You often read about the power of ‘word of mouth’ in publishing, but you rarely witness it in action. Norman Doidge’s The Brain that Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science was published in 2007. Last year, I received gushing recommendations from two friends, so I gave it to my wife for Christmas. She loved it. My daughter read it with the same pleasure. I put it on my ‘to be read’ shelf.
Well, we’re now in 2009 and the phenomenon continues to grow. Readings, one of our fine independent bookshops in Melbourne, held a book signing last night. When I rang to reserve four seats, I was informed the session would be standing room only. So it was – the back of the bookshop was crammed with people. In his introduction, the Readings guy said the shop had never had such a large crowd, and he also informed us that The Brain that Changes Itself had been the bestselling book ever at the just-concluded Sydney Writers Festival. So . . . two years after publication, a rollercoaster of success is still gathering momentum.
Doidge turned out to be a lucid and passionate speaker, and his thesis about the plasticity of the brain, challenging conceptions such as the brain as machine, was so fascinating that I’ll now hurry up my reading. But what was also interesting was that most (though not all) of the listeners were older. It dawned on me that many had come to hear the latest magical prescription to slow down ageing. If they were told brain exercises can, for example, slow down the onset of Alzheimer’s, well then they’d get down to work! And two thoughts occurred to me: (i) I bet they don’t realize the effort required to rewire our grey matter is much greater than doing the morning’s crosswords, and (ii) surely it would be better if they engaged in intellectual activity for the love of the subjects and the thinking itself.