Darwin’s Lost World, Martin Brasier

When I picked this up, I didn’t really register that I’d been disappointed by one of the author’s other books. Good thing it was a library book, because though the topic of the most ancient remains of life is fascinating, Brasier’s account jumps around geologically and logically. There’s no straight progression from idea to idea, era to era, area to area. I kept losing track of where a fossil was and how old it was thought to be, and getting distracted by Brasier’s anecdotes (almost boasting) about places he’d been looking for fossils.

Also, I don’t know if Brasier is English or Welsh or what, but my teeth started slowly grinding when he brought in Arthurian analogies. Arthur never looked for the grail, never. It’s the same issue with basic facts that I found in Secret Chambers when he repeated common apocryphal stories as fact, except even more personally annoying because this is Arthur and I spent most of my degree studying Arthur as deeply as Brasier studies fossils. It’s an idiosyncratic reaction, I know, but it was still annoying. The Arthurian stuff felt weird, shoehorned in, especially when Brasier was doing research for Oxford University in Scotland. I could understand it more if he was a fellow of a Welsh university or something.

Rating: 2/5

The Hemlock Cup, Bettany Hughes

I got Bettany Hughes’ books because when I graduated from my BA, she was awarded an honorary fellowship by my university. So naturally, after her speech, I was curious about her work. My problem with her book on Helen of Troy was mostly the organisation, and I had that problem again too; she begins at the end of Socrates’ life, jumps forward and back with foreshadowing, tells you about people’s deaths and then mentions them again a few pages later…

I can also imagine that a lot of people would find it a dry read. I found Socrates fascinating, learning about his character; I was sometimes doubtful about how Hughes could really have pieced together certain details about him. There’s plenty of references and so on in the back of the book, but then there’s also careless mistakes like referring to Elektra and Ismene’s brothers. (It’s Antigone, not Elektra. Wrong tragedy, wrong tragedian.) That makes me a little unsure of how to take it all — and of course, Socrates didn’t write down his philosophy in the way that Plato or Aristotle did, so everything we have is second or third hand anyway.

An interesting book, at any rate, but not as fascinating as the one on Helen. I actually read it while reading Jo Walton’s The Just City, to which it makes an interesting non-fictional companion!

Rating: 3/5

Otter Country, Miriam Darlington

Otter Country is really a personal account of an obsession with otters, like H is for Hawk or Crow Country. In many ways, it’s more about Darlington than it is about otters, though her eyes are open to the significance of otters in their own environment, to their struggles and their slow recovery over recent years. I felt a little left out, since I haven’t read Ring of Bright Water — which I know we have in the local library, as it survived our last cull, so I’ll probably give it a go when I get the chance.

There are some beautiful descriptions, etc, but sometimes I found myself rolling my eyes rather at the ideas Darlington took into her head, like that it would be a good idea to take her clothes off and jump into the burn during midge season.

Rating: 2/5

The Secret Museum, Molly Oldfield

This book looks like it’d make a great coffee table book, and in a way it is part of that genre of bite-size, digestible bits of culture. But it’s lacking in the lavish pictures I’d expect from such a thing: many of the items are represented by photographs the size of a postage stamp, or just sketches. The book itself looks nice, but it’s not the most visually orientated; I assume that’s because many of these objects are too precious to photograph. With some of them, I wasn’t sure she should even be describing their locations so clearly!

It’s an eclectic collection of objects, in no real order. I can imagine that being very frustrating to anyone a little more serious about this than I am; I did enjoy browsing through the selection, though, dipping in and out as each object interested me more or less. I liked that these precious objects aren’t all of monetary value, often being more valuable as a link to the past or a symbol of an era.

It’s interesting in its randomness, rather like watching an episode of QI, which Molly Oldfield writes for. Probably frustrating, too, if that’s not your thing.

Rating: 3/5

The Spark of Life, Frances Ashcroft

Since I’m in the middle of my female authors only month, I thought now would be a good time to get round to some of the non-fiction books I have by women, especially in the STEM field. I’d forgotten I had this one, which is a shame: it fits into my general theme of reading about neurology, and builds on a lot of the stuff about ion channels that I learnt in an introductory biology class on Coursera. I understood pretty much all the science without wanting or needing to look anything up, or letting anything wash over my head: in part, that’s because Ashcroft writes very accessibly, but I think it is also because this is stuff I know and love.

Some of it is a little too much towards the neurology end of things for me. I wanted more about electricity in the human body — more of the sparks — and less of the chemical messages (the soups, in that old scientific debate); this veered towards talking much more about the chemical parts of the process, especially toward the end. On the other hand, it’s the chemical processes that create the electrical potentials and make all of the electricity in the human body (and other animals too) possible, so it’s quite inextricable. It just felt like it wandered.

Calling the book The Spark of Life is a little misleading, perhaps. It talks about electricity in the body, yeah, but that’s too small a part of the process to be considered alone, and a lot of other factors have to be discussed at quite some length. Ashcroft uses good examples, and explains things clearly; there’s a section of notes in the back for those who want to get a little deeper into it.

Rating: 4/5

Reasons to Stay Alive, Matt Haig

And it felt like a winter machine
That you go through and then
You catch your breath and winter starts again
And everyone else is spring bound

And when I chose to live
There was no joy
It’s just a line I crossed
It wasn’t worth the pain my death would cost
So I was not lost or found
–Dar Williams, ‘After All’

Reasons to Stay Alive is a sort of memoir, a sort of letter-to-self, a bit of a self-help book. It talks frankly about depression and anxiety, trying to put into words the sensations it can cause, the extent to which each is beyond simply feeling sad or worried. Most of the chapters are short; some seemed more useful than others. Some of it might help with understanding a loved one who has depression or anxiety, or any mental health issue, because Haig is a writer and knows how to communicate, and has been there feeling this. Some of it might be helpful in dealing with these kinds of feelings for yourself.

The thing I’ve found is that mostly, people with depression aren’t able to hear this sort of story. I certainly couldn’t. People could tell me until they were blue in the face that it could get better, that there was a light at the end of the tunnel, the fog would lift, etc, etc. I totally get the urge to share that understanding with people who don’t have it yet, but I’m not sure it works.

But if it does, even once, then it’s worth saying, so here’s my voice too: it can get better. No matter how scared or despairing or fucked up you feel, you can come back out of it. You’re never going to be the person you were before the depression, but you can be a new person who has learnt to cope with it, who has good times again.

I’ve been scared again, even desperately so, since I began to get better from my GAD. The important thing was that hard won knowledge that my brain was lying to me and it is possible to be okay again. I believe that for me, I believe that for Matt Haig, and I believe it for you, too, even when you can’t.

Rating: 3/5

The Black Count, Tom Reiss

To be honest, I only knew of one of the three Dumas men: the one who wrote The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers. My French history is pretty patchy, too, so this book was full of information that was new to me — it’s amazing how little one can know about Nelson and Napoleon despite knowing their names and historical significance. It focuses on General Dumas: not the father or the son we know from literary works, but the father and grandfather of them. I had no idea he was a man of colour, the son of a slave and a white aristocrat.

The book covers a lot of more general history about race in Europe at the time, as well, and the French Revolution, but it also reveals General Dumas for a passionate, earnest, thoroughly decent sort of man. Too often we seem to idolise people whose legacy is mixed, but everything here suggests that while Dumas was a soldier, he abhorred unnecessary violence and pillaging. Yes, he killed, and gladly, for his cause, and sometimes in great numbers. But that was in the heat of battle, and he didn’t approve of the guillotine.

You can tell throughout the book the warmth that the author Dumas felt for his father, how he idolised him, and Reiss’ liking as well. And it’s amazing how much General Dumas has been erased from the history of a country he served with all his heart. Someone Reiss interviewed called it racism, and I can’t help but agree.

Rating: 4/5