Genre: Non-fiction

Review – The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World

Posted May 10, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World

The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World

by Bettany Hughes

Genres: History, Non-fiction
Pages: 416
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

Their names still echo down the ages: The Great Pyramid at Giza. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon. The Temple of Artemis. The statue of Zeus at Olympia. The mausoleum of Halikarnassos. The Colossus at Rhodes. The Lighthouse of Alexandria. The Seven Wonders of the World were staggeringly audacious impositions on our planet. They were also brilliant adventures of the mind, test cases of the reaches of human imagination. Now only the pyramid remains, yet the scale and majesty of these seven wonders still enthrall us today.

In a thrilling, colorful narrative enriched with the latest archaeological discoveries, bestselling historian Bettany Hughes walks through the landscapes of both ancient and modern time; on a journey whose purpose is to ask why we wonder, why we create, why we choose to remember the wonder of others. She explores traces of the Wonders themselves, and the traces they have left in history. A majestic work of historical storytelling, The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World reinforces the exciting, and nourishing, notion that humans can make the impossible happen.

It took me a while to properly get into Bettany Hughes’ The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, and I’m not quite sure why. In many ways it’s right up my street, after all, telling a bit of a history of Babylonia, Greece, Egypt, and other lands in that area, and the afterlife of their cultures as well. But I think it was just a bit slower and more lingering than I was in the mood for at first — and certainly I came to appreciate it as I got into the pace of the book, and to appreciate that it carefully puts each of the wonders into their context. Rather than just talking about “Ancient Greece”, Hughes is careful to contextualise the different peoples (and the rivalries between them), rather than lump everyone into a big group.

Sometimes it does feel a bit frustrating: could the Hanging Gardens be X? Could they be Y? Maybe they’re none of those things and they’re actually Z? But of course Hughes isn’t to blame for the fragmentary evidence we have, and she does a pretty good job at teasing out the implications of what data we do have.

I do also very much appreciate the time Hughes spent on picking apart the afterlife of the Wonders: what can be seen of them today, what fragments might remain, and the ways later civilisations have copied and reflected them.

So, all in all, a slow read, but a worthwhile one if you’re interested in the ancient civilisations in that area of the world. Of course it misses out many wonders, particularly ones less central to Western imaginations, but that’s because the very premise is based on an ancient and semi-local list. Still, maybe a more focused title would be nice… there’s a lot of “ancient world” that isn’t included in this book at all.

Rating: 4/5

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Review – Wine

Posted May 3, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Wine

Wine

by Meg Bernhard

Genres: Memoir, Non-fiction
Pages: 159
Series: Object Lessons
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

While wine drunk millennia ago was the humble beverage of the people, today the drink is inextricable with power, sophistication, and often wealth. Bottles sell for half a million dollars. Point systems tell us which wines are considered the best. Wine professionals give us the language to describe what we taste.

Agricultural product and cultural commodity, drink of ritual and drink of addiction, purveyor of pleasure, pain, and memory - wine has never been contained in a single glass. Drawing from science, religion, literature, and memoir, Wine meditates on the power structures bound up with making and drinking this ancient, intoxicating beverage.

Like a lot of the Object Lessons books I’ve read recently, Meg Bernhard’s Wine is something of a memoir. At the same time, though, it does stick pretty close to the topic, and discusses the making of wine in a fairly close and involved manner: Bernhard went to vineyards and put herself to work, and spent time drinking the finished products in a thoughtful way.

As a result, it balances the personal (of which there is quite a bit) with interesting titbits about how wine is made, the impacts of climate change on wine production (such as the impact of wildfires and the wines that have to be made due to the smoke taint on the grape skins), and about how we relate to wine. It also discusses women in the wine industry, the difficulty of breaking through as a master sommelier in a highly male-dominated environment (where men have outright used their status to abuse women).

It’s still a highly personal book, discussing Bernhard’s personal relationship with alcoholic, her blackouts, the sexual assault she suffered when drinking heavily, her relationship with her father who has similar issues. But it manages to balance that with information, with a grounding in fact, and it works well.

Rating: 3/5

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Review – Mountains of Fire

Posted May 2, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Mountains of Fire

Mountains of Fire: The Secret Lives of Volcanoes

by Clive Oppenheimer

Genres: Non-fiction, Science
Pages: 368
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

Volcanoes mean so much more than threat and calamity. Like our parents, they've led whole lives before we get to know them.

We are made of the same stuff as the breath and cinders of volcanoes. They have long shaped the path of humanity, provoked pioneering explorations and fired up our imaginations. They are fertile ground for agriculture, art and spirituality, as well as scientific advances, and they act as time capsules, capturing the footprints of those who came before us.

World-renowned volcanologist Clive Oppenheimer has worked at the crater's edge in the wildest places on Earth, from remote peaks in the Sahara to mystical mountains in North Korea. His work reveals just how entangled volcanic activity is with our climate, economy, politics, culture and beliefs. From Antarctica to Italy, he paints volcanoes as otherworldly, magical places where our history is laid bare and where nature speaks to something deep within us.Blending cultural history, science, myth and adventure, Mountains of Fire reminds us that, wherever we are on the planet, our stories are profoundly intertwined with volcanoes.

There’s no question about Clive Oppenheimer’s fascination with volcanoes — that shows in every page of Mountains of Fire, and in every recollection of the risky things he’s done for the science and love of volcanoes. Every time he mentions a risky climb or measuring gases above an active volcano, you can see that not only does he want to know about volcanoes, he wants to know volcanoes as individuals, and understand them. That extends not only to their physical properties, but the stories and superstitions around them as well.

That’s where the book was strongest for me. I want to be interested in volcanoes and how they work, but it’s one of those rare topics where it doesn’t really seem to catch my interest, even when digging into the nitty-gritty detail… and even when the writer is as enthusiastic as Oppenheimer proves to be. It doesn’t help, of course, that a lot of it describes the political and practical problems around the study of volcanoes (almost a whole chapter is dedicated to not managing to go to sample a specific area due to threats of kidnapping and violence).

I was interested enough to finish the book, but not interested enough to feel an itch to pick it up and keep reading. I can’t say that it’s dry or anything like that, it’s just not one of my pet topics, and thus it didn’t keep me turning the pages. I really think it’s a case of “it’s not the book, it’s me”.

Rating: 3/5

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Review – Sticky

Posted April 26, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Sticky

Sticky: The Secret Science of Surfaces

by Laurie Winkless

Genres: Non-fiction, Science
Pages: 334
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

You are surrounded by stickiness. With every step you take, air molecules cling to you and slow you down; the effect is harder to ignore in water. When you hit the road, whether powered by pedal or engine, you rely on grip to keep you safe. The Post-it note and glue in your desk drawer. The non-stick pan on your stove. The fingerprints linked to your identity. The rumbling of the Earth deep beneath your feet, and the ice that transforms waterways each winter. All of these things are controlled by tiny forces that operate on and between surfaces, with friction playing the leading role.

In Sticky, Laurie Winkless explores some of the ways that friction shapes both the manufactured and natural worlds, and describes how our understanding of surface science has given us an ability to manipulate stickiness, down to the level of a single atom. But this apparent success doesn't tell the whole story. Each time humanity has pushed the boundaries of science and engineering, we've discovered that friction still has a few surprises up its sleeve.

So do we really understand this force? Can we say with certainty that we know how a gecko climbs, what's behind our sense of touch, or why golf balls, boats and aircraft move as they do? Join Laurie as she seeks out the answers from experts scattered across the globe, uncovering a stack of scientific mysteries along the way.

I found Laurie Winkless’ Sticky: The Secret Science of Surfaces a little uneven — less in terms of her writing, though, and more just in terms of my interest. The chapter on how geckos cling to surfaces fascinated me, but I’m less interested in Formula 1 cars or curling, especially not because the chapters felt like they unfolded a bit jerkily. I think it’s because each chapter is kind of chronological in revealing how we’ve understood the topic over time, and it starts to feel a bit like “aaand another thing!”

I think though that part of this is just that I’m a biologist, and not that interested in stuff on the level of van der Waals forces and friction. Winkless writes clearly and communicates the concepts well, and is genuinely enthusiastic about the topics, which helps.

So not quite for me, but still a fun detour.

Rating: 3/5

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Review – A Bookshop of One’s Own

Posted April 25, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – A Bookshop of One’s Own

A Bookshop of One's Own

by Jane Cholmeley

Genres: History, Memoir, Non-fiction
Pages: 340
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

Silver Moon was the dream of three women – a bookshop with the mission to promote the work of female writers and create a much-needed safe space for any woman. Founded in 1980s London against a backdrop of homophobia and misogyny, it was a testament to the power of community, growing into Europe’s biggest women’s bookshop and hosting a constellation of literary stars from Margaret Atwood and Maya Angelou to Angela Carter. While contending with day-to-day struggles common to other booksellers, plus the additional burdens of misogyny and the occasional hate crime, Jane Cholmeley and her booksellers created a thriving business. But they also played a crucial and relatively unsung part in one the biggest social movements of our time.

A Bookshop of One’s Own is a fascinating slice of social history from the heart of the women’s liberation movement, from a true feminist and lesbian icon. Written with heart and humour, it reveals the struggle and joy that comes with starting an underdog business, while being a celebration of the power women have to change the narrative when they are the ones holding the pen.

What was it like to start a feminist bookshop, in an industry dominated by men? How could a lesbian thrive in Thatcher’s time, with the government legislating to restrict her rights? How do you run a business when your real aim is to change the world?

Silver Moon was a feminist bookshop in London — one of the first in the UK, and ultimately the largest in Europe, with the aims of showing there was a market for books for women, books about women, books about lesbians, etc, in all kinds of genres. They started out naive and hopeful, and mostly kept the hope alive through the years of downturns and bastard landlords and men coming in to wank in front of the lesbian bookshelves (really).

Jane Cholmeley was one of the founders, and this book is a little bit her memoir, and mostly the story of the bookshop. It’s selective, of course, though Cholmeley tries to have her eyes open to her own faults, and muses at times on what she did wrong, or on situations she might’ve handled differently. It’s clear that it was an important resource for many, and the support for LGBT women came at just the right time during a period where gays and lesbians needed visibility, to be given a place where they were normal, because of Thatcher’s section 28.

Sometimes it’s infuriating and depressing, sometimes you have to roll your eyes at the earnest naivety of two young feminists starting a bookshop with relatively little knowledge of the requirements, sometimes you just have to cheer them on. And I very much appreciated Cholmeley’s self-examination, and her eagerness to include the anecdotes and perspectives of the people who worked at Silver Moon, including those which were critical.

It sounds like it was a lovely and vital place, and it made me sad for all we lost in the closing down of the bookshops (not just Silver Moon) on Charing Cross Road.

Rating: 4/5

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Review – Sticker

Posted April 19, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Review – Sticker

Sticker

by Henry Hoke

Genres: Memoir, Non-fiction
Pages: 152
Series: Object Lessons
Rating: one-star
Synopsis:

Stickers adorn our first memories, dot our notebooks and our walls, are stuck annoyingly on fruit, and accompany us into adulthood to shout our perspectives from car bumpers. They hold surprising power in their ability to define and provoke, and hold a strange steadfast presence in our age of fading physical media. Henry Hoke employs a constellation of stickers to explore queer boyhood, parental disability, and ancestral violence. A memoir in 20 stickers, Sticker is set against the backdrop of the encroaching neo-fascist presence in Hoke's hometown of Charlottesville, Virginia, which results in the fatal terrorist attack of August 12th and its national aftermath.

Unfortunately, I seem to be having bad luck with my Object Lessons choices lately. I enjoy the ones which pick into the history of an everyday object and try to understand it, like Personal Stereo and Blue Jeans. I’m less a fan of the memoir type, and Henry Hoke’s Sticker falls into that category. It’s a life told through tenuous connections with stickers, from the stickers his mother put on bottles of dangerous household cleaning products to the parental advisory stickers on CDs and onward.

There’s absolutely a place in this world for this kind of memoir, and the story of a gay kid growing up in Charlottesville is a story worth telling. I want to be clear that it’s not that I don’t think the story should be told at all. I’m just not a fan of it in this series, and nor is it something I particularly seek out to read (nor memoir in general). Just not for me.

So, if you’re looking for something that discusses the history or wider cultural relevance of stickers, this ain’t remotely it. Which is a pity, because that book would be fascinating. This book is about Henry Hoke.

Rating: 1/5

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Review – Ten Birds That Changed The World

Posted April 16, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Review – Ten Birds That Changed The World

Ten Birds That Changed the World

by Stephen Moss

Genres: History, Non-fiction, Science
Pages: 416
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

For the whole of human history, we have lived alongside birds. We have hunted and domesticated them for food; venerated them in our mythologies, religions, and rituals; exploited them for their natural resources; and been inspired by them for our music, art, and poetry.

In Ten Birds That Changed the World, naturalist and author Stephen Moss tells the gripping story of this long and intimate relationship through key species from all seven of the world's continents. From Odin's faithful raven companions to Darwin's finches, and from the wild turkey of the Americas to the emperor penguin as potent symbol of the climate crisis, this is a fascinating, eye-opening, and endlessly engaging work of natural history.

Stephen Moss’ Ten Birds That Changed The World is a style of non-fiction I enjoy very much, where history gets illustrated through a focus on key things like archaeological items or, well, birds. Instead of being a straightforward timeline, such things can give a different view on well-worn events and times: an everyday view, or a less human view.

Much of this focuses on how humans have exploited and endangered birds, as one might expect, from climate change to more direct impacts. There are also interesting discussions about other things, though, like the fact that “Darwin’s finches” have become the focus of a sort of mythology around the figure of Darwin. In reality, the finches played little part in the germination of his theories, and were recognised later as the perfect example of his theories in action.

One thing I found a bit questionable was the focus on ravens as mentioned in what Moss referred to as one of the earliest stories, that of the Biblical flood. He’s wrong. The same story is told in the epic of Gilgamesh, also featuring a raven — and that epic was, of course, written before the Bible. It’s curious that he makes no mention of it, but perhaps it’s not very surprising at all since he matter of factly refers to “the birth of Christ” as a way of marking time (not just through using the term “BC”, but specifically stating that something happens “before the birth of Christ”). There’s a particular kind of framing there, subtle but noticeable, and it raises questions about the depth of Moss’ research when discussing mythological and legendary depictions of birds (at the very least), or about his ideological decisions in writing the book. Definitely a weird moment. Of course one’s beliefs shape how one writes and thinks, but a little objectivity is important when you’re talking about historical fact.

All in all, I enjoyed it, but perhaps not as much as I hoped to.

Rating: 3/5

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Review – A Fish Caught in Time

Posted April 12, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – A Fish Caught in Time

A Fish Caught in Time: The Search for the Coelacanth

by Samantha Weinberg

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

A gripping story of obsession, adventure and the search for our oldest surviving ancestor - 400 million years old - a four-limbed dinofish

In 1938, Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer, a young South African museum curator, caught sight of a specimen among a fisherman's trawl that she knew was special. With limb-like protuberances culminating in fins the strange fish was unlike anything she had ever seen. The museum board members dismissed it as a common lungfish, but when Marjorie eventually contacted Professor JLB Smith, he immediately identified her fish as a coelacanth - a species known to have lived 400 million years ago, and believed by many scientists to be the evolutionary missing link - the first creature to crawl out of the sea. Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer had thus made the century's greatest zoological discovery. But Smith needed a live or frozen specimen to verify the discovery, so began his search for another coelacanth, to which he devoted his life.

I didn’t really expect to be hooked when I picked up Samantha Weinberg’s A Fish Caught in Time. Fish aren’t a huge interest of mine, even coelacanths, and in many ways the book is quite biographical in detail, discussing the life of J.L.B. Smith and Margaret Smith in quite a bit of detail, along with some of the other personalities who searched for live coelacanths.

Nonetheless, I found it surprisingly riveting! And that’s always fun, when a book turns out to surprise you. And there are details about coelacanths too, and the controversies surrounding them (are they a missing link between the water and the land, for example? and do they bear live young, or not?), which the biographical details help to highlight and contextualise.

It also helps to make the political implications of coelacanths and their territories very clear; I hadn’t particularly thought about who might consider themselves to own coelacanths, and yet it’s very clear that various countries and localities and political bodies have tried.

If you’re looking for something that’s more of a deep dive into coelacanth biology and ecology, this wouldn’t be it — but it’s an interesting history of the moment the first recently-dead coelacanth was found, and what it meant, and what it led to.

Rating: 4/5

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Review – Work: A History of How We Spend Our Time

Posted April 9, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 1 Comment

Review – Work: A History of How We Spend Our Time

Work: A History of How We Spend Our Time

by James Suzman

Genres: History, Non-fiction, Science
Pages: 464
Rating: two-stars
Synopsis:

Work defines who we are. It determines our status, and dictates how, where, and with whom we spend most of our time. It mediates our self-worth and molds our values. But are we hard-wired to work as hard as we do? Did our Stone Age ancestors also live to work and work to live? And what might a world where work plays a far less important role look like?

To answer these questions, James Suzman charts a grand history of "work" from the origins of life on Earth to our ever more automated present, challenging some of our deepest assumptions about who we are. Drawing insights from anthropology, archaeology, evolutionary biology, zoology, physics, and economics, he shows that while we have evolved to find joy meaning and purpose in work, for most of human history our ancestors worked far less and thought very differently about work than we do now. He demonstrates how our contemporary culture of work has its roots in the agricultural revolution ten thousand years ago. Our sense of what it is to be human was transformed by the transition from foraging to food production, and, later, our migration to cities. Since then, our relationships with one another and with our environments, and even our sense of the passage of time, have not been the same.

Arguing that we are in the midst of a similarly transformative point in history, Suzman shows how automation might revolutionize our relationship with work and in doing so usher in a more sustainable and equitable future for our world and ourselves.

James Suzman’s Work: A History of How We Spend Our Time didn’t really go where I expected. It takes a very long view of work and starts before humans even evolved, down at the level of cells doing “work” and life acting ultimately to increase entropy (even as it appears to create order). He spends a long time discussing the early evolution of humans and human society, discussing hunter-gatherer societies (extrapolating back from currently existing ones to make guesses about earlier ones, which is always dangerous though probably justifiable).

When he eventually got round to farming societies, half the book was already gone, and he dashed madly onward to do industrial societies at a gallop. I felt like half of this book wasn’t on topic, and some of his promises weren’t kept in terms of what he was going to discuss. Either a lot of the first part needed to be cut, to keep things at a relatively surface-level throughout… or he needed to go just as in-depth on the second half.

There were some interesting titbits here, including contradictions to received wisdom about sexual selection that’s intriguing and which I want to look into further, but it just doesn’t come together well.

Also, the editing was very shaky in some places. Typos galore! Ouch.

Rating: 2/5

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Review – Book Love

Posted April 7, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 3 Comments

Review – Book Love

Book Love

by Debbie Tung

Genres: Graphic Novels, Non-fiction
Pages: 136
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

Bookworms rejoice! These charming comics capture exactly what it feels like to be head-over-heels for hardcovers. And paperbacks! And ebooks!And bookstores! And libraries!

Book Love is a gift book of comics tailor-made for tea-sipping, spine-sniffing, book-hoarding bibliophiles. Debbie Tung's comics are humorous and instantly recognizable--making readers laugh while precisely conveying the thoughts and habits of book nerds. Book Love is the ideal gift to let a book lover know they're understood and appreciated.

Debbie Tung’s Book Love is an easy enough read which blithely presents a certain picture of what it is to love books. There are definitely pages I relate to — like the one where she’s in the middle of one book, can’t wait to start a new one, and just lets herself read the introduction… which leads to reading the whole thing.

On the other hand, I feel like she leans into a particular sort of loving books where it’s as much an aesthetic as anything, to the point of being an affectation, and one that I think has become ever more popular because of phenomena like “bookstagram”, where half the time people want books to take pictures of them (hence, probably, the page where she insists on returning a movie edition of the book, and hence definitely the page about checking out book-related social media to “inspire” you to read more).

I’m not immune from the aesthetics of books, to be clear. A flat or a house isn’t a home to me until I’ve brought my books in, and I continue to love reading dead-tree books even as I adore my sleek and comfortable ereader. I love getting new books, and I love the smell of books. But I don’t get so precious about it: I’m fine with lending books or giving books away, with reading the movie tie-in edition, with being less conscious all the time of being a person who reads, and my ereader is a constant companion even though it doesn’t look as bookish.

Sure, I knew going in that this one would be all about books, but it’s suspiciously full of bookshops, coffee shops and fairylights too, and that grates a bit.

Rating: 3/5

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