This week’s theme from Top Ten Tuesday is about weird or funny things you’ve googled thanks to a book. I couldn’t think of many weird or funny things I’ve put into a search engine due to a book. I was tempted to google about the scene with the rice wine in volume four of The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System — I’m not surprised it’s a thing, but would it have helped?! (If you know, you know. I’m saying no more. I advise against googling it if you’re not in the know, and definitely don’t do so on a work or school computer.)

Anyyyyway, moving on from that, I decided to just discuss ten times I looked up more information because of a book! Note that these don’t necessarily constitute recommendations of the book, just times I enjoyably got my nerd on and dug in!

1. The Notebook, by Roland Allen. This one’s fresh in my mind since I just finally put up the review: I found myself searching for more info about ICU patient diaries, because I hadn’t come across it at all and I think it sounds like a really helpful concept. And indeed, it is a thing, and the research suggests it helps a lot!
2. Work: A History of How We Spend Our Time, by James Suzman. The feathers of a peacock have been widely cited as an example of sexual selection in birds, but Suzman suggested this isn’t true. So far, I haven’t been able to find sources backing him up, though I admit I forgot to check whether he included a source for this.
3. Christmas: A History, by Judith Flanders. I googled a lot to find her sources, which eventually a question to her revealed on her website. I went on a whole journey with this one, discussed in my review: she seems to have quoted previous scholarship which I consider to be pretty fundamentally flawed.
4. Rebel Cell, by Kat Arney. This one had me googling a few things, one of them being contagious cancers. It’s amazing how when you google this, you get repeatedly assured that cancer is not transmissible, but in fact it is. That’s frightening and unpalatable, but heyho, it’s the truth. It’s mostly attested in Tasmanian devils (transmitted during fights) and in dogs (transmitted sexually), rather than in humans, but unfortunately it has been reported occuring in recipients of organ donation.
   (While HPV can ultimately cause cancer and is transmissible, it isn’t transmission of the cancer itself. That said, quite a number of viruses can be implicated in the development of various human diseases including cancer, and we should in general get our vaccines and take all the preventative measures we can.)
5. Overkill: When Modern Medicine Goes Too Far, by Paul Offit. The author discusses a lot of common medical interventions and the evidence that suggests they have, at best, no benefit — and at worst cause unnecessary suffering. Those are big claims, and the author knows it, so he provides details of how to go to the primary sources for yourself. I still have stuff I want to dig in on further from this one! I can’t pick an example here, it was all fascinating.
6. Adrift: The Curious Tale of the Lego Lost at Sea, by Tracey Williams. I read quite a bit about Lego’s sustainability efforts after reading this one, which is about Lego shipments lost at sea and how they end up on beaches. It seems that Lego had to abandon its efforts to make bricks from recycled plastic bottles, because it was ultimately going to cause a bigger carbon footprint.
7. An Immense World, by Ed Yong. I grabbed a search engine for a lot of things here, just to read more, e.g. about the eyes of scallops. They have little mirrors made of guanine (a nucleic acid used in DNA) in their eyes — whaaaat?
8. The Good Virus, by Tom Ireland. Did you know that bacteriophage therapy is actively being used in Georgia? It involves using viruses that infect bacteria to control bacterial infections, if you’re not familiar: as Tom Ireland discusses, it may well be a way we can handle antibiotic resistance. I knew about bacteriophages and the theory of using them to treat actual infections. I had no idea it was actually in use.
9. Immune: A Journey into the Mysterious System That Keeps You Alive, by Philip Dettmer. If you are curious about the immune system, I really recommend this one. And I learned new things from it myself, even though I’m doing my MSc in infectious diseases, so know a fair bit about immunology! The bit I loved was learning that neutrophils sometimes create sticky nets using their own DNA and extrude them to capture and do damage to pathogens: neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs). Here’s the Wikipedia page for something a bit less technical… or you could read the book, which explains things beautifully for laypeople.
10. Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art, by Rebecca Wragg-Sykes. I loved this one, and there was so much worth searching up and learning more about. Consider the fact that Neanderthals (widely assumed to be rather stupid compared to us) had complex methods for making glue.

I would recommend most of those books, minus #2 and #3, on balance. So if any of that sounds fascinating, you probably know where to start!

This week’s prompt from That Artsy Reader Girl’s Top Ten Tuesday is “Covers/titles with things from nature”. I feel like I don’t often focus on cover design, so I used this as an excuse to go looking through the book covers I have saved for various posts to admire the cover designs…

It’s a bit of a random mix, as regulars have come to expect from my shelves!

This week’s theme from That Artsy Reader Girl’s Top Ten Tuesday is “bookish superpowers”. I had to have a think about this one…

1. The ability to persuade people to read books I love. I mean, beyond just the power of nagging and explaining how awesome they are (and giving them a copy). Something that nudges people straight past the inertia into giving it a try. I don’t require people to love the books I love, I just want to share them more and have more people to talk to them about!
2. The ability to stop or slow down time when I’m reading. If I could just get a little more time in my day, I’d read so much. I’d accept a more limited power that gives me just an hour a day. Anything!
3. The ability to create infinite space for books. My collection always grows to exceed the space available for it. Back in my bedroom at my parents’ home, my dad even built a shelf over the door to help contain my collection. My coffee table was actually bookshelves. Shelves everywhere. Even though I don’t keep all the books I read, and donate loads of them, over time my collection grows all the same.
4. The ability to remember the crucial details about everything I read. I’d be so much better at reading series if I could just put them on pause for a bit and not forget the major plot points of the first book!
5. The ability to fully forget things I read. Sometimes, I wish I could experience something again for the first time, with only the knowledge that I really loved it.
6. The ability to fix book snobs who sneer at the things other people read. I mean, this sounds like brainwashing, so maybe not seriously, but I wish I had some way to convince people to stop judging what other people read. Sneering at romance novels and looking down on graphic novels doesn’t make you look clever! Not everything is for everyone, but that’s fine. Enjoyment is what matters.
7. The ability to get hold of a book in the very instant I decide I want it, to the benefit of an indie bookshop. I know, I know, I want the world. But my reading is so whim-based, sometimes books don’t arrive before the mood is lost, unless I use Amazon. And that sucks!
8. The ability to magically bring a book back into print. I was sadly rather put off second-hand books for reasons I don’t want to discuss (since it’s gross), so sometimes when a book is out of print, it’d be nice to be able to summon it back into print magically, so I can grab a new copy.
9. The ability to read books that never got written. I’m thinking about Dream’s library from The Sandman — something like that! Sequels that never got written, ideas that never got fleshed out, the things authors would produce if they had world enough and time.
10. The ability to fix typos in all copies of a book once I spot them. I’d be doing a favour to humankind!

Okay, so some of those are a bit silly, but it’s fun to dream sometimes…