Posted August 9, 2021 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
Index, a History of The, Dennis Duncan
Received to review via Netgalley; publication date 2nd September 2021
Indexes don’t exactly sound like the most scintillating of subjects, I guess. On the face of it, they’re such a utilitarian thing, and most of us don’t give them a second thought. But I really enjoy histories that dig into things we take for granted like this, and it’s usually surprisingly rewarding, so I thought this sounded like a good time — and I wasn’t wrong. It’s not just about the minutiae of how to create a good index (although that’s certainly part of it), but also about people’s attitudes to indexes, and what that says about people’s needs, wants and fears when it comes to literacy and scholarship.
The highlight of the book is probably Duncan’s delighted tour of how to use an index to be truly petty. Would you imagine that an index could cost a politician an election? Well, there’s at least one case where an index was a factor. Can you picture getting one over on your rival with a catty little index entry? There’s some really fascinating stuff lurking behind some indexes, and it’s fascinating.
I also thought the examples of using indexes as a format for telling fiction were interesting; as Duncan says, they don’t quite work because they can’t quite imitate the random, non-chronological format… but there are some really imaginative stories out there which give it a go.
Overall, this was everything I’d hoped for.
Rating: 4/5
Tags: book reviews, books, Dennis Duncan, history, non-fiction
Posted August 8, 2021 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments
Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, Robin Wall Kimmerer
From the reviews and blurbs I read for this, I was expecting something that used scientific knowledge a little more than this. It is there, woven into how the author understands the world… but much of it is autobiography, a memoir of how the author came to understand the world through an amalgam of scientific knowledge and training (she is a botanist) and the teachings of indigenous people. She is Potawatomi herself, though those are not the only traditions she references.
I’m afraid that far from being a spirit-nourishing breath of fresh air, as others have found it, it ultimately struck me as very sentimental. She romanticises indigenous lives and teachings to a huge degree. It’s difficult, because of course much of what she says about the changes colonisation brought to the US is true, and I agree with her about the need to live more constructively with other beings on Earth — I don’t think there’s much I actually disagreed with at all! (I can think of one point: she wants to see ecosystems restored to exactly what they were, while I’m not sure that is always possible or desirable. The clock can’t simply be turned back.)
…And yet, still, I found the whole book very sentimental and a little, I guess, vicariously embarrassing? I’m sure the author would view that to some extent as my poverty of spirit, but on the one hand, I don’t find science so devoid of wonder and warmth as she says, and on the other, I don’t think I need to imbue inanimate objects with innate purpose and souls in order to treat the world with respect.
Admittedly, it also does not help that I don’t share her experiences. Britain has different flora and fauna, obviously, and it’s that which would be more likely to spark off that sentimentality in me; talk about wild blackberries on the side of Caerphilly mountain and I can summon up the right warmth, but I have no idea what sweetgrass even looks like beyond the very vaguest outline.
In the end, just… didn’t enjoy it. Had hoped for more science and less sentiment.
Rating: 2/5
Tags: book reviews, books, non-fiction, Robin Wall Kimmerer, science
Posted August 8, 2021 by Nicky in General / 0 Comments
Welp, busy week here. I keep hoping that “next week” will be less bumpy, but it never seems to be true. Ah well!
Received to review:
I had this on my wishlist, and then spotted that I was auto-approved by the publisher on Netgalley, so… here we go!
Books read this week:
Reviews posted this week:
Aaaand that’s all for this week! How’s everyone doing?
Tags: books, Stacking the Shelves, weekly roundup
Posted August 7, 2021 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
Ouch!: The New Science of Pain, Linda Rodriguez McRobbie, Margee Kerr
I’d somewhat feared when I picked this book up that it would be unsympathetic to those with chronic pain, in the way that some doctors are at the moment, because the overprescription of opiates is so much on their minds that everyone reporting pain sounds like a drug seeker to them. There is a bit of commentary on the fact that modern people are more likely to report pain and to be afraid of pain, etc, etc, but overall I found that the two authors were fairly sympathetic and willing to seek out multiple views.
One of the authors has experience with chronic pain and a degenerative illness, and both of them make sure to position themselves so the reader understands where they’re coming from — perhaps too autobiographical for some when it comes to popular science, but I think it was valuable in this case. Either way, both seem to have done a lot of research, including hands-on. Their attitude does lean toward “pain is a good thing and painkillers are generally the wrong treatment”, but doesn’t exclude the usefulness of painkillers for some people. It’s mostly sensitive and sympathetic, as I said, including toward the BDSM community, whose attitudes toward pain they also discuss.
It’s a layperson-friendly guide to what we understand about pain, not just biologically (although it does discuss that) but also psychologically and socially… and it discusses not just physical pain, but to some degree emotional pain as well (particularly as you can’t really have one without the other: human experience isn’t neatly divided like that). It was what I’d hoped for from another book which was much more about responses to pain, so that was nice. Overall, it’s super readable, and I flew through it.
Rating: 4/5
Tags: book reviews, books, non-fiction, science
Posted August 6, 2021 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
Elephants on Acid, Alex Boese
I was warned by reviews that Boese covers some abhorrent experiments on animals without any kind of critique, and that’s correct. Boese seems more interested in the shock and amusement factor of some of these experiments, including expecting people to be rather shocked that scientists have tried to study sex in the lab. I actually knew about most of these experiments and findings before, so there was nothing much shocking or surprising for me — except his casual tone about animal experimentation.
(I’m not personally against animal experimentation when necessary, when there’s a possibility of great benefit. I think. It’s a stance that wavers across time, something that I have great difficulty with. What I never change my mind on is unnecessary experimentation: harming animals just to see what happens. Like giving them a massive and deadly overdose of acid, for example.)
It’s a good overview of some “weird” experiments, some of which have produced useful results. Otherwise, meh?
Rating: 2/5
Tags: Alex Boese, book reviews, books, non-fiction, science
Posted August 5, 2021 by Nicky in Reviews / 1 Comment
The Library of the Dead, T.L. Huchu
I found it a bit unfortunate that the cover design for this book was so reminiscent of the Rivers of London series by Ben Aaronovitch. Maybe a tad more unfortunate again that he actually blurbed it, bringing the comparison even more forcibly to mind. There’s much that is different, of course, from the location (Edinburgh) and the setting (a future in which the divisions between rich and poor are even greater, a world where magic is a known thing, etc)… but there were some similarities that just wouldn’t stop getting between me and the story.
It didn’t help, too, that I found the narrative voice a little unconvincing as that of a fifteen-year-old. Sure, people grow up fast in adversity, but I could never picture her the way she kept describing herself. I mean, not that I “picture” anything anyway, but what I mean is that things just didn’t quite add up for me, and it was really distracting.
There were some parts I loved, like pretty much every interaction between Ropa and her grandmother, and the idea of the hidden Library of the Dead, and the badass wheelchair-user who gets involved to help Ropa solve the mystery. I was intrigued by the world as well, how things came to be the way they are: it never over-explains that, leaving you to glean it from the details, and that was kind of frustrating at first because I didn’t know, going in, whether this was “real” Edinburgh or not… but it’s always an interesting reading experience.
I don’t know if it’s an experience I’d care to repeat with more books in the same series, which is obviously where things are going with the repeated mention of the Tall Man. Meh? Maybe I’ll pick it up if this first book sticks with me more than I expected — that happens, sometimes.
Rating: 3/5
Tags: book reviews, books, SF/F, T.L. Huchu
Posted August 4, 2021 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
Seashaken Houses, Tom Nancollas
This was a complete impulse-buy on my part; something about it just really drew me, in the moment, so I went ahead and grabbed it. I read it right away to try to capitalise on that, and it was the perfect thing for my mood: it’s a history of a number of specific lighthouses and how they relate to the development of rock lighthouses in the UK, but also a personal response to them in many ways –Nancollas’ enthusiasm and interest, along with his imaginings about the lighthouses, really shine through. Do I really care about how the light of a particular lighthouse was installed? Only because he did, and made it sound interesting.
There were a couple of bits I found a bit overly sentimental or kinda purple-prose-y, and I had a roll of my eyes when he referenced King Arthur and got something wrong (Arthur died at Camlann, not anywhere else, in most versions of the Arthurian stories)… but mostly it just really hit the spot. I love it when someone can take a topic that I have very little personal connection to, and make it fascinating. If that sounds interesting to you too, then I recommend this!
Rating: 4/5
Tags: book reviews, books, history, non-fiction, Tom Nancollas
Posted August 3, 2021 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
A Fatal Waltz, Tasha Alexander
In this book, Lady Emily is now engaged to Colin, and gets drawn into his world of espionage in her quest to clear the name of someone close to her. The trip takes her to Vienna, where she consorts with the best and worst… and with a woman Colin once loved, and who still wants to be with Colin herself (despite her marriage). Jealousy isn’t a good look on Lady Emily, and I was embarrassed for her when she slipped and revealed her lack of trust in Colin. I joke about being the relationship advice Dalek, but really, communicate!
Aside from the plotline of jealousy, it turns out someone else is in love with Emily (groan), so there are two jealousy plotlines here, both involving unrequited love. I admit that this book is not my favourite so far because of that, though the investigation plot was actually fairly engaging. I enjoyed Emily’s dip into espionage, even if it all got a little melodramatic.
In the end, it’s a fun read, just didn’t quite capture me the way the previous books have!
Rating: 3/5
Tags: book reviews, books, crime, historical fiction, mystery, romance, Tasha Alexander
Posted August 2, 2021 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
Snowball in a Blizzard, Steve Hatch
Snowball in a Blizzard is a great examination of something that goes overlooked far too often — or blown out of proportion in ways that serve weird fringe agendas: the fact that very little in medicine is certain, and it’s not possible to put numbers on many/most things about biology. People forget that when looking for certainty about how to reduce their risk of cancer, or blow it up into something quite different when they want to argue against the importance of vaccines… and it’s really important to understand why there is uncertainty in medicine and what it really means, if you want to make truly informed decisions about your own healthcare. Informing people about this is Steve Hatch’s aim here, and I think he does a great job.
There are one or two points which have suffered a bit in time — for instance, the Rosenhan experiments that he leans on heavily to make a point or two have been discredited, with Susannah Cahalan’s The Great Pretender arguing pretty convincingly that Rosenhan falsified much of the data in his study, which was never run in the way he described. There are also some references to SARS, which are pretty apocalyptic… But broadly speaking, Hatch’s points hold true.
There’s some really fascinating stuff here that I knew very little about. For example, screening mammography — mammograms for people who have not discovered lumps or had any other symptoms of breast cancer — is, on balance, probably harmful for most people. This doesn’t mean that diagnostic mammography is a bad thing, but the indiscriminate screening of everyone in certain groups includes far too many people who are at too low a risk of cancer. Thus, false positives are common, and a lot of mental distress results — and sometimes worse, with people even ending up having unnecessary mastectomies.
Hatch explains the statistics underlying evidence-based medicine really well. I don’t have a good instinctive grasp of statistics, and never have, and this book helped some of these concepts lodge in my brain — which was nice, because I had an exam coming up at that point on exactly some of these types of statistics. I think it would be really useful for anyone who wants to understand better how uncertainty in medicine works and what that might mean for making decisions about your own care.
Rating: 4/5
Tags: book reviews, books, non-fiction, science, Steve Hatch
Posted August 1, 2021 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
Somebody at the Door, Raymond Postgate
I didn’t think this book was going to come together well, after reading a couple of chapters. It consists mostly of character sketches, which constitute little thumbnails of lives which might (maybe) give the characters motive, means and opportunity for the murder which occurs at the start of the book. They’re quite disconnected, and they go some very different places — one cobbler ruined by a scam who turns to pickpocketing and then goes straight again; one mini-spy story in which a German refugee is rescued by a determined but naive and rich young Englishman; one miniature love story chronicling an adulterous affair…
And in a way, they don’t really pull together, in that the various stories barely touch at all, but they do manage to achieve something: I very much knew who I wanted to be the murderer, and I knew who I didn’t want to be the murderer. I won’t spoil anything about who is who, but it’s perhaps useful to know going in that the effect does work in the end! I wouldn’t say it’s a favourite, but it comes out as surprisingly solid.
Rating: 3/5
Tags: book reviews, books, British Library Crime Classics, crime, mystery, Raymond Postgate
