Alice Weaver FlahertyRecensioni

This book was super cute. It was a story about how the Lock Ness monster grew because a little girl threw out her oatmeal. It took the stance that picky eating is not a negative thing, but that it's okay. It was a great introduction to the legend of the Lock Ness monster and could open up conversations about whether or not myths/fables/tales are reliable. This would be a good book for Kinder-2nd grade. I might do this as a fun read-aloud or if we are talking about myths, Scotland, or foods.

Neurocognitive discussion of why people do write or do not write

Though it took me more than two years to read, this is an amazing book. It was the first genuinely fascinating nonfiction book I had read, and has inspired me to read more nonfiction since then. Flaherty brilliantly presents all possible angles on her subject, and is a delight to read.

Sent across the Atlantic on an ocean liner in order to visit her grandmother in Scotland, young Katerina-Elizabeth continually chucks her oatmeal - a food she simply cannot stand! - out the porthole. It is eaten by a little ocean worm, who begins to grow exponentially, as he follows the ship across the sea. Eventually ship, girl and worm reach Loch Ness, where the now gigantic creature becomes the fabled Nessie, AKA the Loch Ness Monster...

An immensely entertaining original pourquoi story, The Luck of the Loch Ness Monster: A Tale of Picky Eating pairs an amusing tale from author A.W. Flaherty with expressive artwork from illustrator Scott Magoon. Any child who has had a food they just didn't like - for me, it was spinach! - will identify with Katerina-Elizabeth, and will appreciate this creative explanation for how the Loch Ness Monster came to be. There's even an author's afterword discussing being a picky eater, and the science behind it. Recommended to all young picky eaters, and to Loch Ness Monster fans.

We loved this creative explanation of Nessie! The illustrations were muted and simply perfect for to the time and place of the story. My 7yo was completely engrossed!

Haven't completely finished it yet, but an amazing look into the creative mind. As a writer (or writer-wannabe), I'm still intrigued by the brain's inner workings to produce creative material and wonder in vain why mine has seemed to give up and won't!

A little like reading a college textbook but still very well-written.

A little too much peripheral psycho-babble. I liked the areas of focus on the writer's issues, with block, and hypergraphia, but sometimes too much psycho-babble, and it lost me....I can study that in class, I don't want to read about it here. I wanted Flaherty to stay more on target with the intention of the book. Nonetheless, it was fairly interesting (in those parts).

A little too much peripheral psycho-babble. I liked the areas of focus on the writer's issues, with block, and hypergraphia, but sometimes too much psycho-babble, and it lost me....I can study that in class, I don't want to read about it here. I wanted Flaherty to stay more on target with the intention of the book. Nonetheless, it was fairly interesting (in those parts).

Interesting read, so far. But I've been reading it since I picked it up at the Coop last Spring so it's one of those that can be put down and revisited a few times. I'd still recommend it.

I started the book last summer as part of my attempt to get over my own blocked writing. It took me a long time to read not because the book is difficult or boring. It is neither of those things. However, it is a book packed to bursting with ideas that require digesting. A doctor and scientist goes through her own mental illness, which causes changes in her relationship to writing. That leads her to explore how our brains allow us to write (or keep us from writing), among other things. This is a small book -- 307 pages, including extensive notes and index -- but is is incredibly readable. It is funny, poignant, insightful, and very, very quotable.

I intend to read the book again, this time with a highlighter, and to take notes. There's too much in this book for one reading, and all of it interests me.

Maybe a little long for read aloud but super silly. A girl travels to Scotland and throws her oatmeal out the window of the boat every morning. A little baby sea monster, Nessie, eats all the tossed out oatmeal and gets bigger and bigger, and viola the Loch Ness monster is born.

The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer's Block, and the Creative Brain is written by Alice Flaherty, a neurologist. Her medical training has a profound impact on the book, but even more so weighs the event that changed her life: the premature birth and death of twin boys. Her subsequent postpartum disorder brought on depression and mania, including hypergraphia--the constant need to write. But this isn't a memoir, even though her voice and experience are integral. This is about the very nature of the human brain and how mental states and trauma impact our ability to read and write, causing crippling writer's block or the inability to step away from the pen or keyboard.

I loved this book. It's not an easy read, though. You need a basic understanding of the brain and what does what, though Flaherty does a wonderful job of elaborating. The temporal lobe is essential to the writer. I was amazed at how conditions such as epilepsy and bipolar disorder directly impact how prolificly a person writes. It also delves into depression and autism, issues within my own family.

If you write and want to understand why, read this book. It won't give you direct answers, but you'll have a lot to think--and write--about.½

Hi I'm Christopher.This book is about a girl who is traveing along to Scotland where her grandmother lives.When she got in the ship for breakfast it was her least favorite food.Oatmeal!!!The next day shegot oatmeal again and for the rest of the days so she threw the oatmeal out the window.There is a worm that eats all the oatmeal,grows into a wrong sizes and turns into a....... I like this book.It was a funny book.It was funny when the people get scared of what the worm turns into.People who like stuff that turns into stuff get it And I hate oatmael too.½

This is a fantastic tale of how the loch ness monster started as a tiny worm that discovered oatmeal that was thrown out a porthole by a little girl that despised oatmeal. So, everyday the worm ate the oatmeal that was thrown out and grew bigger and bigger. Eventually, the little girl’s boat docked in Loch Ness and the worm, who was now so big they called him a monster, showed his face while searching for oatmeal. This adorable Bluebonnet Book 2009-2010 is written by a neurologist who writes in her author’s note about the genetics of picky eaters but doesn’t touch on the possibility of a real Loch Ness monster. The illustrations are wonderful and even the font chosen is a winner! Love this book!

This book gives a funny and entertaining explanation for how the Loch Ness Monster came to be. At the same time, it justifies why it's ok to be a picky eater. The author, a Harvard educated neurologist, includes a great afterward explaining how picky eating is genetically determined. This would make a great read-aloud for children of all ages.½

A very cute tale about the genesis of the Loch Ness Monster and the girl it loves because she feeds him oatmeal. Very sweet and fun. The only strange part is that the title claims this is about picky eating, but really isn't.½

FINALLY!!! I'M DONE!!!

No, I'm not relieved to be done with this book at all. Why ever would you think otherwise?

I have to say, of all the books I cherry-picked for my writer's block/procrastination module, I was really excited about this one. Cool cover aside, everything I read about it told me that this book with be IT, and I'd get lots and lots of stuff for my module out of this text.

Then I noticed that despite its length (there's only 266 pages of text), the text itself is packed tight. So I realized that this book might read longer than its 266 pages imply. And boy did it ever. It wouldn't have been so bad if this book had been the IT I was hoping for, but it wasn't, and boy, was it sludge.

Here's where I have to be really honest about how my expectations colored my perceptions of the book. Because it wasn't what I was looking for, I began reading with more of a cynical eye, and I found myself composing rants in which I accuse the author of imitative fallacy (you can do this in non-fiction, who knew?). I had to step back. I can't tell you how successful this book is in terms of what it AIMS to do. I can only say how successful it was for me based on MY expectations. It might be a bright and shining jewel of a book for someone who's looking for some serious science (yes, SCIENCE: psychology and neurology combined, here) behind what makes us write. Flaherty examines how the urge to write has been linked to serious mental illnesses and she attempts to locate just why we write to begin with, all based on different regions in the brain and what happens if said regions are damaged. She doesn't claim that all writers suffer from mental illness either, but she uses studies from mental illness to try and relate to writers who are sane. It's interesting stuff, and the book's not completely without merit. She also talks about the known illnesses of rather famous writers like Dostoevsky and Flaubert and how their illness influenced their work, and that's fascinating stuff: if you want to reduce creativity to every single chemical, synapse, and region of the brain. Flaherty goes as far as to tackle how the inspiration to write--the muse--is biochemically similar to what happens in the brain during religious experiences and/or drug-induced states.

Again, it's interesting stuff. But don't read this book without knowing what you're getting into. I felt like this book talked and talked and TALKED about all kinds of things, but I was so disconnected from the text that I don't felt like I learned anything at all. Flaherty, and if she doesn't admit it, she comes close, seems to have written this book as a means to explore the "reasons" behind her own obsession with the craft, so in some ways, this is 10% memoir, hence why I slapped the "imitative fallacy" label on it earlier. Normally, I like it when writers in non-fiction share real-life experiences, but this books smells like agenda, even if the agenda is purely selfish on the author's part for wanting to find the cause behind her own "mania" and also use this book as a kind of therapy (after all, writing IS therapy for some people, and that's fine).

It must be doing something right, since it's so highly praised, but it didn't hit the right chord with me, and I can't say for sure if that's because it's due to my misplaced expectations or some obvious flaw in the book. I can say with reasonable objectivity that I feel Flaherty tackled too many subjects, and didn't do a good enough job relating the science behind it all to NORMAL writers. She kept talking about the greats and those who have a documented (or could have been documented had documentation been around at the time) illness, but never the "normal" writer who has no history of mental illness but sometimes experiences the same "symptoms" as those who do.

My Rating

Wish I'd Borrowed It: Obviously. But the really sad thing is that I'm not sure I'll ever want to touch this book again, even with a different POV. It's sad because stuff like this usually fascinates me: I eat it up. I loved The God Gene, and it essentially does the same thing: deconstructs something sacred to most people and puts it into the perspective of science. But unlike Hamer's work, Flaherty's isn't nearly as readable to me, but it may be my own fault for not being on the same level of terminology that she is.½

A wonderfully readable book about cognition and creativity, written by a neurologist whose thinking is profoundly informed by her own experience with mania and depression. She's one of those rare scientists who can write.
-- James

If you've ever had writer's block, read this book. If you are a writer and you don't understand how other writer's can get writer's block, read this book. If you're interested in literature, writing, and your brain, read this book. Be delighted. Then talk to people about it.

Hope to find this soon....in the meantime a review I found on google books. =
Editorial Review - Reed Business Information (c) 2003
Flaherty (The Massachusetts General Handbook of Neurology) mixes memoir, meditation, compendium and scholarly reportage in an odd but absorbing look at the neurological basis of writing and its pathologies. Like Oliver Sacks, Flaherty has her own story to tell a postpartum episode involving hypergraphia and depression that eventually hospitalized her. But what holds this great variety of material together is not the medical authority of a doctor, the personal authority of the patient or even the technical authority of the writer, but the author's deep ambivalence about the proper approach to her subject. Where Sacks uses his stylistic gifts to transform illness into literature, Flaherty wrestles openly with the problem of equating them, putting her own identity as a scientist and as a writer on the line as she explores the possibility of describing writing in medical terms. She details the physiological sources of the impulse to write, and of the creative drive, metaphorical construction and the various modes of stalled or evaded productivity called block. She also includes accounts of what it feels like to write (or fail to write) by Coleridge and Joan Didion as well as by aphasiacs and psychotics. But while science may help one to understand or create literature, "it may not fairly tell you that you should." To a student of literature, Flaherty's struggle between scientific rationalism and literary exuberance is familiar romantic territory. What's moving about this book is how deeply unresolved, in an age of mood pills and weblogs, that old schism remains. Writers will delight in the way information and lore are interspersed; scientists are more likely to be divided. (Jan. 6)