Tag: non-fiction

Review – Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma

Posted February 13, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Review – Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma

Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma

by Claire Dederer

Genres: Non-fiction
Pages: 257
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

Can we love the work of Roman Polanski and Michael Jackson, Hemingway and Picasso? Should we love it? Does genius deserve special dispensation? Is history an excuse? What makes women artist monstrous? And what should we do with beauty, and with our unruly feelings about it?

I’d been meaning to read Claire Dederer’s Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma anyway, but it became suddenly very topical for me after the in-depth reporting of the allegations of rape and abuse against Neil Gaiman. I hadn’t been a major fan of his in years, but I loved Good Omens, and connected deeply with Crowley as portrayed by David Tennant and that feels deeply tainted now — so what do I do?

(I try not to discuss anything too in-depth about specific types of abuse and monstrousness, but if you’re not in the right place for any of that, I suggest leaving this review for now.)

Dederer naturally doesn’t offer any actual answers, instead doing a fair amount of gazing at her own navel about her own heroes and monsters, and herself. I don’t mind that it’s navel-gazing, but I do mind that we have men like Polanski juxtaposed against Joni Mitchell, included because she gave her daughter up for adoption at birth, or Sylvia Plath, because she committed suicide. (Ted Hughes mentioned once, only as Sylvia Plath’s husband, not for his part in that whole situation.)

She does mention Rowling, but sparingly, and the book is seriously lacking a really monstrous female artist in a way that to me suggests lack of research: for instance, Marion Zimmer Bradley may be genre, but still a very relevant and important monster to consider for modern fans of Arthuriana and fantasy. And there have always, will always be women who behave like Amanda Palmer is alleged to have done, who knowingly enable the abuse perpetrated by their husbands and stay damningly silent.

There’s a certain amount of self-hate, I think, in Dederer’s choice of female monsters: really what she keeps trying to tell us is that she( thinks she)’s a monster (because of her alcoholism, and because she sometimes chose to shut her children out in order to work, or found herself just going through the motions and angry at her children — normal things).

In a way, the fact that she struggled to find female monsters may also reflect the fact that we give men a lot more leeway to be monsters, but mostly I think she just didn’t do any research beyond her own narrow frame of reference, and thus served us up women she thinks are monsters because she worries that she’s a monster. That’s pretty uncomfortable to read.

She does make some interesting points, likening the consumption of work by monsters to recycling: the individual agonising about it makes very little difference, almost none, under capitalism. It doesn’t address the question of the “stain” metaphor she uses, the blackening of the work because you know about the crimes of the author — but for those who can divorce the author from the work, it might offer some peace when they can’t stop treasuring something in their heart of hearts.

On which note, Dederer also writes powerfully about the fact that this is about love. We can love terrible people. Abused children often continue to love their parents. It’s hard to let go of, and it asks us to figure out where love stops, and whether we can stop it just by wanting to.

It also leaves me thinking about monsters who were made, who had monstrous things done to them which shaped even the thoughts they could think. What do we do about them? Sometimes it can change the level of culpability… I came to no conclusions there, and Dederer certainly didn’t. The book ends with the same ambiguity and same questions as it began with, or perhaps even more. The only answer can be that every person has to figure out their own answer: there is no calculator to work out how bad someone must be, what mitigations they can have, and then tell us whether to continue to love.

For me, it’s usually fairly clear-cut, but I have some blurred lines and grey areas and (yes) hypocrisy, as many people do. I didn’t find Dederer’s book helpful in clarifying that, really, but all the same, I enjoyed reading it, for a certain value of “enjoy”.

Rating: 4/5

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Review – Sing Like Fish

Posted February 12, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 4 Comments

Review – Sing Like Fish

Sing Like Fish: How Sound Rules Life Under Water

by Amorina Kingdon

Genres: Non-fiction, Science
Pages: 324
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

A captivating exploration of how underwater animals tap into sound to survive, and a clarion call for humans to address the ways we invade these critical soundscapes—from an award-winning science writer

For centuries, humans ignored sound in the “silent world” of the ocean, assuming that what we couldn’t perceive, didn’t exist. But we couldn’t have been more wrong. Marine scientists now have the technology to record and study the complex interplay of the myriad sounds in the sea. Finally, we can trace how sounds travel with the currents, bounce from the seafloor and surface, bend with the temperature and even saltiness; how sounds help marine life survive; and how human noise can transform entire marine ecosystems.

In Sing Like Fish, award-winning science journalist Amorina Kingdon synthesizes historical discoveries with the latest scientific research in a clear and compelling portrait of this sonic undersea world. From plainfin midshipman fish, whose swim-bladder drumming is loud enough to keep houseboat-dwellers awake, to the syntax of whalesong; from the deafening crackle of snapping shrimp, to the seismic resonance of underwater earthquakes and volcanoes; sound plays a vital role in feeding, mating, parenting, navigating, and warning—even in animals that we never suspected of acoustic ability.

Meanwhile, we jump in our motorboats and cruise ships, oblivious to the impact below us. Our lifestyle is fueled by oil in growling tankers and furnished by goods that travel in massive container ships. Our seas echo with human-made sound, but we are just learning of the repercussions of anthropogenic noise on the marine world’s delicate acoustic ecosystems—masking mating calls, chasing animals from their food, and even wounding creatures, from plankton to lobsters.

Amorina Kingdon’s Sing Like Fish is all about the world of sound underwater. At one point humans dubbed it stuff like “the silent kingdom” and stuff like that because we can’t hear well underwater, but in fact lots of fish, marine invertebrates and marine mammals make noises — a lot of them! Whalesong is well known now, but it isn’t the only thing. There are fish that drum their swim bladder to attract a mate, fish who fart (literally expel air from their anuses) to communicate, and of course, use sound to navigate.

Unsurprisingly, pretty much any purpose for sound you can imagine from our lives is also served in the ocean, perhaps through some slightly different physics.

And of course the sounds we make are impacting the ocean. Sometimes that means our installations in the seabed are actually attracting creatures, and sometimes it means that the sounds are actively snapping the cilia involved in hearing and leading to deafened, unbalanced lobsters whose lives are drastically shortened by their injuries.

Kingdon discusses all of this and how we can ameliorate some of it, highlighting things we need to pay attention to for the health of the planet. Like me, you probably didn’t know that sound can harm plankton, but… yep, it can.

Mostly though it’s full of wonder about this world of sound we don’t always understand or know how to investigate. I found it really interesting.

Rating: 4/5

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Review – What An Owl Knows

Posted February 7, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – What An Owl Knows

What An Owl Knows

by Jennifer Ackerman

Genres: Non-fiction, Science
Pages: 333
Synopsis:

'And if anyone knows anything about anything...it's Owl who knows something about something.' Winnie-the-Pooh, A. A. Milne

From prehistoric cave paintings to the prints and etchings of Picasso, owls have captivated and inspired us for millennia. Whether they appear as ancient Athenian symbols of wisdom, ghostly harbingers of death, or the cuddly sidekicks of Harry Potter and Winnie the Pooh, these birds have continued to fascinate and disturb us in equal measure.

Through revelatory new behavioural research, Jennifer Ackerman provides an intimate glimpse into these magnificent creatures' lives. From the evolutionary quirks behind their silent flight and rotating heads, to their romantic relationships and parenting styles, What an Owl Knows brings the rich natural history of owls to life. Deftly weaving together science and art, Ackerman journeys into the owl's moonlit world and asks: what is it about these birds that so enthrals us?

What an Owl Knows, by Jennifer Ackerman, is a fun exploration of owls as a species, how they’re adapted for what they do, how they’re adapting to changes made by humans, etc. There’s a certain amount of “oh wow I touched a bird” personal stuff, and canned biographies of people who’ve interacted with owls for various reasons, but also plenty of facts and discussion thereof.

I learned some fascinating things, e.g. the fact that some owl species will adopt the owlets of other pairs, if the owlet gets into their nest or somehow interacts with them demanding food — even if they don’t currently have owlets of their own. And the fact that some screech owls grab blind snakes (they’re tiny) and use them as nest cleaners, resulting in healthier, quicker-growing owlets.

It also contradicts some other stuff I was reading lately about owls being stupid, pointing out that they have small, densely packed neurons, as some other birds do — allowing a high degree of intelligence, even if their kind of intelligence isn’t as readily measured as that of primates or crows.

Overall, enjoyable and informative, if sometimes a bit padded with filler-statements about the majesticness of owls (you can only take it so often, even when it’s true).

Rating: 3/5

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Review – Stonehenge: The Story of a Sacred Landscape

Posted February 6, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Review – Stonehenge: The Story of a Sacred Landscape

Stonehenge: The Story of a Sacred Landscape

by Francis Pryor

Genres: History, Non-fiction
Pages: 208
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

A beautifully illustrated account of the history and archaeology of an iconic feature of the English landscape, as part of the stunning Landmark Library series.

Perched on the chalk uplands of Salisbury Plain, the megaliths of Stonehenge offer one of the most recognizable outlines of any ancient structure. Its purpose - place of worship, sacrificial arena, giant calendar - is unknown, but its story is one of the most extraordinary of any of the world's prehistoric monuments.

Constructed in several phases over a period of some 1500 years, beginning c. 3000 BC, Stonehenge's key elements are its 'bluestones', transported from West Wales by unexplained means, and sarsen stones quarried from the nearby Marlborough Downs.

Francis Pryor is one of Britain's most distinguished archaeologists. In Stonehenge, he delivers a rigorous account of the nature and history of the monument, while also placing the enigmatic stones in a wider cultural context, exploring how antiquarians, scholars, writers, artists, 'the heritage industry' - and even neopagans - have interpreted the site over the centuries.

Francis Pryor’s Stonehenge: The Story of a Sacred Landscape is a good summary of the current consensus around Stonehenge, inasfar as I understand it. It’s not really much of a step forward from Mike Parker Pearson’s book on Stonehenge from ~2012, which is probably a good place to go if you want something in-depth.

Still, it’s presented beautifully here, with photos, art, coloured maps and plans, etc, and it does a good job of condensing down what we know and how we know it, and theorising from what we do know about the reasons for Stonehenge’s building, the phases of activity there, the traces of those who built there, etc. It discusses Mike Parker Pearson’s theory that the people who built Stonehenge built in wood for the living and stone for the dead, and makes that pretty clear (though I think there’s supporting evidence he chooses not to discuss that would firm up that point).

However, I do keep in mind with Francis Pryor that he does deliberately cherry-pick sources that agree with him (he’s said as much, explicitly, in Britain AD), so it’s important to read him sceptically.

Rating: 4/5

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Review – Against Technoableism

Posted February 3, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 1 Comment

Review – Against Technoableism

Against Technoableism: Rethinking Who Needs Improvement

by Ashley Shew

Genres: Non-fiction
Pages: 148
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

A manifesto exploding what we think we know about disability, and arguing that disabled people are the real experts when it comes to technology and disability.

When bioethicist and professor Ashley Shew became a self-described “hard-of-hearing chemobrained amputee with Crohn’s disease and tinnitus,” there was no returning to “normal.” Suddenly well-meaning people called her an “inspiration” while grocery shopping or viewed her as a needy recipient of technological wizardry. Most disabled people don’t want what the abled assume they want—nor are they generally asked. Almost everyone will experience disability at some point in their lives, yet the abled persistently frame disability as an individual’s problem rather than a social one.

In a warm, feisty voice and vibrant prose, Shew shows how we can create better narratives and more accessible futures by drawing from the insights of the cross-disability community. To forge a more equitable world, Shew argues that we must eliminate “technoableism”—the harmful belief that technology is a “solution” for disability; that the disabled simply await being “fixed” by technological wizardry; that making society more accessible and equitable is somehow a lesser priority.

This badly needed introduction to disability expertise considers mobility devices, medical infrastructure, neurodivergence, and the crucial relationship between disability and race. The future, Shew points out, is surely disabled—whether through changing climate, new diseases, or even through space travel. It’s time we looked closely at how we all think about disability technologies and learn to envision disabilities not as liabilities, but as skill sets enabling all of us to navigate a challenging world.

Ashley Shew’s Against Technoableism is a fairly short book divided into chapters that don’t need to be read linearly. It has a few different themes: one is that technology isn’t the cure-all that people are suggesting for various disabilities, and that even if it was, is that really for the best for people with disabilities, and is it what they want? And why, either way, is assistive technology often developed without reference to what disabled people actually want?

It also delves into the social model of disability, and spares a chapter to discuss neurodiversity (though Shew acknowledges that that isn’t her lane, so she does a lot of talking with others). She points out throughout the book that the way we look at people with disabilities is often what is disabling: if we stopped policing how autistic people express themselves, for example, they would be healthier, happier, and more able to contribute in the ways they are interested in doing.

None of it was an enormous surprise to me; I’ve been lucky enough to be exposed to a lot of similar discussion through friends, discussions I’ve followed online, etc. But it’s very readable and clear, and I think a good start if you’re interested in the topic.

As a note, Shew does discuss why she became an amputee, though not immediately, and talks frankly about the cancer that led to it. If you have any health-focused anxiety, it’s worth being aware of that going in!

Rating: 4/5

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Review – Breakfast Cereal

Posted January 31, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 4 Comments

Review – Breakfast Cereal

Breakfast Cereal

by Kathryn Cornell Dolan

Genres: History, Non-fiction
Pages: 144
Series: Edible
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

A global history of breakfast cereal, from the first grain porridges to off-brand Cheerios.

Simple, healthy, and comforting, breakfast cereals are a perennially popular way to start the day. This book examines cereal’s long, distinguished, and surprising history—dating back to when, around 10,000 years ago, the agricultural revolution led people to break their fasts with wheat, rice, and corn porridges. Only in the second half of the nineteenth century did entrepreneurs and food reformers create the breakfast cereals we recognize today: Kellogg’s Corn Flakes, Cheerios, and Quaker Oats, among others. In this entertaining, well-illustrated account, Kathryn Cornell Dolan explores the history of breakfast cereals, including many historical and modern recipes that the reader can try at home.

A while ago I read a history of bread in the US, and found it fascinating, which means that there were some things that just weren’t surprising in Kathryn Cornell Dolan’s Breakfast Cereal: some of the same ideas circulated around plain wholemeal cereals and bread, albeit in slightly different ways. What I hadn’t really appreciated was how very much the modern boxed cold cereals originated from the US, and how ubiquitous they swiftly became: it was really surprising.

The title Breakfast Cereal might suggest Cornell Dolan’s talking about boxed cereal only, but actually she also discusses older and more traditional cereal-based breakfasts (porridge, congee, etc) as well. That said, the real focus is really the boxed cereals, and it’s fascinating that despite their global reach, that is pretty much a US story. Sometimes I quibble about that with the books in the Edible series, where they discuss US history way more than “global” history — but in this case, it seems that the US really was an origin point.

It’s funny to think about how cereal has evolved, and that (like bread) it’s actually a point of contention in terms of health, nutrients, emotional importance, etc, etc.

A slim book, as with all in this series, but interesting.

Rating: 3/5

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Review – Penguins and Other Sea Birds

Posted January 27, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Penguins and Other Sea Birds

Penguins and Other Sea Birds

by Matt Sewell

Genres: Non-fiction, Science
Pages: 128
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

Description
Did you know...

The GalĂĄpagos Penguin's speckled markings make each of them as unique as a snowflake?
The Emperor Penguin weighs the same as a Labrador retriever?
The Adélie Penguin takes its name from the sweetheart of a Napoleonic naval captain turned explorer?

From tiny fairy penguins to the regal emperor penguin, street artist and ornithologist, Matt Sewell, illustrates one of the world’s favourite birds in this follow-up to Owls, Our Garden Birds, Our Songbirds and Our Woodland Birds.

I think the major reason to pick up Matt Sewell’s Penguins and Other Sea Birds is really for the art: though it does contain facts about each bird, each bird only gets a short paragraph. There is some neat info included, like the fact that certain birds (male crested auklets, if you’re curious) smell uncannily like tangerines — but it’s mostly just titbits.

The art is cute, though sometimes I think he does choose to emphasise odd features of the animals, probably to give the images more character. So it’s not a great resource for recognising the birds that you might be likely to be able to spot for yourself in the wild.

Rating: 3/5

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Review – Selfish Genes to Social Beings

Posted January 23, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 1 Comment

Review – Selfish Genes to Social Beings

Selfish Genes to Social Beings: A Cooperative History of Life

by Jonathan Silvertown

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

For all the "selfishness" of genes, they team up to survive. Is the history of life in fact a story of cooperation?

Amid the violence and brutality that dominates the news, it's hard to think of ourselves as team players. But cooperation, Jonathan Silvertown argues, is a fundamental part of our make-up, and deeply woven into the whole four-billion-year history of life. Starting with human society, Silvertown digs deeper, to show how cooperation is key to the cells forming our organs, to symbiosis between organisms, to genes that band together, to the dawn of life itself. Cooperation has enabled life to thrive and become complex. Without it, life would never have begun.

I wasn’t a big fan of Jonathan Silvertown’s Selfish Genes to Social Beings. Ultimately, it’s as the subtitle (“A Cooperative History of Life”) suggests, rather than focusing on the question of how cooperation arises from “selfish” genes, or trying to dissect the evolution of altruism. It’s probably best read keeping that in mind.

Even so, I found it slow, and sometimes strangely organised. It works back through time… more or less. Sometimes it’s more like it’s working back through scale, finding fresh simulated surprise as smaller and smaller living things turn out to cooperate (a fact which should not be a surprise, since we know our own individual genes must cooperate). Sometimes the examples didn’t really contribute to a narrative, and I found the pop-culture references (like references to songs) cringey, like Silvertown was trying to add readability through pasting in some song lyrics.

Whiiiich is the other problem: I couldn’t put my finger on why, exactly, but I constantly found my attention wandering before the end of a paragraph — or sometimes, the end of a sentence. It’s not that I can’t focus on this kind of thing, because I love reading non-fiction. It’s also not that I know it all already (though I did), because I can happily read popular science about my pet subjects even when it contains absolutely nothing new. What’s required is usually just enthusiasm and a will to put across one’s own point of view.

I did find some of his later chapters more interesting, since his discussion of the RNA World hypothesis went deeper into it than my previous reading, but I still found this a very slow read and, ultimately, not for me. The stuff about kin selection has been discussed ad nauseam in many other books, and I didn’t feel that anything particularly fresh was added to the discussion.

Rating: 2/5

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Review – Agatha Christie

Posted January 22, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 4 Comments

Review – Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie

by Lucy Worsley

Genres: Biography, Non-fiction
Pages: 498
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

Why did Agatha Christie spend her career pretending that she was 'just' an ordinary housewife, when clearly she wasn't? As Lucy Worsley says, 'She was thrillingly, scintillatingly modern'. She went surfing in Hawaii, she loved fast cars, and she was intrigued by the new science of psychology, which helped her through devastating mental illness.

So why - despite all the evidence to the contrary - did Agatha present herself as a retiring Edwardian lady of leisure?
She was born in 1890 into a world which had its own rules about what women could and couldn't do. Lucy Worsley's biography is not just of an internationally renowned bestselling writer. It's also the story of a person who, despite the obstacles of class and gender, became an astonishingly successful working woman.

With access to personal letters and papers that have rarely been seen, Lucy Worsley's biography is both authoritative and entertaining and makes us realise what an extraordinary pioneer Agatha Christie was - truly a woman who wrote the twentieth century.

Lucy Worsley’s Agatha Christie tries to examine Agatha Christie and her work with affection and respect, but without taking her own words about herself too seriously. She considered herself to be basically an unworking lady, a homemaker in our terms, a wife. She wrote compulsively and prolifically, without ever admitting that she was a serious writer. Given that her work has enduring appeal, and a certain amount of influence, it’s worth examining her life a bit. Not just the things people know about her (the famous disappearance), though Worsley covers that too, but her whole life and all the relationships that influenced her.

I have to say that I didn’t really know much about Agatha Christie herself, other than that she’d dispensed medications during the war, and the disappearance. I knew more about her work, but didn’t have that much experience with it (I read The Murder of Roger Ackroyd when I studied crime fiction during my first degree, and at some point read my way through the books featuring Miss Marple, but remember little about them). It was a surprise to meet (through Worsley) a woman who generally had a gift for being happy — at least as she grew older and met her second husband.

As you’d expect from her work, which I’ve now been reading via Serial Reader in the last couple of months, she wasn’t always a nice woman. She could be pretty racist and anti-Semitic, she wasn’t a great mother to her own daughter, she could be an awful snob, and regardless of how sympathetic you feel toward her reasons, it’s possible she tried to frame her first husband for her murder. Worsley doesn’t endorse that view, and there simply isn’t real evidence either way, but it’s something people have believed to some degree or another since it happened, something which rings tantalisingly true for a woman who specialised in writing murder mysteries and thrillers.

Overall, Worsley does a fairly good job of giving us Agatha Christie as a whole person, a woman who was wronged, a woman with faults, a woman who could demonstrate a wealth of generosity. Contradictory and flawed, as we all are.

Rating: 4/5

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Review – The Loki Variations

Posted January 19, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – The Loki Variations

The Loki Variations: The Man, The Myth, The Mischief

by Karl Johnson

Genres: Non-fiction
Pages: 96
Series: Inklings
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

Loki, ever the shapeshifter, has never been more adaptable across pop culture. Whether it’s deep in the stories from Norse mythology, the countless offshoots and intepretations across media, or even the prolific Loki that has come to dominate our screens via the Marvel Cinematic Universe, each serves its own purpose and offers a new layer to the character we’ve come to know so well.

By exploring contemporary variations of Loki from Norse god to anti-hero trickster in four distinct categories – the God of Knots, Mischief, Outcasts and Stories – we can better understand the power of myth, queer theory, fandom, ritual, pop culture itself
and more.

Johnson invites readers to journey with him as he unpicks his own evolving relationship with Loki, and to ask: Who is your Loki?

And what is their glorious purpose?

Karl Johnson’s The Loki Variations digs into the character of Loki — not specifically the Norse god in his original form, nor Loki just as portrayed by Tom Hiddleston, but Loki as an overall concept. Pretty much what it says on the tin, in fact: he’s looking at the varied ways people have portrayed and enjoyed Loki’s character, and what he’s meant to people.

It’s nice to read something that takes pop culture seriously, because — regardless of how ephemeral or unimportant it can seem — it’s a great reflection of what’s on people’s minds. Johnson talks specifically about Loki’s queerness, which is linked to how difficult he can be to pin down: he’s not your typical Asgardian (in any incarnation), he’s not exclusively bad or exclusively good; he slides past definitions adroitly.

(A sudden thought: given the red hair and general inclination to mischief over evil, I wonder if Good Omens’ Crowley as portrayed by David Tennant is technically a bit of a variation on Loki himself. In some ways, no, but something of Loki’s instinct for self-preservation, adaptability, and unwillingness to be pinned down and defined does ring true for Crowley as well.)

Anyway, it’s a slim book and doesn’t go into enormous depth, but it’s written with a love for Loki and an appreciation for popular culture that I very much enjoyed.

Rating: 4/5

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