Phil Hogan, writing in The Observer (UK), says he's made it up to Chapter 5 in The Accidental Mind and offers this useful summary of the book so far...
"Now, where was I? Ah, the book, The Accidental Mind by David J Linden. It's brilliant, I'm sure, though the more I read the less I know. I gather from his general thesis that brains are not as brilliantly engineered as we like to think. We might have a hundred billion cells going at it round the clock but they're constantly misfiring or getting the wrong end of the stick. Brains are more Heath Robinson than Bill Gates, having evolved over the aeons simply by growing new pipes and cables on top of the crappy old ones.
And while ordinary electrical signals happily travel down copper wire at almost the speed of light (669 million mph), brain signals go as fast as a Ford Fiesta. Not only that, but you have to imagine a Ford Fiesta with stuff falling out of the boot. And - this is the best bit - to get from one cell to the next you have to jump out of your Ford Fiesta and swim with your message across a synaptic channel of neurological gloop before getting in another hopeless Ford Fiesta at the other side, air hissing out of tyres, wing mirrors hanging off. That's how high tech it is. It's a wonder we can find our way to the bus stop."