Tag: non-fiction

Review – Holy Shit

Posted January 4, 2021 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Cover of Holy Shit by Melissa MohrHoly Shit: A Brief History of Swearing, Melissa Mohr

Sorry, that really is the title of the book! And it’s kind of central to Mohr’s premise: that there are two axes of swearing, the ‘Holy’ and the ‘Shit’… or the profane and the obscene, or swearing and cursing — however you best see the distinction between “for God’s sake” and “for fuck’s sake”. She sets this up by discussing various different cultures (all familiar to a Western audience), starting with the Romans and Greeks (mostly the Romans), then moving to the development of Judaism and the rising importance of oath-taking… and then round the full circle back to obscenity.

It’s a fascinating history, though it really is brief when you consider the potential scope for investigating swearing throughout history. I found the chapter on the Old Testament Yahweh fascinating — Mohr charts the development of monotheism through the way oaths are taken and the importance of oaths in the Old Testament, and it makes a lot of sense. (Reassuringly, it’s also well-sourced, and includes quotations and examples.)

It was slower-going than I thought, when I look at my reading time records, but I found it very absorbing. My only complaint would be that the ending felt rather abrupt, even with the later postscript (which briefly discusses an analysis of swearing on Twitter). Recommended!

Rating: 4/5

Tags: , , ,

Divider

Review – Accessories: Bags

Posted January 2, 2021 by Nicky in Reviews / 1 Comment

Cover of Bags by Claire WilcoxAccessories: Bags, Claire Wilcox

This short volume is from the V&A Museum, discussing the trends in fashion for bags and purses, with a bit of an insight into pockets as well. In many ways it’s a very feminine story, since men retained pockets in clothing and haven’t been such targets of fashion for much of the time. It’s a very Western European history of bags, but nonetheless, it’s interesting to see how they developed and what was considered important or essential in a bag through time. The text is descriptive and refers to items from the V&A collection to illustrate their points, photographed beautifully and carefully labelled to help you match up the two.

I’ll admit, some of these bags are just weird to me, which is an entertainment factor all its own — mostly I mean the newer fashionable ones, like the one which looks like a bag of Walkers crisps. Why?!

Fashion. Apparently.

Rating: 4/5

Tags: , , , ,

Divider

Review – Burnout: Solve Your Stress Cycle

Posted December 18, 2020 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of Burnout by Emily & Amelia NagoskiBurnout: Solve Your Stress Cycle, Amelia & Emily Nagoski

Burnout is a self-help book, so no surprises here: there’s a rather chummy writing style with simplified, bitesize “science” (some of it feeling more dubious than other bits), and there’s a fair bit of colloquial, “relatable” stuff like saying “(ugh)” every time they write the word “patriarchy”. The book is focused on women, or at least people who were assigned female at birth, and throughout it assumes that it’s speaking to women and that women are the only people who would benefit from the advice contained therein. I don’t think that’s true, though I think some aspects of burnout that they discuss tend to impact women more.

There are some interesting ideas and bits of advice in here, and the ways in which it emphasises exercise — or doing some kind of analogue for exercise, like lying down and tensing each muscle sequentially — are fairly doable for anybody, without an undue emphasis on fitness/weight. There’s a section about body positivity which is probably useful for some folks, and which emphasises the ways weight loss is a con.

Overall, I’m probably never going to be a huge fan of self-help books, but this one has useful information and is probably accessible to just about anyone who can put up with the sex/gender assumptions being made. It is probably not going to fix your brain; it certainly didn’t fix mine… but it can offer a useful perspective.

Rating: 3/5

Tags: , ,

Divider

Review – Meteorite

Posted December 10, 2020 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of Meteorite by Tim GregoryMeteorite: The Stones From Outer Space That Made Our World, Tim Gregory

Most of the science in this book is not my field at all (some touches on biology a little bit), so I come to this as a complete layperson… and I wasn’t entirely enthused by the idea of a book about meteorites, admittedly — or at least, not sure it would work out to be my kind of book — because it’s not my field, and that’s for a reason! But Tim Gregory writes so clearly and with transparent passion about what he’s doing that I was immediately absorbed. You can tell that he loves his subject, and is eager to communicate it — and he’s a great communicator. You can make any subject boring if you’re not good at writing, and likewise, I think perhaps you can make anything interesting with the right style.

As far as the actual science and history he discusses goes, I’m not really qualified to comment, but everything seemed to hang together and make sense. I didn’t notice anything that jarred against what I actually know or could quickly look up. If you’re interested in space, and in cosmochemistry, then I think this is probably one for you!

Rating: 4/5

Tags: , , , ,

Divider

Review – Metazoa

Posted December 6, 2020 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of MetaZoa by Peter Godfrey-SmithMetazoa, Peter Godfrey-Smith

I really loved Godfrey-Smith’s Other Minds, so I was expecting something pretty readable and entertaining here. Godfrey-Smith is using the opportunity to dig further into how he thinks minds are formed, and it’s a mixture of science, speculation and philosophy, as was Other Minds. I found, though, that it just didn’t keep my attention very well. It felt like he was taking ages to dig into each point, and like this was a much more self-consciously Serious Book instead of something that shared the wonder and excitement of an animal he loves.

Where he does lean on science, I don’t know anything to his detriment, but it’s not really a field I enjoy very much. I did have a module in my undergrad called “the science of the mind”, but it didn’t really go into this area much at all. There are definitely interesting anecdotes, but sometimes I wanted him to dig into them more — for instance, split brain patients.

A bit disappointing for me, overall, though probably enjoyable for someone who likes grappling with the problem of the evolution of minds.

Rating: 2/5

Tags: , , , ,

Divider

Review – Murderous Contagion

Posted November 16, 2020 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of Murderous Contagion: A human history of disease by Mary DobsonMurderous Contagion: A Human History of Disease, Mary Dobson

I’d expected this to be right up my alley, but in the end, it was too general to really serve up the kind of titbits I’m looking for. Each chapter is a pretty high-level summary of the disease, its effects, its place in history and the current state of affairs, and though here and there some snippets were new to me, on the whole it just wasn’t deep enough for me. There’s some sourcing and recommended further reading, which is worth digging into, but it’s very much a layperson’s book.

As a layperson’s book, because of course I’m not a layperson in this field, it’s a pretty good overview of some very important diseases. The section on SARS and MERS is, well, not prophetic, but an intelligent person mentioning a warning they were aware of which we should all have heeded. The information in the book, as far as my own knowledge goes, is correct and interesting, though I wondered now and then if some things might be apocryphal (Albert Szent-Györgyi calling vitamin C “godnose”, for example).

I think the writing style might be a bit dry at times, though. I can’t tell if I thought so because so little of the information was new, or whether it was genuinely boring.

Rating: 2/5

Tags: , , , , ,

Divider

Review – How to Tame a Fox (And Build A Dog)

Posted November 14, 2020 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of How to Tame a Fox by Lee Alan Dugatkin and Lyudmila TrutHow to Tame a Fox (And Build A Dog), Lee Alan Dugatkin, Lyudmila Trut

This book discusses one of the most famous experiments on the domestication of animals: the silver fox experiment, originally conceived by Dmitri Belyaev. Generations of foxes were bred during this experiment, selecting from each generation only the tamest animals… and quickly, the experimenters found the behaviour and appearances of their subjects converging on that of dogs. Floppy ears, curly tails, play behaviour even in adults, interest in humans, affection — even protective behaviour.

This book discusses these experiments and their context (shadowed at the start by Lysenko’s hold on the government, their funding fluctuating according to who was in power), and some of their implications. It discusses the morphological and behavioural changes, picking apart some of the known or hypothesised causes (like differences in levels of hormone production, including melatonin and serotonin).

It doesn’t go into any of the criticism of the project’s far-reaching conclusions, which I’ve been seeing a bit of around now Google knows I’m interested in this subject. For instance, at least one study has suggested that the foxes used in the experiment weren’t wild to begin with; though it was always acknowledged that they were from fur farms (and the descriptions of their behaviour, per the book, certainly don’t make it sound like any tameness had been selected for)… it’s still a confounding variable. The book is wildly positive about the experiments, so it’s worth noting that slant and the fact that the story here definitely isn’t the full story. It’s very much a story, though, including a touching tale from Belyaev’s funeral and snippets about the lives of those who worked with the foxes, so it’s pretty much to be expected.

It’s a very clear and easy to follow read, and I think it would be perfectly fine for a complete layperson, even when it dips into the science. It makes me wonder very much about whether these foxes will become common pets in future.

Rating: 4/5

Tags: , , ,

Divider

Review – House of Fiction

Posted November 11, 2020 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of House of Fiction by Phyllis RichardsonHouse of Fiction, Phyllis Richardson

I was hoping for something that was totally disconnected from current events, something like stepping back into the bubble that was my BA/MA at Cardiff University… and I got it. This is a history of houses in British literature, what houses might have inspired the authors and what the houses meant to them — and what, perhaps, they were trying to say with their fiction. It gets a bit infodumpy, which may or may not bother you: the books it mentions are comprehensively spoilered, which may or may not spoil the stories for you. (For me, no; it probably enhances them most of the time.)

It is, consequently, not a book about the history of houses, per se. Some of that creeps in, of course. Some of the books and stories are more focused on houses than others, and some books felt included here as an afterthought — but it’s nice to have some signposting to other relevant reading, should I care.

I don’t, really; I wanted this for my wide-but-shallow knowledge acquired by pleasure reading, and so it was an end in itself, something that demanded very little of me. As far as I can tell, the theories and arguments about the influence of certain houses on certain writers (and the intent of the writers in shaping their stories) were well-argued and plausible. Richardson writes clearly and made me interested in books and authors I’ve not read yet, and makes some interesting points.

Rating: 4/5

Tags: , , ,

Divider

Review – Fake Law

Posted November 1, 2020 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of Fake Law by the Secret BarristerFake Law: The Truth About Justice in an Age of Lies, the Secret Barrister

I enjoyed the Secret Barrister’s first book, earlier this year, but I took it a chapter at a time. Something about my particular mood at the moment meant I absolutely devoured Fake Law in under 24 hours, though, even as the Secret Barrister was tweeting about the PM’s presser today.

Fake Law is about the many misconceptions people have about the way British law works, and the way those misconceptions have been fostered by unscrupulous reporting, ignorant MPs, and a general lack of perspective. The various chapters deal with well-known cases and examples, discussing human rights law, sentencing, legal aid entitlements, immigration… and yes, the infamous (and unlawful) prorogation of Parliament on the advice of Boris Johnson. It’s definitely hot water, here: some people don’t want to hear that, yes, everybody should be entitled to a fair defence in court, and no, the government is not allowed to curtail Parliament when there is relevant business they should be attending to. People don’t want to hear that human rights law largely protects the deserving, that Charlie Gard could never have survived even with nucleoside therapy (which had not ever been tested in humans at that point anyway).

Of course, I’m a sympathetic ear to pretty much everything the Secret Barrister discusses which I was already aware of, and ready to trust their word on other points. Nonetheless, I think they make it plain that they’re not trying to play politics, here, except insofar as earnestly wanting to educate all British people about their legal rights goes. I might be able to make some guesses about where SB sits politically, but this book is not about that — it’s not intended to vindicate those who voted Remain, or excoriate a particular party (actually, people from both Labour and the Tories are roundly criticised at various points). It tries to explain why the things the tabloids want you to get outraged about are a bit more complicated than that.

I think it’s really readable, and accessible; I think it might be more broadly of interest and more useful to people than SB’s first book, though I think that’s a good read too. The Secret Barrister is right: ordinary people do not know enough about the law, not even to know our own rights, and it’s time that we learned.

Rating: 4/5

Tags: , , ,

Divider

Review – How To Change Your Mind

Posted October 31, 2020 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of How to Change Your Mind by Michael PollanHow to Change Your Mind: The New Science of Psychedelics, Michael Pollan

If you’re interested in the recent findings that psychedelic drugs (like LSD and magic mushrooms) could help treat forms of depression that have proven themselves resistant to the usual standard of care, this is pretty helpful in many ways as a survey of how LSD et al were originally perceived, how and why things changed, how a psychedelic experience feels, and where things are right now with research (roughly, given that anything based on research can be refined or retracted by the time the book’s printed).

It is also, however, very much about the author: his experiences with various different psychedelic substances take up a whole chapter, and another chapter is given over to the hunting of mushrooms (and the descriptions of a psychedelic trip based on those, too). It’s a very personal history, though I feel that Pollan does make his biases and prejudices — and how they changed with the research — pretty clear, so the unwary reader is still aware that some of this is coloured by opinion.

It sounds like psychedelics are a pretty promising avenue not just for treatment-resistant depression, but for quite a few other mental health issues too. I don’t think that I’m ever likely to see out psychedelics recreationally: the described dissolution of the ego and changed perceptions don’t really appeal to me, and I’d rather find my oneness with the universe through meditation and just trying to be a good person. The one way in which it appeals to me is the finding that it often changes people’s relationship to death (having been used with great success as part of palliative care). As someone with 10-15 years of constant anxiety about my health and anxious predictions of my imminent death under my belt, the idea of feeling able to let that go to some extent sounds very appealing… if only there were an exact science to having the kind of trip that leads to that outcome.

There are a few things that bother me about the current perception that psychedelics could be a panacea for almost all mental health problems, and to his credit, Pollan does discuss them despite his enthusiasm. One is the near-impossibility of randomised controlled studies; another is the impossibility of tightly controlling all the variables when psychedelic drugs are used, because people’s experiences depend highly on their setting and their mental state beforehand, and crucially, what they expect to happen. As soon as you’ve got someone’s informed consent for a psychedelic to be administered, you’ve changed the outcome of their trip.

Finally, we’ve had seemingly amazing breakthroughs in mental health treatments before, but over time they have lost their efficacy — repeat studies on antidepressants like fluoxetine (Prozac) now find far smaller effects, even when everything is carefully controlled. It’s not entirely clear why that is, so it is also unclear whether that will apply to psychedelics as well, and to what extent.

In any case, Pollan’s book is an interesting survey of the history and the state of the field now, and well worth it if you’re interested in the topic.

Rating: 4/5

Tags: , , , , ,

Divider