Tag: books

Top Ten Tuesday: Books Randomly Grabbed

Posted November 4, 2025 by Nicky in General / 34 Comments

I thought this week’s Top Ten Tuesday theme would be kinda fun, and maybe a good prompt to get round to reading some books I’ve been neglecting, so… here we go. The prompt is the ten books you find from randomly grabbing books from your shelves — let’s see what I find on my shelves!

Love, Theoretically, by Ali Hazelwood. I haven’t read this one yet. I’ve enjoyed a couple of Hazelwood’s books/stories, so I’m looking forward to getting around to it, though I have to be in the right mood to pick something described as a romcom. I get embarrassment squick really easily!
A Prayer for the Crown-Shy, by Becky Chambers. The second book in the Monk & Robot duology. I didn’t love these as much as Chambers’ other work, but there’s always something kind about her work that I’m drawn to.
The Book Eaters, by Sunyi Dean. Ah, definitely one I’ve been neglecting. I passed it up for review because I wasn’t quite sure about it, but ended up buying it a couple of years ago in Topping & Company in Edinburgh (an excellent indie bookshop).
A Mourning Wedding, by Carola Dunn. This is fairly deep into the Daisy Dalrymple series, and probably one of the furthest along I’ve read, though I haven’t got to it yet in my reread (preparatory to actually finishing the series). By this point things are a little repetitive, to be honest, and it’s possibly time for me to let go of this series.
Merchants of Doubt, by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway. I’ve been meaning to read this for ages — it digs into what is an absolute scandal of scientists manipulating public opinion with unfounded claims. I think this one is only getting more relevant, not less, though the examples will be out of date.
Hot Earl Summer, by Erica Ridley. This is in the Wild Wynchesters series, and I’m a liiiittle behind. I should really catch up, because I’ve absolutely loved the books. This one sounds a bit over the top and bonkers, but hopefully it’ll be fun anyway.
Heaven Official’s Blessing, vol 8, by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu. Ahhh, my beloved. This volume finishes off the story and contains the extras as well. There’s some really lovely stuff, though I can’t say it’s my favourite volume because it is a bit scattered, given it’s about a third of the main story plus disconnected extras. Still, a wonderful series.
The Shards of Heaven, by Michael Livingston. Hm, I’ve forgotten everything I might have ever known about this one. Looking at the summary, I’m curious how it turns out, mixing magic and the fallout from the assassination of Julius Caesar. Might have to be in the right mood for it, though, since it’s a series and I can be quite slow with reading the next book sometimes.
Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities, by Bettany Hughes. It’s… been a while since I picked this one up. I want to learn more about this part of the world, especially beyond just Byzantium (which I have read about in the past), but this book’s daunting me, I must admit.
Archivist Wasp, by Nicole Kornher-Stace. I’d almost forgotten about this one, but I’ve been meaning to read it forever. The ghost-hunting, post-apocalyptic setup sounds fascinating.

And there we go! I almost wanted to keep going and pull a few more random choices…

Tags: books, Top Ten Tuesday

Review – History in Flames

Posted November 3, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

History in Flames: The Destruction and Survival of Medieval Manuscripts

by Robert Bartlett

Genres: History, Non-fiction
Pages: 220
Rating: three-stars

Synopsis:
To what extent does our knowledge of the past rely upon written sources? And what happens when these sources are destroyed? Focusing on the manuscripts of the Middle Ages, History in Flames explores cases in which large volumes of written material were destroyed during a single day. This destruction didn't occur by accident of fire or flood but by human forces such as arson, shelling and bombing. This book examines the political and military events that preceded the moment of destruction, from the Franco-Prussian War and the Irish Civil War to the complexities of World War II; it analyses the material lost and how it came to be where it was. At the same time, it discusses the heroic efforts made by scholars and archivists to preserve these manuscripts, even partially. History in Flames reminds us that historical knowledge rests on material remains, and that these remains are vulnerable.

Robert Bartlett’s History in Flames is not that different to a bunch of other books I’ve read semi-recently that discuss the destruction of libraries and books, except that he also discusses more quotidian manuscripts as well — records of gifts and debts, government records, etc. It’s a relatively slim volume, first defining the problem and what we know about manuscript losses, and then discussing some particular examples.

He does manage to avoid being judgemental of e.g. peasants destroying records of debts, mostly, but doesn’t really extend the same kind of understanding around the destruction of Irish records, which sometimes feels a little odd. Mostly, though, pretty interesting, and a couple of cases I didn’t know much or anything about, which made a bit of a change from the usual “libraries and war”, “book burnings”, etc, books.

It’s a pretty quick read, but conscientious about sourcing, which is nice to see as well. I long for numbered footnotes, but at least the end notes make clear not just the chapter but also the page they refer to.

Rating: 3/5 (“liked it”)

Tags: book reviews, books, history, non-fiction, Robert Bartlett

My Year in Non-fiction

Posted November 2, 2025 by Nicky in General / 9 Comments

Non-fiction November technically started on October 27th, and I’m just sliding in under the wire with my post for the first week!

So far this year I’ve read 87 non-fiction books (28% of my reads overall), according to StoryGraph, and one of my first reads of the year was non-fiction. I’ve turned to non-fiction increasingly as I got older, finding a lot of solace from anxiety in treating curiosity as its antidote — both curiosity about the things I’m frightened of, and curiosity in general.

With so many books read, I’m not going to discuss all 87, but I want to pick out some favourites if I can! It’s tough to split them into any kind of sections, because I read all sorts, but there are a few topics I turn to time and again. I’ll stick with books for which I’ve posted reviews already, though there are a handful of lovely choices in my review backlog as well.

Health and disease

I’m sorry, I know, it’s not very cheery! But my most recent degree was in infectious diseases, and the ins and outs of health and disease are both scary and fascinating.

Laura Dawes’ Fighting Fit covers the efforts to keep Britain healthy during WWII. The picture is surprisingly rosy, in part thanks to scientists and physicians who experimented (including on themselves) to try to figure out optimum diets, etc. John Green’s Everything is Tuberculosis is less cheery, given the ongoing world threat of tuberculosis (largely suffered by those in poverty, which is why many believe TB is no longer a threat). It’s now my go-to recommendation for a pop-science read around one of the diseases I find most fascinating, and on which I wrote my undergraduate dissertation.

Monty Lyman’s The Immune Mind wasn’t a total win — I had a few reservations about a couple of elements — but it’s fascinating, and offers some surprising suggestions about treating mental health.

Finally, if you’re in possession of a female-shaped body, Sarah Graham’s Rebel Bodies may be of use to you, especially if you live in the UK. It discusses some of the medical bias and misconceptions about women’s bodies, in an inclusive way. At the very least, it’s validating.

Nature

This isn’t a topic I deliberately seek out, but there’s a lot of popular science out there about it, so it regularly crosses my bookshelves anyway!

First, a quick mention of Matt Sewell’s charming short collections about birds, suitable for children, but beautifully illustrated — I think I only reviewed Penguins and Other Sea Birds, as they’re each very similar. On a similar vein, but aimed more at adults, there’s Around the World in 80 Birds, illustrated by Ryuto Miyake.

On another tack, there’s Amorina Kingdon’s Sing Like Fish, which discusses sound underwater with a wealth of examples… and a bit more depressingly, Hugh Warwick’s Cull of the Wild: Killing in the Name of Conservation, which wrestles with some important questions.

Fashion history

I never expected to be into this, to be honest, but between Great British Sewing Bee and the memories of a childhood book where you had to collect little cards and stick them in to chart fashion through the ages, somehow it slipped in. And it often turns out to be much more than just the history of fashion, since fashion tells us a good deal about all kinds of trends, like women’s rights.

The whole “Fashion in Detail” series from the V&A is lovely, but Sau Fong Chan’s Chinese Dress in Detail is particularly well put together. The others are very enjoyable too, but Chinese Dress in Detail is the best organised.

General history

I know, this probably deserves to be broken down into categories like “ancient history” and so on, with many more books included, but I haven’t got the patience, ahaha. So here are some very brief history highlights; I’ve tried to pick out some of the less well-trodden titles I haven’t seen other bloggers talk about.

The Other Olympians is a fascinating dissection of sport and panic about gender, and the links between those “concerns” and fascism leading up to WWII (and not just in Germany, but also in the US in particular). As for David Bellos and Alexandre Montagu’s Who Owns This Sentence, I found it surprisingly lively for a book about copyright history, and enjoyed it a lot.

Paul Koudounaris’ Heavenly Bodies: Cult Treasures and Spectacular Saints from the Catacombs was an impulse pick because of the beautiful illustrations, and I couldn’t possibly regret it. It’s macabre, but fascinating and beautiful too.

Finally, Sara Lodge’s The Mysterious Case of the Victorian Female Detective upended some of my assumptions, discussing both fictional and historical sources to point out the role of women in detection was a lot broader than you might think.

Other

And so we come to some books I find harder to place, but which deserve their moment…

Claire Dederer’s Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma came at a particularly important moment for me, given the accusations of Neil Gaiman. Over the years, I’d mostly got less interested in his work, but I loved Good Omens still (including the TV adaptation, though I consider the two quite different beasts, and I didn’t love season two). It offers no answers, and I have heavy caveats about the examples of female “monsters” Dederer includes — but it was useful in that particular moment to read about someone else wrestling with it.

Maud Rowell’s Blind Spot: Exploring and Educating on Blindness is part of the Inklings series of short non-fiction books, an excellent discovery of this year. It’s also on a topic near and dear to my heart, given my previous volunteering work and family connections. And finally Against Technoableism: Rethinking Who Needs Improvement is something I think we could all use pondering on a bit more.

That’s been quite the whistle-stop tour, and I’ve inevitably missed out something I found amazing — but I hope it’s a good sampling of the riches I’ve found this year!

As for what I’d like to read more of… well, everything, whether it fits into my categories above or not. There’s so much to learn about, after all.

NB: sorry if this shows up in feeds/emails again. I accidentally unpublished it and had to republish.

Tags: books, non-fiction, Non-fiction November

Stacking the Shelves & The Sunday Post

Posted November 1, 2025 by Nicky in General / 24 Comments

The weekend again already?! The time is flying by.

Books acquired this week

This was going to be another week of nothing, but then at the last moment I realised I was auto-approved on Netgalley for this, and couldn’t resist…

I’ve been awaiting this one for a long time, so very excited for it!

Posts from this week

Let’s start with the usual review roundup:

Alt-history crime: Pagans, by James Alistair Henry (3/5 stars, “liked it”)
Non-fiction: Bitch: A revolutionary guide to sex, evolution and the female animal, by Lucy Cooke (3/5 stars, “liked it”)
Poetry: Magnetic Field: The Marsden Poems, by Simon Armitage (1/5 stars, “didn’t like it”)
Romance manga: The Troublesome Guest of Sotomura Detective Agency, by Kusama Sakae (2/5 stars, “it was okay”)
Fantasy novella: The Rider, the Ride, the Rich Man’s Wife, by Premee Mohamed (4/5 stars, “really liked it”)
Historical romance: You Should Be So Lucky, by Cat Sebastian (5/5 stars, “loved it”)

And a What Are You Reading Wednesday post, as usual.

What I’m reading

It’s been a busy, busy week for reading, as I worked on finishing up with Book Spin Bingo and Comics Bingo. So let’s see — here’s the sneak peek of books I’ve finished this week and plan to review soon!

I’m going to need to start posting more than one review a day to keep up, at this rate!

Over this weekend, I’m not sure what I’ll read, because I’ve only just drafted my November reading list, and there’s so much choice! But chances are high that I’ll make a start on vol 4 of The Disabled Tyrant’s Beloved Pet Fish (last volume, sob sob sob), and maybe read some more of the Tied to You manhwa.

Linking up with Reading Reality’s Stacking the Shelves, Caffeinated Reviewer’s The Sunday Post, and the Sunday Salon over at Readerbuzz.

Tags: books, Stacking the Shelves, weekly roundup

Review – You Should Be So Lucky

Posted October 31, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 4 Comments

You Should Be So Lucky

by Cat Sebastian

Genres: Historical Fiction, Romance
Pages: 395
Rating: five-stars

Synopsis:
The 1960 baseball season is shaping up to be the worst year of Eddie O’Leary’s life. He can’t manage to hit the ball, his new teammates hate him, he’s living out of a suitcase, and he’s homesick. When the team’s owner orders him to give a bunch of interviews to some snobby reporter, he’s ready to call it quits. He can barely manage to behave himself for the length of a game, let alone an entire season. But he’s already on thin ice, so he has no choice but to agree.

Mark Bailey is not a sports reporter. He writes for the arts page, and these days he’s barely even managing to do that much. He’s had a rough year and just wants to be left alone in his too-empty apartment, mourning a partner he’d never been able to be public about. The last thing he needs is to spend a season writing about New York’s obnoxious new shortstop in a stunt to get the struggling newspaper more readers.

Isolated together within the crush of an anonymous city, these two lonely souls orbit each other as they slowly give in to the inevitable gravity of their attraction. But Mark has vowed that he’ll never be someone’s secret ever again, and Eddie can’t be out as a professional athlete. It’s just them against the world, and they’ll both have to decide if that’s enough.

I’ve enjoyed a lot of Cat Sebastian’s books, but We Could Be So Good and You Should Be So Lucky are probably my favourites, and I think the best written. This one features Eddie, a baseball player, and Mark, a reporter who usually writes book reviews (and really has no need to work at all thanks to having quite a lot of money) who ends up covering his career and the slump he’s in.

Eddie’s an absolute disaster-sweetheart: he has very little filter, he says what he thinks even what he thinks isn’t something that should be voiced to reporters, and he hasn’t yet had to really work at being a baseball player. Mark’s… grumpier, and guarding a hurt he can’t really talk about, after the unexpected loss of his boyfriend, but he can’t help but respond to Eddie’s sunniness and find himself slowly wanting to participate in the world again. Also, he has a dog, who of course gets loved on by Eddie.

We do also see a few glimpses of characters from We Could Be So Good — having read it isn’t necessary to enjoy this one, but if you have, then it’s lovely to see the cameo appearances.

I loved the way this patiently worked through Mark’s fears and inability to say that this is what he wants for sure. Eddie doesn’t push it too far or rush, he’s far too decent, and so there’s a slow burn effect even though their attraction is obvious fairly early on. There’s also a fair bit of growth for Eddie though, not just in his relationship with Mark — though he does have to be sure about his feelings and find ways to make that relationship work — but as a baseball player and a part of his team too, giving the whole thing a satisfying story other than the relationship. His relationship with his mother is adorable.

Also, this will seem like a non-sequitur if you haven’t read the book, but it made me want to reread The Haunting of Hill House.

Overall, just lovely and warm and kind. It does reckon constantly with the homophobia of the period, but it finds ways for Eddie and Mark to live as honestly as they can despite it, and their relationship is adorable.

Rating: 5/5 (“loved it”)

Tags: book reviews, books, Cat Sebastian, historical fiction, romance

Review – The Rider, The Ride, The Rich Man’s Wife

Posted October 30, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 4 Comments

The Rider, The Ride, The Rich Man's Wife

by Premee Mohamed

Genres: Fantasy
Pages: 115
Rating: four-stars

Synopsis:
Lucas is dismayed when his brother Kit is chosen to take part in the Hunt: a chase that takes place every seven years and acts as a sacrifice to the Rider and his Wife, ensuring a plentiful harvest, at least that year. Determined to save his brother, all he has left, Lucas hatches a plan to save Kit and accompany him in his struggle to survive—setting the scene for a race through a post-apocalyptic landscape filled with more danger than either boy could ever imagine. The Rider, The Ride, The Rich Man’s Wife is a thrilling, post-apocalyptic chase, marrying Fairy Tale, Western and Adventure. Hang on tight!

Premee Mohamed’s The Rider, The Ride, The Rich Man’s Wife is weird and atmospheric, like many of her novellas. I’ve enjoyed pretty much all of them, if not all, and this one’s gonna linger with me a bit as well, pondering its secrets. It’s basically a story about a kind of Wild Hunt, wrapped round with some rules (one victim, marked, anyone who interferes can also be killed, if the victim can survive until morning they’re safe) and spiced up with twins, where of course only one of them gets marked.

I loved Luke and Kit’s closeness, it felt really organic and grown out of the life they were living, and I loved the setting as well. Mohamed doesn’t tell us everything, sketching in the world and the boundaries of it, and that leaves plenty of scope for imagination. What exactly is going on in the other world they step into? Does the girl they meet escape? Will there be retribution for what Lucas and Kit do in order for Kit to escape? And why exactly is the hunt happening, anyway? And so many other questions.

It’s a fascinating novella that leaves lots of questions lingering, taking its power from that atmosphere and the bond between the two boys. I wasn’t even sure entirely what was happening at times, but… nonetheless, it got under my skin.

Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)

Tags: book reviews, books, Premee Mohamed, SF/F

WWW Wednesday

Posted October 29, 2025 by Nicky in General / 2 Comments

What have you recently finished reading?

Kacen Callender’s Felix Ever After, which… I think would’ve meant a lot to me 10-15 years ago. Though it would probably have also been more viscerally upsetting 10-15 years ago, since the main character gets private details exposed in school which is reminiscent to me of someone finding private stuff of mine and outing me to the entire school as a lesbian (not a term I use for myself, but close enough to true to kick off several years of intense bullying). It was very teenage, in a way that doesn’t speak to me much now, but I think I’m glad I gave it a shot. I need to mull over how to properly review it.

What are you currently reading?

A lot of books at once, as I try to finish off my Book Spin Bingo card! Let’s see… the last thing I was reading was Emily Tesh’s The Incandescent, which is pretty fun. I have some theories about where things are going, and I kind of hope I’m wrong, just so it can surprise me.

I’m also still partway through volume three of The Disabled Tyrant’s Beloved Pet Fish, which is still cute and silly. I’ve also started on: Anna Bright’s The Hedge Witch of Foxhall, which I’m still kind of dubious about; Mary Robinette Kowal’s The Spare Man, which I’m enjoying but in which the mystery so far is not that mysterious apart from one element; aaand Fonda Lee and Shannon Lee’s Breath of the Dragon, which is enjoyable enough but not totally wowing me right now.

What will you be reading next?

Volume one of Mo Xiang Tong Xiu’s The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, also for my Book Spin Bingo card! I’d wanted to finish Disabled Tyrant first, but I had a couple of days of not reading much, so it won’t work out if I want to finish off the bingo card.

I also want to read a couple of manga and comics I’ve identified for a comics bingo card, but that might have to wait for November. Sadly, there are only so many reading hours in the day, for some weird reason.

Tags: books, WWW Wednesday

Review – The Troublesome Guest of Sotomura Detective Agency

Posted October 28, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

The Troublesome Guest of Sotomura Detective Agency

by Kusama Sakae

Genres: Manga, Mystery, Romance
Pages: 265
Rating: two-stars

Synopsis:
Matsuda Kei is a private investigator who specializes in quirky cases centered on his local neighborhood around the shopping arcade. He's recently taken on a new roommate (and lover) named Kamiko who is unemployed, ruthlessly horny, and was actually a classmate from his past.

While the two work together to solve cases, they carry on in what starts as a strictly physical relationship... until Matsuda finds that this temporary situation he has entered with Kamiko might be turning into something more.

Sakae Kusama’s The Troublesome Guest of Sotomura Detective Agency is a one-shot manga which features a private investigator (Matsuda Kei) and a former classmate (Kamiko) who ends up running into him as part of a case. Kamiko starts freeloading on Matsuda, and it becomes obvious that they were both intrigued by each other back in school, but Matsuda judged Kamiko for his dating habits and Kamiko felt unfairly judged.

They start off in a super casual sexual relationship and have lots and lots of sex, which I think comes somewhat at the expense of developing a relationship between them. There are glimpses of it, for example when Matsuda decides to figure out what happened to Kamiko’s childhood dog in order to set his mind at rest about it, but mostly it’s just a lot of sex.

Still, when I think about it, both definitely had redeeming characteristics: Matsuda might be grumpy all the time, but he helps people out, and Kamiko begins to care about Matsuda and apply himself to doing the same work (and really throws his heart into it when Matsuda’s in trouble).

I wasn’t a huge fan of the art, but the story (the detective stuff but also Kamiko’s horndog ways) kinda reminded me a bit of Dee and Ryo in FAKE — it’s not the same story by any means, far from it, and doesn’t go as deep into either character’s background or thoughts, but that did give me a nostalgic smile.

Not for me, ultimately, but that’s mostly a personal taste thing.

Rating: 2/5 (“it was okay”)

Tags: book reviews, books, Kusama Satae, manga, mystery, romance

Review – Magnetic Field: The Marsden Poems

Posted October 27, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Magnetic Field: The Marsden Poems

by Simon Armitage

Genres: Poetry
Pages: 89

Synopsis:
Growing up in Marsden among the hills of West Yorkshire, Simon Armitage has always associated his early poetic experiences with the night-time view from his bedroom window, those 'private, moonstruck observations' and the clockwork comings and goings in the village providing rich subject matter for his first poems. Decades on, that window continues to operate as both framework and focal point for the writing, the vastness of the surrounding moors always at his shoulder and forming a constant psychological backdrop, no matter how much time has elapsed and how distant those experiences.

Magnetic Field brings together Armitage's Marsden poems, from his very first pamphlet to new work from a forthcoming collection. It offers personal insight into a preoccupation that shows no signs of fading, and his perspective on a locality he describes as 'transcendent and transgressive', a genuinely unique region forming a frontier territory between many different worlds. Magnetic Field also invites questions about the forging of identity, the precariousness of memory, and our attachment to certain places and the forces they exert.

I remember liking some of Simon Armitage’s poems, so I was surprised that I didn’t really connect with or enjoy a single one in this collection! It’s deeply rooted in place, being a collection of his poems about his childhood home, and it’s not a picture I connect with myself, so perhaps that’s part of it… though really, I didn’t get a sense of warmth or place from it at all.

Maybe I misremembered and I’m just not a fan of Armitage’s work — I’m not totally giving up, I think I remember one of his other collections, so I’ll see if the library has it and I’ll give that a shot, but… sadly, it might just not be my thing.

It is a nice collection though, with some black-and-white images added and an introduction explaining why a collection of poems about Marsden, and what the place has meant to him.

Rating: 1/5 (“didn’t like it”)

Tags: book reviews, books, poetry, Simon Armitage

Review – Bitch

Posted October 26, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Bitch: A Revolutionary Guide to Sex, Evolution and the Female Animal

by Lucy Cooke

Genres: Non-fiction, Science
Pages: 400
Rating: three-stars

Synopsis:
What does it mean to be female? Mother, carer, the weaker sex? Think again.

In the last few decades a revolution has been brewing in zoology and evolutionary biology. Lucy Cooke introduces us to a riotous cast of animals, and the scientists studying them, that are redefining the female of the species.

Meet the female lemurs of Madagascar, our ancient primate cousins that dominate the males of their species physically and politically. Or female albatross couples, hooking up together to raise their chicks in Hawaii. Or the meerkat mothers of the Kalahari Desert – the most murderous mammals on the planet.

The bitches in Bitch overturn outdated binary expectations of bodies, brains, biology and behaviour. Lucy Cooke's brilliant new book will change how you think – about sex, sexual identity and sexuality in animals and also the very forces that shape evolution.

Lucy Cooke’s Bitch aims to re-examine things that are taken for biological truths (like the idea that eggs are more costly so female animals evolved to be choosy while sperm is “cheap” and male animals are always profligate with it) in order to debunk the idea that female animals are less evolved than male animals.

She digs into this through a wide range of examples, but it’s worth noting that she really takes until the last chapter to wrestle with the fact that a male/female binary is an overly reductive and in fact unhelpful way of viewing the world. Each example, until the last chapter, is predicated on the idea that there are female animals and male animals, and some of those female animals are a bit more masculinised than we thought, or the sex roles are a bit more fluid or just plain different than we thought. It’s only in the last chapter that she reckons with species that have more than two recognised sexes (humans also have more than two phenotypic sexes, but because intersex individuals are comparatively rare and viewed as simply aberrant, we don’t really talk about that and this is never acknowledged) and the fact that the variation between sexes is actually often less than the variation between any given pair of individuals (including individuals considered to be of the same sex).

Which is to say, she doesn’t really properly reckon with it at all, since it comes in as an afterthought. As far as she goes, there are some interesting examples that overturn and complicate scientists’ expectations.

It might be a good one to sneak in some more complicated biology on people who think that genes or hormones or genitalia are the be-all and end-all of sex, but have some space between their ears for new concepts.

Personally, I learned about some new-to-me examples, and learned about some scientists who are doing interesting work, but it wasn’t overall that surprising or new to me.

Rating: 3/5 (“liked it”)

Tags: book reviews, books, Lucy Cooke, non-fiction, science