral science in all its forms is my jam. I think I’ve included the line “I was hoping for an Oliver Sacks version of topic X” in approximately half of my non fiction reviews and each time been disappointed, but this more or less hit the mark. I mean, I love you Helen Thomson, but you’re not quite Oliver Sacks, but getting as close as you did to filling his shoes is an achievement.
Anyway, Thomson follows unusual brains and the people who live with them, from a colorblind synesthete to a woman with spatial blindness who cannot orient herself without spinning around. She achieves the right balance between the human and the scientific necessary when writing about neuroscience for the layman crowd, although she tips just slightly too far away from the hard science to be truly perfect, but that’s me comparing her to one of the best science writers in history. She makes their struggles relatable, and their perception as understandable as possible given that she is writing about qualia – her subjects brains lead them to have unique but completely subjective experiences, and the difficulty in describing the texture of purple or feeling disoriented in ones own home is a challenge Thomson not only rises to but makes it look easy.
Since this is so much my cup of tea, I may have added several suggestions from Amazon when looking up this link to my cart, so if there’s a similar type of book reviewed for my listicle review, don’t be surprised. But this should definitely be someone’s Cannonballer Says choice if you’re the least bit intrigued by the description, it was a great book and I heartily recommend it.