Because I am a hooligan, I read books at bookstores without buying them. (I do this in part because the portion of my expenses pie chart set aside for books is already extensive and taking over most of my expendable income).
Today, aside from a guide on writing cover letters, I started a couple of other rather interesting books which I intend to go back and continue reading until such time as I either finish the books, or decide to buy them. Anything I read in these books that I want to share, I will do so here. This way, you can keep track of my literary criminal activity.
The first of these books is titled This is Your Brain on Music by Daniel Levitin. Having studied music for years, a bit of music psychology and enough music therapy to consider pursuing it as a career, I find this book right up my alley, as well as easily readable to the non-musician. You know how we call low sounds low and high sounds high? Well, according to Levitin, this was not always the case. Apparently the Greeks used the labels oppositely. Since the instruments they used were typically vertical, the shorter strings and shorter organ pipes (that produce what we call "high" pitches), which were also lower to the ground produced the low sounds.
The second book that I am reading at no expense is titled The Female Brain by Louann Brizendine. I have not read further than the first 30 pages, but I am astounded at all the evidence of hormonal interplay in the early development in boys and girls! For example, in the first two years of life, when a girls brain is being flooded with estrogen, she is extremely susceptible to the stresses her mother might feel and those could be with her for the rest of her life. In animals, this can even be passed down through several generations of females!
1 comment:
My son's not gonna be stressed. He's gonna be like, "uhh..."
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