Your reaction to this book will probably depend on your interest in the subject matter, but there are so many great points of entry to this topic that it's sure to be fascinating to just about anybody.

Musicophilia is essentially a neuroscientist's report on the effects of music on the brain. There is a ridiculously wide variety of topics covered, from musical hallucinations, to savant composers and performers, to the role of music therapy in treating a variety of disorders, to perfect pitch, to why you get that song stuck in your head, etc.

In exploring all of these topics, Sacks references countless studies and anecdotes that shed interesting light on the subject. Some topics are so mysterious as to be unexplainable, and in these situations, Sacks does his best to guess at the neurological underpinnings of the phenomenon, implying a grand sense of wonder and mystery at the human brain. In other situations, Sacks is able to get very specific about the neurological causes and effects of particular things. I learned a ton of information from book, some of it merely fun anecdotal stories about music, some of it powerfully challenging the way I think about music, myself, and humans in general.

I especially enjoyed sections about musical savants, the effect of music on childhood development, music's ability to enhance other brain functions, and the strange implications that the brain processes music on a completely different and much more pervasive system than it does other sound.

I also appreciated that Sacks understands what it means to be a professional musician, and is able to discuss it in that way, but is not limited to it either. Many writers who try to talk about music do so from the perspective of the "uninitiated." When you've studied music intensively as a performer and composer, you think of it completely differently than someone who merely listens to music for enjoyment. Additionally, performers of different styles have disparate approaches, i.e. the jazz musician who primarily improvises relates to music and his instrument differently than a classically trained performer, which is different from a composer, although there is significant overlap. That ability to analyze music on a structural level, as well as deal with issues and particular problems affecting players of specific instruments and styles, is something that sets this book apart from the pack. Even so, Sacks never goes above the heads of the non-musician, so there's no need to feel intimidated.

My only real complaint here is that the footnotes get a bit ridiculous. Oftentimes, a page will devote more space to footnotes than to the actual text of the book. While some of the footnotes are nice and interesting, I felt that not only were there so many that it became intrusive, but many of them didn't need to be footnotes at all. They are simply more studies or alternate anecdotes that didn't need to be separated from the main text. They could have simply been the next paragraph and no one would have noticed. But this is a petty complaint.

Overall, this book is fascinating, and has plenty to offer people who aren't "into" music or science. It's just plain interesting stuff. If you're even remotely interested in the way your brain works, or in music in any sense, you owe this book a read. It's easy to skip around to the chapters that interest you most if you want, but there's lots of unexpected treasures littered around all the sections for those that take their time.