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Blue Cats and Chartreuse Kittens: How Synesthetes Color Their Worlds
 
 
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Blue Cats and Chartreuse Kittens: How Synesthetes Color Their Worlds [Paperback]

Patricia Lynne Duffy (Author)
4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)

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What's a "synesthete"? It's a person in whom more than one sense responds when a single sense is stimulated. Research suggests that one in 2,000 people experience synesthesia; for Duffy, letters (and the words they combine to produce) have color (hence, Blue Cats and Chartreuse Kittens ). It took technology like PET scans to confirm the unusual brain patterns of synesthesia, but some artists of the past--Liszt, Rimbaud, and Nabokov, for example--seem to have experienced it. Duffy describes her own experience and that of several contemporary artists in examining this phenomenon as a special case of the "personal coding" scientists now recognize as a vital aspect of brain development. Mary Carroll
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"A fun and worthwhile read. Whether you're a nonsynesthete amused by colored words and shapely smells or a synesthete annoyed with the notion of 'cat' being a blue word (when it's clearly brown), either way you'll shake your head and marvel."--Salon.com

"A thought-provoking glimpse at how much is lurking in other people's minds-- and how little we know about it."--Detroit Free Press
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4 Reviews
5 star:
 (2)
4 star:
 (1)
3 star:    (0)
2 star:
 (1)
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Average Customer Review
4.0 out of 5 stars (4 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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4.0 out of 5 stars An Interesting Book..., Mar 7 2004
By 
M. Kinch "chaoticpi" (Columbus, Ohio) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Blue Cats and Chartreuse Kittens: How Synesthetes Color Their Worlds (Hardcover)
I first happed upon this book by first hearing about it through a slew of synastesia web sites I had come across in my search to understand what was going on in my own head.

I as a synasthete really loved reading her personal stories and reflections and some of the research that she's found along the way. And especially loved listening to people talk about their colored letters and how they differed from mine and the shapes people saw and how they were a brigher reflection of the shapes I dimly see listening to music.

The reason that this book got only four stars is because of the fact that she acts like there isn't really that much information on synesthesia so she starts repeating the things she's said before.

If you're willing to step into the world of synesthesia and seeing for yourself the things that we see then this is a good book to start from.

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5.0 out of 5 stars Informative and fun!, Mar 23 2003
By 
This review is from: Blue Cats and Chartreuse Kittens: How Synesthetes Color Their Worlds (Paperback)
I first learned about the phenomenon of synesthesia in a review of Blue Cats in the journal Cerebrum, where Dr. Simon Baron-Cohen, a world authority on synesthesia says, "This book is a delight. As far as I know, this is the first time a synesthete has written about what it is like to live with this neurological condition - one in which the senses are intermingled, so that the spoken word, "cat", for example, may consistently be experienced as blue." The review prompted me to get the book, which opened my eyes to the very different ways that people can perceive the world. I recommend 'Blue Cats'
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2.0 out of 5 stars Tedium... yawn, Mar 14 2003
By A Customer
This review is from: Blue Cats and Chartreuse Kittens: How Synesthetes Color Their Worlds (Paperback)
I find synethesia fascinating and have read a few excellent articles on theories of the neurological basis.

This book wasn't just boring, it was tedious. I only skimmed certain pages in the second half of the book. I grew tired of reading the colors of different synethetes' letters, for example. To know that one person sees a green 'A' and another sees a blue 'A' is not compelling. A good half of the book was comprised on such droning descriptions in run-on sentences.

There were mentions of researchers in the field but little information about the research. Some famous historical figures were mentioned as well, which was interesting, but only ~10 pages worth of the book.

I would recommend this book to no one. If you got it free, I would be hesitant to recommend you spend your time reading it. Such prose may be interesting to people with a high synesthetic response, I'll leave that open as an unknown. As someone with only mild such perception but with high curiosity about neurological functioning, I found reading this book a compulsive chore.

This gets two stars instead of one since there were no gross spelling errors, the font was readable, and other trivial details.

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