Genre: Non-fiction

Review – You Have Not Yet Heard Your Favourite Song

Posted April 24, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Review – You Have Not Yet Heard Your Favourite Song

You Have Not Yet Heard Your Favourite Song: How Streaming Changes Music

by Glenn McDonald

Genres: Non-fiction
Pages: 236
Rating: two-stars
Synopsis:

For the first time in history, almost every song ever recorded is available instantly. Everywhere.

This book charts what music’s dazzling digital revolution really means for fans and artists. As a former data guru at the world’s biggest streaming service, Spotify, Glenn McDonald reveals:

- What the tech giants know about you
- How they serve up your next song
- Whether fans can cheat the algorithm
- Whether jazz is dead and ASMR is the new punk
- Your chances of becoming a rock star

Having analysed the streams of 500 million people, McDonald explores what the data tells us about music and about ourselves, from the secrets of russelÄter in Norway to Christmas in the Philippines.

Statistically, you have not yet heard your lifetime’s favourite song. This book will take you on a voyage of discovery through music’s fast-flowing new waters.

10 bonus playlists of wonder included!

In a way, it’s really hard for me to know how to rate/review Glenn McDonald’s You Have Not Yet Heard Your Favourite Song, because he could tell me that Spotify has an arts-and-crafts department just for employees and I’d have to believe him — and when it comes to math (as when he discusses Spotify’s payment model), anyone can blind me with science, I’m afraid.

What I can say is that McDonald clearly has a passion for music, and believes that streaming is fair, equitable, and good for music going forward — or at least not worse for it than any of the other models we’ve had of music getting into people’s hands. He’s fascinated by the diversity of music, and eager for Spotify and other services to bring that music to people and let them try it.

In some ways, I’d rather he stuck to that part, because when he talks about the revenue models etc, it’s always with the caveat that he had nothing to do with that. As such, it’s all very back-of-the-napkin. He also outright contradicts some of the reporting about Spotify (e.g. that they commissioned some music for a flat fee to fill up playlists, so they don’t have to pay out when those songs are listened to) where I don’t know who is right or wrong at all. My instinct is that McDonald is definitely working hard to protect Spotify and cast it in the right light, which seems to be out of love, and may or may not be truly accurate.

I’m now reading Mood Machine, by Liz Pelly, and I get the sense that McDonald’s book is a bit more like a PR machine (even if he doesn’t work for Spotify now) and Liz Pelly’s is more accurate reporting.

Rating: 2/5

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Review – Sheeplands

Posted April 23, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Sheeplands

Sheeplands: How Sheep Shaped Wales and the World

by Alan Marshall

Genres: History, Non-fiction
Pages: 256
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

Human civilisation was not just created by humans: we had the help of many creatures, and foremost among these were sheep. From Argentina to Australia and from Mesopotamia to Mongolia, just about every country with hills and meadows has adopted and then developed sheep farming as a way of living. And in Wales in particular, sheep played a central role in shaping landscape and culture.

Sheeplands outlines the journeys taken by some of these sheep as they voyaged across the world, both by themselves and with human shepherds, from the earliest human settlements to the present day. Along the way, Alan Marshall paints vivid portraits of the roles sheep have played in the development of the modern world, in times of peace and war, and describes how our sheeplands might continue to influence Wales and the wider world in future years.

Alan Marshall’s Sheeplands is, as it says, a history of Wales (and the wider world) through the lens of sheep and sheep-farming. This isn’t trivial: farming has been very important over the years, and the development of farming techniques, breeds of sheep and ways of transporting the sheep have been vital in the economy, war, colonisation, and everyday lives. I definitely appreciated a history that kept coming back to Wales, specifically, and from a very pro-Welsh point of view.

However… the problem is, the book doesn’t have numbered references, just a list of sources in the back, making it very difficult to follow up a particular anecdote and reference it. Sometimes something is stated as sheer fact when it sounds like mere theory, and sometimes the flippant easy tone elides the author’s lack of knowledge on a subject (“Homer” didn’t “scribe into text” anything, folks; Homer quite possibly never existed — it’s all more complicated than that). Sometimes that doesn’t affect the underlying point, and it didn’t in the case of this example. But. What about inaccuracies in the stuff I don’t have personal knowledge of? How can I tell apart flippancy, opinion, and fact, without proper sourcing?

I know it’s meant for a popular audience, but that shouldn’t mean you put yourself beyond fact-checking. Adding numbered sources doesn’t interrupt the flow for someone who is reading very casually, and allows anyone to look up the source for more information if they’re curious, sceptical, etc.

I did also find that I wasn’t so keen on the personal interjections about the author and his son Shelley. It’s cute, but it doesn’t really add to the narrative for us to be told what the author’s six-year-old son thinks about a given fact or location.

So… there were definitely things I enjoyed about the reading experience, don’t get me wrong, but it did also leave a lot to be desired in other ways.

Rating: 3/5

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Review – A History of Britain in Ten Enemies

Posted April 18, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – A History of Britain in Ten Enemies

A History of Britain in Ten Enemies

by Terry Deary

Genres: History, Non-fiction
Pages: 256
Rating: two-stars
Synopsis:

Ah, Britain. So special. The greatest nation on earth, some say. And we did it all on our own. Didn’t we?

Well, as it happens Britannia got its name from the Romans, and for the past two centuries we have been ruled by Germans. But then, as Horrible Histories author Terry Deary argues, nations and their leaders are defined by the enemies they make.

The surprisingly sadistic Boudica would be forgotten if it weren't for the Ninth Legion, Elizabeth I a minor royal without the Spanish Armada, and Churchill an opposition windbag without the Nazis. Britain loves its heroes so much we have been known to pickle them in brandy to keep them fresh. And after all, every nation sometimes needs a bit of unifying Blitz spirit (although in an ideal world, we wouldn’t have accidentally let Corporal Hitler go in the first place).

The British have a proud history of choosing their enemies, from the Romans to the Germans. You might even say those enemies made Britain what it is today.

A History of Britain in Ten Enemies is an entertaining gallop through history that will have you laughing as you find out what they didn't teach you in school.

Terry Deary’s A History of Britain in Ten Enemies is pretty much what you’d expect of someone who wrote for Horrible Histories: flippant, irreverent, willing to be sarcastic about everything, and… almost completely unsourced in a gossipy, opinionated account of history. It’s especially jarring when what he writes is contradictory to something I know is a prominent theory (e.g. that the building of wooden henges wasn’t replaced by the building of stone ones, as Deary suggests, but contemporaneous with them and linked to them: wood for the living, stone for the dead).

At that point I settled in to read it more or less for the tone and anecdotes, and to take everything with a heaping of salt. Each chapter does have a couple of references, but since they’re unnumbered and there’s only 2-3, it’s not very convincing.

If you’re just interested in a casual read, it’s probably perfect; for me, the tone didn’t quite land, and it turns out I get really irritated by such flagrant lack fo sourcing.

Rating: 2/5

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Review – Unlikeable Female Characters

Posted April 17, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Review – Unlikeable Female Characters

Unlikeable Female Characters: The Women Pop Culture Wants You To Hate

by Anna Bogutskaya

Genres: Non-fiction
Pages: 351
Rating: one-star
Synopsis:

How bitches, trainwrecks, shrews, and crazy women have taken over pop culture and liberated women from having to be nice.

Female characters throughout history have been burdened by the moral trap that is likeability. Any woman who dares to reveal her messy side has been treated as a cautionary tale. Today, unlikeable female characters are everywhere in film, TV, and wider pop culture. For the first time ever, they are being accepted by audiences and even showered with industry awards. We are finally accepting that women are—gasp—fully fledged human beings. How did we get to this point?

Unlikeable Female Characters traces the evolution of highly memorable female characters, from Samantha Jones as "The Slut" in Sex and the City to the iconic Mean Girl, Regina George, examining what exactly makes them popular, how audiences have reacted to them, and the ways in which pop culture is finally allowing us to celebrate the complexities of being a woman. Anna Bogutskaya, film programmer, broadcaster, and co-founder of the horror film collective and podcast The Final Girls, takes us on a journey through popular film, TV, and music, looking at the nuances of womanhood on and off-screen to reveal whether pop culture—and society—is finally ready to embrace complicated women.

I really liked Anna Bogutskaya’s book on horror, but I found Unlikeable Female Characters really… well, obvious? It didn’t feel particularly insightful, more like a regurgitation of the plots of various movies and TV series, many of which I was already familiar with.

To be honest, I feel like the question is less why people are so against “unlikeable” female characters (which in this book is referring to characters who are e.g. promiscuous; not everything in this book should be considered an unequivocally unlikeable trait) and more why they hate female characters in general, and that’s part of why this doesn’t satisfy. Growing up being interested in fandom, like Gundam Wing and Final Fantasy VIII, there was such rabid hate for characters like Relena Peacecraft and Rinoa Heartily, and on an adult assessment… actually, they were really nice girls. As an outsider who knows little about the franchise as it stands, it felt like a very similar reaction to Rey in Star Wars, for example. (Maybe I’m wrong. I don’t want to argue that right now.) I think we need to examine that too along the way to understanding liking or disliking “problematic” female characters, though that too is part of the picture.

Digging into that was probably more what I would’ve been interested in, but even so I found this rather repetitive and unoriginal. I’ve read this listicle, basically. It makes me wonder if the book on horror was less insightful than I thought, and more obvious to a fan of horror… This was disappointing, anyway.

Rating: 1/5

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Review – Endangered Languages

Posted April 13, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 4 Comments

Review – Endangered Languages

Endangered Languages

by Evangelia Adamou

Genres: History, Non-fiction
Pages: 264
Series: The MIT Press Essential Knowledge Series
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

A concise, accessible introduction to language endangerment and why it is one of the most urgent challenges of our times.

58% of the world’s languages—or, approximately 4,000 languages—are endangered. When we break this figure down, we realize that roughly ten percent of languages have fewer than ten language keepers. And, if one language stops being used every three months, this means that in the next 100 years, if we do nothing, 400 more languages will become dormant. In Endangered Languages, Evangelia Adamou, a specialist of endangered languages and a learner of her own community language, Nashta, offers a sobering look at language endangerment and what is truly lost when a language disappears from usage.

Combining recent advances from the Western scientific tradition—from the fields of linguistics, psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics, language attrition, population genetics, and natural language processing—and insights from Indigenous epistemology, theory, and ethics, Adamou examines a wealth of issues surrounding endangered languages. She discusses where endangered languages are found, including how they are faring in a digital world, why these languages are no longer used, and how communities can reclaim languages and keep them strong. Adamou also explains the impact of language continuity on community and individual health and well-being, the importance of language transmission in cultural transmission, and why language rights are essentially human rights.

Drawing on varied examples from the Wampanoag Nation to Wales, Endangered Languages offers a powerful reminder of the crucial role every language has in the vitality and well-being of individuals, communities, and our world.

Endangered Languages, by Evangelia Adamou, is part of the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, so it’s essentially an introduction, a bit of a primer on what it means for a language to be endangered, what we might do about it, etc. As a Welsh person (who doesn’t speak Welsh), obviously I have a bit of a vested interest here: Welsh is the least endangered of the Celtic languages, but it isn’t for lack of trying on the part of our English rulers (see also: the Welsh Not, Brad y Llyfrau Gleision, etc).

Welsh is a bit too successful for Adamou to spend much time on here, despite all that, though I think the revival efforts probably deserved a bit of a mention alongside the revival efforts for Breton, Cornish and Irish, including stuff like the Welsh Language Acts. To compare how Welsh is doing compared to other more endangered languages is pretty instructive — but there’s a limited amount of space in any one book, of course.

In the end, discussing endangered languages and how to protect them is surprisingly similar to discussing conservation, though of course it’s best not to stretch the similarity too far. I was interested to read about the fact that languages should be considered “dormant” rather than “extinct” now: I don’t know if I think that’s a nice way to look at it, or perhaps one which softens the tragedy of losing all native speakers of a language a little too much.

Anyway, an interesting introduction.

Rating: 3/5

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Review – Now Go

Posted April 12, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Now Go

Now Go: On Grief and Studio Ghibli

by Karl Thomas Smith

Genres: Non-fiction
Pages: 90
Series: Inklings
Rating: two-stars
Synopsis:

Grief is all around us. At the heart of the brightly coloured, vividly characterised, joyful films of Studio Ghibli, they are wracked with loss - of innocence, of love, of the connection to our world and of that world itself. Now Go enters these emotional waters to interrogate not only how Studio Ghibli navigates grief so well, but how that informs our own understanding of grief's manifold faces.

Now Go is basically an essay about Studio Ghibli’s portrayal of grief and what that means to the author. It isn’t really just about grief in Studio Ghibli movies, and sometimes the link feels a bit tenuous. I can understand feeling a very strong personal connection to movies, and seeing things in them which reflect on one’s own grief and loss, but it ends up not being an inquiry into grief in Studio Ghibli, but very much the author’s grief and Studio Ghibli. The actual analysis of the movies as texts is fairly surface-level. In retrospect, maybe the title should’ve told me that was where it was going to tilt.

I also wasn’t super convinced that the author understood that, for example, Howl’s Moving Castle is based on a book by Diana Wynne Jones, and not something that Miyazaki came up with in his own head alone. He didn’t engage at all with the anti-war themes of this adaptation of Howl’s Moving Castle, which are very much Miyazaki’s thing, developed out of very small elements of the plot of the novel. It would have fit nicely with his themes, but… nope.

Rating: 2/5

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Review – Conspiracy Theory: The Story of An Idea

Posted April 6, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Conspiracy Theory: The Story of An Idea

Conspiracy Theory: The Story of an Idea

by Ian Dunt, Dorian Lynskey

Genres: History, Non-fiction
Pages: 184
Series: Origin Stories #2
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

What makes people believe in conspiracy theories? Why have they taken over our political sphere? And how do we counter them before it’s too late?

The world has always had conspiracy theories. From the Illuminati to the deep state, the JFK assassination to the death of Princess Diana – there have always been those who believe that events are manipulated by shadowy forces with sinister intent. But in recent years, conspiracism has colonised the mainstream. These days, it is a booming industry, a political strategy and a pseudo-religion – and it’s threatening the foundations of liberal democracy.

Where once political battles were fought over ideas and values, it now feels as though we’re arguing over the nature of reality itself. The problem is bigger than lizard people or UFOs: left unchecked, conspiracy theories have the power to warp the fabric of society and justify unspeakable crimes.

In Conspiracy Theory: The Story of an Idea, Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey pull back the curtain on conspiracy theories: where they come from, who promotes them, how they work and what they’re doing to us. From biblical myth to online hysteria, this book explains what happens when the human gift for storytelling goes wrong – and how we might restore our common reality.

If you’ve already read about conspiracy theories much before, Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey’s Conspiracy Theory doesn’t offer a lot that’s new. They try to tackle the history of conspiracy theories, the psychology of why we believe them, and also what can be done about them, which is a big ask in a small space.

The history manages to be reasonable thorough, or that’s my impression: I only vaguely knew about the original actual Illuminati, and there were aspects of historical USian conspiracy stuff that I didn’t know a lot about. It discusses Kennedy’s assassination, of course, but also more recent stuff like Pizzagate: it’s definitely modern and relevant, though feels slightly weird that it doesn’t address Trump’s new presidency and what that might mean for conspiracy theories (which is not the book’s fault, to be clear — it was released only just after the US election).

In a way, that fact makes the book feel defeated right away once we get onto the stuff about what to do about conspiracy theories, to be honest. How can one focus on deplatforming people who spout conspiracy theories when Trump’s about to be president again? [Not to mention everything that’s happening at the time of this review’s posting — it was originally written in January.] The chapter on defanging conspiracy theories is also quite short, because I think if that was the problem you want to solve… you wouldn’t want to start from here.

Ultimately, it was interesting but didn’t really add much for me. Rob Brotherton’s Suspicious Minds (which the authors reference) is better and more in depth.

Rating: 3/5

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Review – Black Ops and Beaver Bombing

Posted April 2, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Review – Black Ops and Beaver Bombing

Black Ops & Beaver Bombing

by Fiona Mathews, Tim Kendall

Genres: Non-fiction, Science
Pages: 267
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

From seals' frisky behaviour to red squirrels making their last stand in the battle against the greys, here are the mammals of Britain as you’ve never seen them before.

Join Fiona Mathews and Tim Kendall on an overnight stakeout in search of the elusive pine marten. Follow them down mines inhabited by greater horseshoe bats, cavers, ravers and teenagers smoking unusual substances. Meet water voles thriving in the East End of Glasgow – despite the lack of water – and observe the brilliance of wild boar in your back garden.

Lively and light-hearted, Black Ops and Beaver Bombing puts animals at the heart of the story, revelling in their peculiarities, with a few corny jokes along the way. In search of answers to the problems that beset our wildlife, Fiona and Tim reveal the wonder of creatures that are worth fighting for.

Black Ops & Beaver Bombing is by a husband-and-wife pair, Fiona Mathews and Tim Kendall, and it introduces and discusses various of Britain’s wild mammals, scientific engagement with them, and attempts to experience them in the wild. It discusses stuff like rewilding (hence beaver bombing), and the success or not thereof, and also of culling (such as red squirrel culling), and definitely provides some interesting insights.

I think partly the personal touch didn’t work for me a lot; I didn’t care if they managed to see beavers or not, I was here for the science. That’s a failing of a lot of pop-science books, admittedly, and not unique to this. But somehow the chapters really did drag.

All the same, there was a lot of interesting information — I found myself telling my dad various things about voles, since he has an affection for them — and updates on stuff I sort of knew from bits of the news, but had never looked into in detail. The title is probably the snappiest thing about it, though, and much of the content is fairly sobering: we really do fail our wild mammals, here in Britain.

Rating: 3/5

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Review – Soda and Fizzy Drinks

Posted March 31, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Soda and Fizzy Drinks

Soda and Fizzy Drinks: A Global History

by Judith Levin

Genres: History, Non-fiction
Pages: 184
Series: Edible
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

More than eighty years before the invention of Coca-Cola, sweet carbonated drinks became popular around the world, provoking arguments remarkably similar to those they prompt today. Are they medicinally, morally, culturally, or nutritionally good or bad? Seemingly since their invention, they have been loved—and hated—for being cold or sweet or fizzy or stimulating. Many of their flavors are international: lemon and ginger were more popular than cola until about 1920. Some are local: tarragon in Russia, cucumber in New York, red bean in Japan, and chinotto (exceedingly bitter orange) in Italy. This book looks not only at how something made from water, sugar, and soda became big business, but also how it became deeply important to people—for fizzy drinks’ symbolic meanings are far more complex than the water, gas, and sugar from which they are made.

Judith Levin’s Soda and Fizzy Drinks is another entry in the “Edible” series, all global histories of particular food items. Levin discusses the development of fizzy drinks and also their modern popularity, what they mean to people, and why they keep coming out with weird seasonal flavours (basically, to grab people’s attention and keep up demand, which isn’t a surprise).

I was surprised to learn about flavours of soda like celery, turkey and gravy, etc, and not surprised by much else such as the history of Coca-Cola and various reactions to Coca-Cola like Inca Cola. I was surprised that (according to Levin) Coca-Cola is viewed as pretty much holy by the Maya people. (Mostly so far in my external reading inspired by this book I’ve found sources discussing it as a part of diet in Mexico, and discussing changes brought by “coca-colonisation”, but less about it actually being a part of religious ceremonies.)

As usual with this series, the book is illustrated (sometimes making reference to the images and sometimes not really), and has a bunch of recipes in the back.

Rating: 4/5

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Review – Close Encounters of the Fungal Kind

Posted March 25, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Close Encounters of the Fungal Kind

Close Encounters of the Fungal Kind

by Richard Fortey

Genres: Non-fiction, Science
Pages: 336
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

There are three great kingdoms of life – Animals, Plants and Fungi – but the fungi always come in third place. This may be because fungi seem alien to many their strange forms, their rapid appearance and disappearance, their hidden means of feeding and propagation. In Close Encounters of the Fungal Kind, acclaimed scientist and author Richard Fortey acknowledges this otherworldliness, marvels at their unique charm and boots-up as a guide through this great, mysterious Kingdom of life.

To Fortey, the strangeness of fungi is what makes them so exciting. Many people find them alien and the way so many toadstools appear so quickly and disappear with equal dispatch; their strange forms and colours; their reputation as poisoners. But for Fortey, the extraordinary nature of fungi makes him wonder, think and marvel. In Close Encounters of a Fungal Kind, Fortey leads us on a glorious literary journey, narrated through field trips to real places in search of the strangest, most extraordinary, or even most delicious fungi.

Writing with characteristic warmth, wit and wisdom, Fortey focuses on a selection of the larger fungi, the kind that might be spotted on a country walk, and a handful of microfungi that have particularly caught his attention. His enthusiasm and passion as a life-long ‘mushroom twitcher’ is infectious as he shares his own ‘close encounters’ and brings us along on his treks through this magnificent Kingdom.

The unique charm of the mushrooms themselves is centre stage in this gripping narrative that explains what fungi do in the natural world and rejoices in their profusion and diversity.

Richard Fortey’s Close Encounters of the Fungal Kind is all about obsession with fungi, and often, about collecting them. He’s fascinated by every aspect of them, including identifying them, about how they grow and where they grow, about fungal diversity and whether (as with a lot of other species of all kingdoms) fungi are declining in the modern world.

His interest in eating and collecting fungi is not one I share, but it’s a clear passion, and that’s always fun to read. I think I’d have liked something more focused on the science of fungi — how they work, and even more of their diversity, e.g. delving into fungi like yeast (like baker’s yeast and Candida). But that’s my obsession, not his.

I think I found his writing more engaging about fossils and so on, a thing I think I’ve said before. Maybe that’s because he was younger then and his tone’s evolved, maybe it’s just that that was a topic where he was on surer ground. (It definitely isn’t always my ground, to be clear: I enjoyed his books that discussed lots of geology, which I find dead boring for the most part.)

Fun enough, in any case, and if you’re interested in collecting fungi, it’s not exactly a reference book but it is a fun description and discussion of such a hobby.

Rating: 3/5

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