How long does it take to read Musicophilia?
Tales of Music and the Brain
Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks takes about 7 hours 48 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 7 hours 48 minutes
A weekend read
First published 2007. 425 pages, about 116,875 words.
16 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 12 hours 59 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 7 hours 48 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 4 hours 52 minutes |
The page count is the median across 43 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
Music can move us to the heights or depths of emotion. It can persuade us to buy something, or remind us of our first date. It can lift us out of depression when nothing else can. It can get us dancing to its beat. But the power of music goes much, much further. Indeed, music occupies more areas of our brain than language does–humans are a musical species. Oliver Sacks’s compassionate, compelling tales of people struggling to adapt to different neurological conditions have fundamentally changed the way we think of our own brains, and of the human experience. In Musicophilia, he examines the powers of music through the individual experiences of patients, musicians, and everyday people–from a man who is struck by lightning and suddenly inspired to become a pianist at the age of forty-two, to an entire group of children with Williams syndrome who are hypermusical from birth; from people with “amusia,” to whom a symphony sounds like the clattering of pots and pans, to a man whose memory spans only seven seconds–for everything but music. Our exquisite sensitivity to music can sometimes go wrong: Sacks explores how catchy tunes can subject us to hours of mental replay, and how a surprising number of people acquire nonstop musical hallucinations that assault them night and day. Yet far more frequently, music goes right: Sacks describes how music can animate people with Parkinson’s disease who cannot otherwise move, give words to stroke patients who cannot otherwise speak, and calm and organize people whose memories are ravaged by Alzheimer’s or amnesia. Music is irresistible, haunting, and unforgettable, and in Musicophilia, Oliver Sacks tells us why.
Subjects: psychology, Alzheimer’s disese, amnesia, Parkinson’s disease, amusia, Williams syndrome
