The Kiwi’s Egg, David Quammen

Having thoroughly enjoyed several of Quammen’s other books, I’m a bit sad that I didn’t really feel enthusiastic about this one — especially because I do have a great interest in Darwin, the early theories of evolution and the reaction to them in society. I mean, we’re still seeing that reaction now: I know people who don’t believe in evolution forming new species; I know people who are not convinced by the proofs we have; and various people somewhere in between. And this is an idea that’s in our general consciousness, unlike — for example — electron shells.

But the long descriptions of the incubation of Darwin’s idea are, well, long. And often totally speculative, alas. We have so many records of Darwin, but of course they don’t necessarily answer the questions we really want answered. All in all, this just… didn’t captivate me as I would’ve liked, despite reminding me that by all accounts I think I quite like Darwin as a person as well as a scientist.

Rating: 2/5

Creation: The Origin of Life/The Future of Life, Adam Rutherford

This book has kind of a fun design: the two sections are separated by flipping the book upside down. It’s a gimmick, but it’s kind of a cool design anyway. The topics are pretty interlinked, but you can read one half of the book without the other, or read them in either order; whatever you like. One half covers how life came to be, and one half covers the attempts to create life (or should that be recreate?), via genetic engineering, etc.

It’s an interesting bunch of issues, and Rutherford handles it well. His tone is informative, without being stultifyingly boring: he has some moments of humour which, while not laugh-out-loud funny, did provoke a snort or two. He writes engagingly, and those it is definitely an overview of the topics not really meant for a professional audience, he doesn’t shy away from discussing the complex ideas and different theories. None of it was really surprising or groundbreaking to me, because biology and genetics are big areas of interest for me, but it would make a good introduction for the intelligent reader, or a refresher to bring you up to date.

Rating: 4/5

The Periodic Table, Eric R. Scerri

I picked this up to help me get to grips a bit more with electron shells, and especially sub-shells, which I need to know for my OU course but are a step further that I learnt back in my GCSE. But really, it focuses more on the history of the periodic table, on the people who developed the most common versions and why it’s useful. There is some explanation of why the periodic table works and why it’s useful, but it didn’t really get me any further toward understanding it. I’m still left with “there are sub-shells because we say so”.

So, useful for background and history, less so for actual chemistry. Onward, I guess!

Rating: 3/5

Blackbeard, Angus Konstam

Another entry in “Nikki picks up the most random stuff at the library”, though this might’ve been around the time Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag came out, when I also picked up a book on George Washington I haven’t read yet… In any case, this turned out to be a bit disappointing. There’s a wealth of information here about pirates in general, their ports and habits and motivations, and yet it all seems to work out to a big heap of nothing when it comes to Blackbeard. The conclusion seems to be he’s more myth than man, because what we have of him was witnessed by terrified victims and the authors of sensational tales — i.e., not the most likely group to stick to the truth and nothing but the truth.

It’s interesting to get an idea of what does survive from the period, but most of it is very flimsy, and it makes it worse that Konstam will introduce it, dismiss it, and then still build other suppositions on it. For example, he establishes that there’s no proof beyond gossip for Blackbeard being a Bristol boy, and then goes on to build a whole theory about his piratical career on the basis of him being a Bristol boy. The two theories then prop each other up, neither very substantial. Not good practice!

Rating: 2/5

Stonehenge, Mike Parker Pearson

The whole idea of Stonehenge is a potent one. Those massive stones, dragged there from so far away (40 miles, by the most conservative theory) by people so long ago, for purposes that have puzzled us for centuries. Pearson’s work acknowledges the hold it has on our imaginations, and discusses a lot of the different theories before setting out his own and that of the excavation team he worked with. That aspect may be disappointing to you if you believe in a Mycenaean influence, or aliens building it, or that it’s an astronomical observatory. Or that Merlin brought the stones from Ireland and erected them with magic.

Overall, though, Pearson discusses the excavations themselves, the actual results of the digs and surveys, and the definite facts that came out of them. His interpretation is included, but I think he’s fairly clear that most of it is a working theory, albeit considered proven by himself and his team. I don’t know what archaeologists more generally think of it; to me, his theories seemed to make sense, but then I’m not an archaeologist, I have no particular specialist knowledge relevant to Stonehenge, and he wouldn’t exactly write the book to make himself sound like a crank. It does help that it seems aligned with theories about Seahenge that I read about by a different writer (review here).

If there’s a sense of wonder at history here, it’s about the things that humans could do, from so early in our history. It’s not about any religious awe; Pearson seems pretty devoid of that, at least as regards Stonehenge. And maybe a sense of wonder at what we can recover.

I think in some ways he theorises beyond his data, as the temptation always is with something like Stonehenge. I think he’s pretty convinced his theories are right, despite the fact that you can’t prove a lot of it (e.g. we can’t prove that henge burials tend to be of a family lineage over generations). But it’s overall a compelling book that pulls together the facts we have.

Rating: 4/5

When Life Nearly Died, Michael J. Benton

For all that this purports to be about the end-Permian extinction — the greatest of the extinction events, where maybe 90% of living organisms were wiped out — this actually contains a lot more information about the end-Cretaceous. This makes some sense, because we have a much better understanding of what caused the end-Cretaceous extinction, and it helps that it’s also the most widely known and understood. People don’t really want to hear about the extinctions in the Permian, however much more disastrous, because the image of the extinction of the dinosaurs is so entrenched in our minds.

But I kind of did want to know about the end-Permian extinction, and I wasn’t so interested in chapters and chapters of set up, particularly when it came to the history of catastrophism. It’s enough that I grasp the concepts, and that they haven’t always been agreed upon or understood the way they are now — I don’t really want to know the personal details of loads of scientists’ lives. (Some are interesting characters in themselves. Some are not. Either way, I’m actually here for the end-Permian, not upheavals in Earth sciences.)

I was a bit staggered by a couple of assertions — “all organisms have DNA”, for example, including “the simplest virus”. But no: a virus contains RNA. It’s quite an important distinction, and shouldn’t have slipped past editors, particularly when the book does touch on heredity and descent. And then there was the rather bizarre idea that the Marie Celeste’s crew were struck by a burp of gas which killed them, made their bodies disappear, and left the ship itself untouched. Hm.

Mostly it seems reasonably solid, but bits like that made me raise my eyebrows a bit.

Rating: 2/5

Pieces of Light, Charles Fernyhough

This is rather more anecdotal than I’d hoped, often exploring memories through Fernyhough’s relationship with his own memories: memories of his father, teaching his children about his father, comparing his memories of a place to re-experiencing the place later on, etc, etc. Some of this is fascinating — especially his interviews with his grandmother, recording all the stories she had to tell. It’s a very personal thing, not scientific, but it’s interesting all the same; I sometimes get the same urge with my grandmother, just to capture the weird things she says sometimes that she trots out like proverbs and yet no one has ever heard before!

There are some discussions of more scientific stuff, and most of it seemed perfectly solid from what I know from other authors; it’s just, under the sea of anecdotal data, I don’t feel like I learned much. There’s nothing wrong with the writing style or the content, but it’s more H is for Hawk than scientific.

Rating: 3/5