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Der Geruch Der Erinnerung (2013)

by Molly Birnbaum(Favorite Author)

3.38 of 5 Votes: 2

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

btb

review 1: As one of those unfortunates who was born without a sense of smell. I found this very interesting. Unlike those who have lost this sense due to accident of illness, I have no memory or even any idea of what smells are like. This book has given me great insights into just what I've been missing all my life, which left me feeling quite sad for a bit. Her discussion of how hard it is to describe scents, for which there is no real vocabulary, unlike sound or taste, helped me to understand this inability of people with this sense to describe scents to me. I must admit I spent several days attempting to smell things, which was ridiculous of course. I can't even smell ammonia. My brothers (two of four are also afflicted) were in great demand at school to remove stink bombs from ... morescience laboratories. More seriously, one who worked for a while for a water authority, narrowly escaped serious injury or death while inspecting a sewerage tunnel which was, unknown to him, full of some very nasty gas. So those of you with functioning noses be grateful. I was also interested to find that we have to learn scents, although I guess we learn what we are seeing and hearing as well. But the fact that when her sense of smell returned, she didn't know what she was smelling, unless she had a visual clue.
review 2: As a recent anosmic, I looked to this book to shed light on my situation after a car accident that also left me with no taste or smell. As Molly states in the books, Western and medical doctors have very little information on this topic and offer only vague answers like "time will tell." I found her book useful in that she's gone and done some of the treatments and talked to the same people I've been researching, and also that she was able to be more specific about the actual issue at hand. However, I can't imagine that this would be an interesting book for anyone besides me. It was even a little homework-like at times for myself. There were times I had some "aha" moments and felt she did a great job of explaining senses and a newfound relationship to them, but her life is pretty safe and comfortable otherwise and the little studied field of olfactory issues is kind of boring. less

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