Although the assembled evidence is more than compelling, I ultimately found this book disappointing. The same point gets made over and over again in each chapter--water in all forms, including representations of water, has tremendous healing benefits of all sorts. The research results he describes all support each other in this, granted from different disciplines, but the author fails to explore the underlying issues and the connections between them deeply enough to sustain a monograph length argument. Without pushing that boundary, this should have been a long essay. ( )

All the reasons I live here, scientifically reinforced! ( )

New Age ruminations on the life-changing spirituality of water.
Okay if this is your kind of thing. ( )

Look, maybe I went into this book looking for something it wasn't. Maybe I expected too much from this book.
I, personally, like the sea. I spend my commute shuttling by Dublin Bay, and make an effort to appreciate it, every morning.
But I didn't connect with the writing, which was strong enough at the start and then fizzled into anecdotes and filler and a series of lists. There were lots of stories of, say, Professor Joe, intrepid socio-neuro-biologist, taking his students out into the wilderness, often by the sea, and then asking them to take a test, or quizzing them about their mental state. And they're more relaxed! Blue Mind!
Unless we're talking about the plot of Blue Mind: I Know What You Did Last Summer, in which the professor then begins hunting the college co-eds, and really, they should have known better because his questions and quizzes and field trips to more and more remote watery places was getting creepy. In Blue Minds: Halloween, Professor Joe returns by staying out in the wilderness, accessible only by kayak, paddle board, swan boat, or boogie board, and interviewing unsuspecting campers in their natural habitat. "How do you feel now?" asks Joe, to the frightened campers, huddled around the campfire, wondering if they throw the tin of baked beans at this deranged, wooly mad professor will it make him go away or simply enrage him into Red Mind (which is a whole other movie franchise).
I feel like the main point of the book was 'water is good. Oh, but, if you like extreme sports, those are good too. Just, you know, water is good.' The arguments he makes aren't really arguments, and there's nothing hugely revelatory in the book. 'Take care of the planet, I have this blue marble viral thing you might want to do, your brain relaxes on water and the color blue, unless you think of the things to fear in the ocean, which some people do, being in or near water relaxes you, if you hear the sound of the sea and you are told it's the sound of the sea you'll feel more calm, generally (though if you're told it's the sound of traffic you'll feel more stressed). The ocean supports empathy?'

If you want to read an excellent book that captures the 'stoke' someone like a surfer feels around water, Thad Ziolkowski does an excellent job in his memoir, On A Wave, that would be much more worth your time. ( )

Makes his point repeatedly. ( )