Genre: Non-fiction

Review – Castles of the Welsh Princes

Posted December 3, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 4 Comments

Review – Castles of the Welsh Princes

Castles of the Welsh Princes

by Paul R. Davis

Genres: History, Non-fiction
Pages: 108
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

The Medieval castles built and occupied by the native princes of Wales hold a special place in the imagination of the Welsh and have an unique historical appeal. The 500 and more castles of Wales testify to the remorseless military ambitions of the Normans and the English but also to the tenacious resistance of the Welsh and their unswerving belief in Welsh independence. In this fully illustrated book, Paul Davis guides the reader to some of the most awe-inspiring and romantic castles in Wales and describes their construction and history.

Paul R. Davies’ book leads with a little potted history of the Welsh princes, to contextualise the castles described and pictured. It’s not all full-colour — sometimes castles are illustrated by sketches and plans, or not pictured at all where we know very little — but the plans provided give a nice visual guide to some of the structures and layouts mentioned. Each entry includes a little section explaining how to visit the castle (if at all possible).

The thing I found most interesting was actually the discussion of why certain castles are built the way they are — for instance, with towers that are unusually placed compared to Norman-build castles of the period. The theory is basically that the builders had no idea why you wanted towers, or how to best make use of them at least, so they didn’t always position them “correctly” (leading to stuff like blind spots that are perfect for an attacking enemy).

It’s a short volume, but worth the read if you’re interested in Welsh castles. It confines itself to castles built and occupied by the Welsh princes, rather than Norman castles, though sometimes it will mention sites where both sides had a period of occupation enough to make changes to the fabric of the site.

Rating: 4/5

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Review – Around the World in 80 Trees

Posted November 29, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Review – Around the World in 80 Trees

Around the World in 80 Trees

by Jonathan Drori, Lucille Clerc

Genres: History, Non-fiction, Science
Pages: 240
Rating: five-stars
Synopsis:

In Around the World in 80 Trees, Jonathan Drori uses plant science to illuminate how trees play a role in every part of human life, from the romantic to the regrettable. From the trees of Britain, to India's sacred banyan tree, they offer us sanctuary and inspiration - not to mention the raw materials for everything from aspirin to maple syrup.

Stops on the trip include the lime trees of Berlin's Unter den Linden boulevard, which intoxicate amorous Germans and hungry bees alike, the swankiest streets in nineteenth-century London, which were paved with Australian eucalyptus wood, and the redwood forests of California, where the secret to the trees' soaring heights can be found in the properties of the tiniest drops of water.

Each of these strange and true tales -- populated by self-mummifying monks, tree-climbing goats and ever-so-slightly radioactive nuts -- is illustrated by Lucille Clerc, taking the reader on a journey that is as informative as it is beautiful. The book combines history, science and a wealth of quirky detail - there should be surprises for everyone.

Like Around the World in 80 Plants, this is beautifully illustrated by Lucille Clerc, in much the same style: sometimes the images show details of the trees, sometimes a more zoomed out look, and sometimes the pictures include images that illustrate the text directly to show how the trees are used or handled.

If anything, the text seemed livelier in this book than in the other — like, perhaps, the author is just a bit more enthusiastic about trees than general plants. I certainly flew through the book, and found a couple of new-to-me facts that I was eager to tell other people. (Like the stuff about avocado trees!)

If there’s a plant-lover in your life, it’d make a wonderful gift, and there’s also plenty of titbits to pique the interest of anyone who likes this sort of history-through-a-specific-type-of-object (like myself), or just enjoys learning about all kinds of things (also me).

Rating: 5/5

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Review – In Miniature

Posted November 26, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – In Miniature

In Miniature: How Small Things Illuminate the World

by Simon Garfield

Genres: History, Non-fiction
Pages: 335
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

Simon Garfield writes books that shine a light on aspects of the everyday world in order to reveal the charms and eccentricities hiding in plain sight around us. After beguiling fans with books about everything from typography to time, from historic maps to the color mauve, he's found his most delightful topic yet: miniatures.

Tiny Eiffel Towers. Platoons of brave toy soldiers. A doll's house created for a Queen. Diminutive crime scenes crafted to catch a killer. Model villages and miniscule railways. These are just a few of the objects you will discover in the pages of In Miniature.

Bringing together history, psychology, art, and obsession, Garfield explores what fuels the strong appeal of miniature objects among collectors, modelers, and fans. The toys we enjoy as children invest us with a rare power at a young age, conferring on us a taste of adult-sized authority. For some, the desire to play with small things becomes a desire to make small things. We live in a vast and uncertain world, and controlling just a tiny, scaled-down part of it restores our sense of order and worth.

As it explores flea circuses, microscopic food, ancient tombs, and the Vegas Strip, In Miniature changes the way we perceive our surroundings, encouraging all of us to find greatness in the smallest of things.

I rather love small things myself — small ereaders (please, please, Onyx Boox Palma, fall into my hands somehow!)*, small books, etc. When I was little, I used to make tiny books for my teddies, and there was a whole miniature library as a result, with multiple bookcases for different genres. So I was attracted to the premise of this book by Simon Garfield, though the nature of the miniatures it discusses are heterogeneous.

I didn’t actually love the chapter on miniature books, because the super, super small stuff you can only appreciate with a microscope does not appeal. I like books that are tiny but readable, so the books in Queen Mary’s doll’s house and the chapter on that appeals more.

It’s a bit of a random collection of anecdotes in the end, but it captures some of the magic of miniature things, some of the motivation that leads people to make them and look at them. I wouldn’t mind a look at some of the described exhibits, myself.

* Since I wrote this review, it did! Or, you know, I bought it, like a sensible person. And yes, it’s really awesome.

Rating: 4/5

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Review – Around the World in 80 Plants

Posted November 24, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Around the World in 80 Plants

Around the World in 80 Plants

by Jonathan Drori, Lucille Clerc

Genres: History, Non-fiction, Science
Pages: 216
Rating: five-stars
Synopsis:

Jonathan Drori takes a trip across the globe, bringing to life the science of plants by revealing how their worlds are intricately entwined with our own history, culture and folklore. From the seemingly familiar tomato and dandelion to the eerie mandrake and Spanish "moss" of Louisiana, each of these stories is full of surprises. Some have a troubling past, while others have ignited human creativity or enabled whole civilizations to flourish. With a colorful cast of characters all brought to life by illustrator Lucille Clerc, this is a botanical journey of beauty and brilliance.

The first thing to know is that this book is beautifully illustrated by Lucille Clerc, full colour, at least one full-page image per plant. Sometimes these images show details of the plants, and sometimes they include aspects of the accompanying text explanation.

Jonathan Drori’s discussion of each plant is often brief, and the order is not necessarily in order of the origin of a given plant, but rather a place where they might be encountered now, along with the story of how they got there. The stories vary by plant, often including the human history of how we’ve used the plant, and what the plant has done for us.

I found it fascinating, and I’m definitely passing this on to the plant lover in my life; I think he’ll enjoy it even more.

Rating: 5/5

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Review – Being Human

Posted November 19, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Being Human

Being Human: How Our Biology Shaped World History

by Lewis Dartnell

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

We are a wonder of evolution. Powerful yet dextrous, instinctive yet thoughtful, we are expert communicators and innovators. Our exceptional abilities have created the civilisation we know today.

But we're also deeply flawed. Our bodies break, choke and fail, whether we're kings or peasants. Diseases thwart our boldest plans. Our psychological biases have been at the root of terrible decisions in both war and peacetime.

This extraordinary contradiction is the essence of what it means to be human - the sum total of our frailties and our faculties. And history has played out in the balance between them. Now, for the first time, Lewis Dartnell tells our story through the lens of this unique, capricious and fragile nature. He explores how our biology has shaped our relationships, our societies, our economies and our wars, and how it continues to challenge and define our progress.

Lewis Dartnell’s Being Human was okay, but not too surprising for me: it explores the links between our biological constraints (such as our immune systems and adaptive immunity) and historical events (such as the enslavement of millions because white people had no immunity to various diseases and thus were dying).

It discusses some other types of issue, such as cognitive biases, and briefly gestures toward mismatch theory… but mostly it skims over each topic, and doesn’t feel like it goes into depth on anything. The incidents chosen are illustrative rather than exhaustive, so it’s usually an idea, one example, and then move on.

I didn’t notice any glaring errors where it concerned things I know, but I think it rather lightly touched on most things, so there weren’t major opportunities for it to go wrong.

Rating: 3/5

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Review – Basilisks and Beowulf

Posted November 15, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 1 Comment

Review – Basilisks and Beowulf

Basilisks and Beowulf: Monsters in the Anglo-Saxon World

by Tim Flight

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

This book addresses a simple question: why were the Anglo-Saxons obsessed with monsters, many of which did not exist?

Drawing on literature and art, theology, and a wealth of firsthand evidence, Basilisks and Beowulf reveals a people huddled at the edge of the known map, using the fantastic and the grotesque as a way of understanding the world around them and their place within it. For the Anglo-Saxons, monsters helped to distinguish the sacred and the profane; they carried God’s message to mankind, exposing His divine hand in creation itself.

At the same time, monsters were agents of disorder, seeking to kill people, conquer their lands, and even challenge what it meant to be human. Learning about where monsters lived and how they behaved allowed the Anglo-Saxons to situate themselves in the world, as well as to apprehend something of the divine plan. It is for these reasons that monsters were at the very center of their worldview. From map monsters to demons, dragons to Leviathan, we neglect these beasts at our peril.

This would probably have been a more interesting read for me back when I was doing English literature and studying Anglo-Saxon literature! I’m a little out of touch now, a decade later, but it was still interesting to delve back into this kind of thinking, this kind of linking texts and cultural attitudes together to better understand something more like the whole experience.

The central thesis here is that monsters are about enforcing the barriers between humanity and the unknown, humanity and monsters. They represent blurry points where people can become monsters, where monsters might also be kind of people, and sometimes they just make it clear how scary the unknown is.

I didn’t find it too surprising/original, but it was reasonably convincing.

Rating: 3/5

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Review – Buzz

Posted November 12, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Buzz

Buzz: The Nature and Necessity of Bees

by Thor Hanson

Genres: Non-fiction, Science
Pages: 304
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

In Buzz, the award-winning author of Feathers and The Triumph of Seeds takes us on a journey that begins 125 million years ago, when a wasp first dared to feed pollen to its young.

From honeybees and bumbles to lesser-known diggers, miners, leafcutters, and masons, bees have long been central to our harvests, our mythologies, and our very existence. They've given us sweetness and light, the beauty of flowers, and as much as a third of the foodstuffs we eat. And, alarmingly, they are at risk of disappearing.

As informative and enchanting as the waggle dance of a honeybee, Buzz shows us why all bees are wonders to celebrate and protect.

Thor Hanson’s style is quite enjoyable — conversational, personal, but usually to the point. We’ll see some scraps of his family life as he talks about making experiments with his son, for example, but it doesn’t veer off into three pages of some scenario about a mid-life crisis and turning to bees or something like that (which can be a bit of a hazard with books of this genre). Mostly, he’s focused on the bees, and his enthusiasm for the bees.

I actually didn’t know much about any type of bees other than honeybees, so I really enjoyed hearing about sweat bees and alkali bees and learning a bit more about bumblebees and their tiny amount of honey.

Of course he also addresses colony collapse disorder, and the general decline of bee species worldwide, with some room for hope and some much-needed warning. Bees are just “cute” enough that I hope humans are going to come through for them.

Rating: 4/5

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Review – Fossil Legends of the First Americans

Posted November 9, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Fossil Legends of the First Americans

Fossil Legends of the First Americans

by Adrienne Mayor

Genres: History, Non-fiction, Science
Pages: 488
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

The burnt-red badlands of Montana's Hell Creek are a vast graveyard of the Cretaceous dinosaurs that lived 68 million years ago. Those hills were, much later, also home to the Sioux, the Crows, and the Blackfeet, the first people to encounter the dinosaur fossils exposed by the elements. What did Native Americans make of these stone skeletons, and how did they explain the teeth and claws of gargantuan animals no one had seen alive? Did they speculate about their deaths? Did they collect fossils?

Beginning in the East, with its Ice Age monsters, and ending in the West, where dinosaurs lived and died, this richly illustrated and elegantly written book examines the discoveries of enormous bones and uses of fossils for medicine, hunting magic, and spells. Well before Columbus, Native Americans observed the mysterious petrified remains of extinct creatures and sought to understand their transformation to stone. In perceptive creation stories, they visualized the remains of extinct mammoths, dinosaurs, pterosaurs, and marine creatures as Monster Bears, Giant Lizards, Thunder Birds, and Water Monsters. Their insights, some so sophisticated that they anticipate modern scientific theories, were passed down in oral histories over many centuries.

Drawing on historical sources, archaeology, traditional accounts, and extensive personal interviews, Adrienne Mayor takes us from Aztec and Inca fossil tales to the traditions of the Iroquois, Navajos, Apaches, Cheyennes, and Pawnees.

Fossil Legends of the First Americans felt a bit… slower than Mayor’s book on the fossil knowledge of Greek and Roman culture. In part, it’s because there’s just more ground to cover, but also there’s a certain repetitiveness to each chapter in her gradual survey of the whole area.

I do see her point that these indigenous peoples definitely interacted with fossil bones, and definitely came to an understanding of them — seeing them as evidence of deep time, and even perhaps a form of evolution — but sometimes (as with the other book) it feels like grasping at straws. “Perhaps” they thought this or that, but we can’t know that. So much knowledge has been lost, and so much is kept by indigenous communities and not shared with white people (for good reason).

It’s an interesting survey of attitudes toward fossils and stories about fossils in indigenous American cultures, but that’s as far as it can go.

Rating: 3/5

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Review – For the Love of Mars

Posted November 6, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 3 Comments

Review – For the Love of Mars

For the Love of Mars

by Matthew Shindell

Genres: History, Non-fiction, Science
Pages: 247
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

Mars and its secrets have fascinated and mystified humans since ancient times. Due to its vivid color and visibility, its geologic kinship with Earth, and its potential as our best hope for settlemen, Mars embodies everything that inspires us about space and exploration. For the Love of Mars journeys through the red planet's place in the human imagination, beginning with ancient astrologers and skywatchers and ending in our present moment of exploration and virtual engagement.

This book isn’t really about the science of Mars — though that comes into it — but is more of a cultural history: an attempt to understand what Mars has meant to people, the framework in which people have understood it in different ages, and how that has shaped how we understand Mars now and the kind of assumptions we hold about it.

I found it a surprisingly slow read for the length, comparatively speaking; it was perhaps a bit drier than I expected for a book about Mars (which just goes to show how we think about Mars, I suppose), and spent rather a long time recounting the stories that people told about Mars, e.g. a detailed explanation of Dante’s Paradiso.

I did expect a cultural history from the blurb (though it seems other people were misled), but I suppose I’d expected something focusing more on the modern part of it. I did really enjoy the chapter that discusses the Mars rovers and people’s intense, surprisingly emotional reactions to them.

Rating: 3/5

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Review – The Man Who Tasted Words

Posted November 4, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 3 Comments

Review – The Man Who Tasted Words

The Man Who Tasted Words

by Guy Leschziner

Genres: Non-fiction, Science
Pages: 326
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

Vision, hearing, taste, smell, and touch are what we rely on to perceive the reality of our world. Our senses are the conduits that bring us the scent of a freshly brewed cup of coffee or the notes of a favorite song suddenly playing on the radio. But are they really that reliable? The Man Who Tasted Words shows that what we perceive to be absolute truths of the world around us is actually a complex internal reconstruction by our minds and nervous systems. The translation into experiences with conscious meaning—the pattern of light and dark on the retina that is transformed into the face of a loved one, for instance—is a process that is invisible, undetected by ourselves and, in most cases, completely out of our control.

In The Man Who Tasted Words, neurologist Guy Leschziner explores how our nervous systems define our worlds and how we can, in fact, be victims of falsehoods perpetrated by our own brains. In his moving and lyrical chronicles of lives turned upside down by a disruption in one or more of their five senses, he introduces readers to extraordinary individuals, like one man who actually “tasted” words, and shows us how sensory disruptions like that have played havoc, not only with their view of the world, but with their relationships as well. The cases Leschziner shares are extreme, but they are also human, and teach us how our lives and what we perceive as reality are both ultimately defined by the complexities of our nervous systems.

The Man Who Tasted Words sounds like it’s going to be about a lexical->gustatory synaesthete, and the blurb also calls out that part, so I just want to say up front that it’s not really like that. There’s one chapter that discusses synaesthesia, and it doesn’t give it an especially long consideration or something.

In the end, it’s a book in the vein of many other similar books: the author’s a neurologist, and he draws stories from his practice to illustrate how the brain works, and how it fails to work. It’s always fascinating to read that kind of thing, but at the same time, this isn’t new at all. It has all the predictable beats (here’s the patient he failed, here’s the worst thing he’s ever experienced as a doctor, here’s the fascinating case), and the stories don’t particularly illustrate anything surprising and new.

So if you don’t read a lot of these, or conversely if you absolutely love them and read every single one you can get your hands on, this might be worth some time. I thought it was just OK, though.

Rating: 3/5

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