Page 82 of 185

Not the Wellcome Prize Tour

27/04/2020 / Paul / 5 Comments

Welcome to Halfman, Halfbook for my stop on the Blog Tour for the Not the Wellcome Prize Tour organised by Rebecca Foster of BookishBeck

The official Wellcome Prize is on hiatus this year. This is not the first time that they have done this, but I don’t think that they knew about the pandemic in advance! It is an anxious time for many, and what it shows is that we need books that can talk honestly and truthfully about the science of health and wellbeing and not succumb to the snake oil salesmen.

Here is how the website describes the Prize’s purpose: “a book should have a central theme that engages with some aspect of medicine, health or illness. … At some point, medicine touches all our lives. Books that find stories in those brushes with medicine are ones that add new meaning to what it means to be human. The subjects these books grapple with might include birth and beginnings, illness and loss, pain, memory, and identity. In keeping with its vision and goals, the Wellcome Book Prize aims to excite public interest and encourage debate around these topics.

We have selected 19 books for this tour:

Two of which I am going to be highlighting today.

Chasing the Sun: The New Science of Sunlight and How it Shapes Our Bodies and Minds by Linda Geddes

Since the dawn of time, humans have worshipped the sun. And with good reason.

Our biology is set up to work in partnership with the sun. From our sleep cycles to our immune systems and our mental health, access to sunlight is crucial for living a happy and fulfilling life. New research suggests that our sun exposure over a lifetime – even before we were born – may shape our risk of developing a range of different illnesses, from depression to diabetes.

Bursting with cutting-edge science and eye-opening advice, Chasing the Sun explores the extraordinary significance of sunlight – from ancient solstice celebrations to modern sleep labs, and from the unexpected health benefits of sun exposure to what the Amish know about sleep that the rest of us don’t.

As more of us move into light-polluted cities, spending our days in dim offices and our evenings watching brightly lit screens, we are in danger of losing something vital: our connection to the star that gave us life. It’s a loss that could have far-reaching consequences that we’re only just beginning to grasp.

About the Author

Linda Geddes is a London-based journalist writing about biology, medicine and technology. Born in Cambridge, she graduated from Liverpool University with a first-class degree in Cell Biology. She has worked as both a news editor and reporter for New Scientist magazine, and has received numerous awards for her journalism, including the Association of British Science Writers’ awards for Best Investigative Journalism. She is married with two young children, Matilda and Max.

My Review

The sun rises every single day and has done so for the past few billion years. This source of energy has played a pivotal part in the development of life on Earth and not unsurprising, it has been a focus of our collective attention for time immemorial. Many cultures have worshipped it or have tracked its regular path through the heavens and tried to elucidate meaning from it.

As the sun has been a central part of almost all the Earth’s inhabitants, lots of creatures have evolved in tandem with it, including us. Research has shown that the sun is key to our mental well being, sleep, immune systems and circadian rhythms. Too much sun is bad for us as it can cause skin cancers but then so is too little, those that rarely see the sun do not generate enough vitamin D that is essential for their health.

One of the biggest disrupters to our health in the modern day is artificial light. Ever since the light bulb was invented, cheap affordable light has been available to all so we have retreated indoors turning pallid in the glow of the modern screens. Office lighting is a good example. The output from the ceilings lights is fairly poor, you only get a fraction of light, around 200 to 300 lux, which is nothing when you compare it to the amount light on a bright day which can reach around 100,000 lux. All of these effects are cumulative, and if you live in northern Europe, then you are much worse off in winter because of the very short days.

I liked this book a lot, it does what a good popular science book should do, gives you a good overview of the subject and touches on lots of different subjects without becoming too academic. On certain elements, for example, on our body clocks and how to improve lighting for those on shift work, in particular, Geddes explores them in a little more depth. Worth reading.

The Nocturnal Brain: Nightmares, Neuroscience, and the Secret World of Sleep by Guy Leschziner

For Dr Guy Leschziner’s patients, there is no rest for the weary in mind and body. Insomnia, narcolepsy, night terrors, sleep apnea, and sleepwalking are just a sampling of conditions afflicting sufferers who cannot sleep–and their experiences in trying are the stuff of nightmares. Demoniac hallucinations frighten people into paralysis. Restless legs rock both the sleepless and their sleeping partners with unpredictable and uncontrollable kicking. Out-of-sync circadian rhythms confuse the natural body clock’s days and nights.

Then there are the extreme cases. A woman in a state of deep sleep who gets dressed, unlocks her car, and drives for several miles before returning to bed. The man who has spent decades cleaning out kitchens while “sleep-eating.” The teenager prone to the serious, yet unfortunately nicknamed “Sleeping Beauty Syndrome” stuck in a cycle of excessive unconsciousness, binge eating, and uncharacteristic displays of aggression and hyper-sexuality while awake.

With compassionate stories of his patients and their conditions, Dr Leschziner illustrates the neuroscience behind our sleeping minds, revealing the many biological and psychological factors necessary in getting the rest that will not only maintain our physical and mental health but improve our cognitive abilities and overall happiness.

About the Author

Guy Leschziner is a consultant neurologist at Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospitals in London, where he leads the Sleep Disorders Centre, one of the largest sleep services in Europe, and a reader in neurology at King’s College London. He also works at London Bridge and Cromwell Hospitals. Alongside his clinical work, he is the presenter of the Mysteries of Sleep series on BBC Radio 4, is editor of the forthcoming Oxford Specialist Handbook of Sleep Medicine (OUP), and is Neurology Section editor for the next edition of Principles and Practice of Sleep Medicine (Elsevier)

My Review

Thankfully I have never had any issues in sleeping. I put my head on the pillow and almost always I am asleep within a few minutes. I sleep deeply too, I missed the entire Great Storm in 1987 and was totally oblivious to a massive lightning storm that struck an oak tree opposite where I lived. My father has always called it a short course in death…

Sleep is essential to our health, but no one can say with any conviction exactly why we need it. If we are sleep deprived then there is a finite time that we can survive, hence why it is used as a form of torture. So what happens to our brain at night? A lot of what we can learn about the brain when it is resting is by studying those that struggle with all manner of sleep-related issues.

Guy Leschzineris well placed to explain these sleep issues as he is the head of the Sleep Disorders Centre at Guy’s and St. Thomas’s Hospitals. In this book, he explains the various types of disorders that he has come across, such as sleepwalking, apnoea, night terrors and narcolepsy through the stories of the people that he has met and treated. Some of the things that these people have to suffer sound horrendous, paralysis, tremors and hallucinations for example. The story of a lady who would wake in the middle of the night and drive around whilst asleep and be utterly unaware what she was doing is terrifying.

This book by Leschziner is a fine addition to the discussion and understanding of this little-understood habit that we have to undertake every day for our health. His compassionate writing about the people that he is treating will help those that have been suffering from insomnia and other sleeping disorders to understand that they are not alone. There are several books out there now about sleeping. Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker is a really good explanation of why we need sleep and this accessible book is a fine addition to the knowledge of sleep.

Don’t forget to visit the other blogs on the blog tour. There are quite a few of them! Follow the hashtag on Twitter too, #NotTheWellcomePrize.

The shadow panel (Annabel, Clare, Laura, Rebecca and myself) will choose a shortlist of six titles to be announced on 4 May. We will then vote to choose a winner, with the results of a Twitter poll serving as one additional vote. The Not the Wellcome Prize winner will be announced on 11 May.

Buy these at your local independent bookshop if possible. If you’re not sure where your nearest is then you can find one here

Follow the authors and publishers on Social Media:

Chasing the Sun by Linda Geddes

@LindaGeddes

Instagram @lindageddes.science

published by @ProfileBooks

Insta: @profile.books

The Nocturnal Brain by Guy Leschziner

@guy_lesch

published by Simon & Schuster UK

@simonschusterUK

Liquid Gold by Roger Morgan-Grenville

24/04/2020 / Paul / 0 Comments

3.5 out of 5 stars

A copy of this was provided free of charge from the publisher in return for an honest review.

It was getting caught helping himself to a tomato from his grandfather’s vines and a conversation with Mr Fowler, the gardener, that he first became aware of bees. This led to a promise of tea at Mr Fowler’s and a visit to his hive. Having been stung the odd occasion before, being shown 50,000 of them is a wooden box was almost too much, but the gentle reassurance of his mentor meant that his worries ebbed away. Mr Fowler shut the hive up and promised a return visit when it was time to harvest the honey. He never went back.

Roll on a few decades later and he is looking out the window with his friend, and Jim says that is the third one he has seen recently. Third what? is the question; swarm is the reply. Thankfully Jim was once a beekeeper and suggested that Roger tried to take it off the branch and get it into a box. It was going well until he dropped something in the middle of the swarm and it was not long after that, that he spots a couple of bees inside the veil…

Taking Jim’s old hive and with several thousand irritated bees in the boot of the car, he heads home to start his beekeeping adventure. It was one of those pivotal moments though, that little spark that was almost extinguished years earlier was fanned into life once again. It would become a flame after meeting Duncan, a new guy in the village. As they head out of the pub, Duncan picks up a pot of honey from the shelves where people sell a few bits and pieces and nearly falls over at the price. He mentions the failed attempt with the swarm earlier and together they concoct a plan to get a couple of hives.

What could possibly go wrong…

It is the beginning of a warm friendship between the two men as they try to get their heads around these tiny insects as they produce this liquid gold. It is very amusing at times especially when they are at the auction or trying to decide the next plan of action. It is a steep learning curve too, the initial budget is blown out of the water and they suffer setbacks and celebrate successes in equal measure. It is full of poignant moments, a spot of cricket, an expensive bottle of whisky and the odd hangover. I’m not totally sure what the price per pot of honey worked out at, but this isn’t about the money. It is a book about forging friends for life and a growing respect for these amazing insects. It did remind me a little of Allotted Time: Twelve Months, Two Blokes, One Shed, No Idea by Robin Shelton which is a book in a similar vein but about allotments.

Agency by William Gibson

21/04/2020 / Paul / 2 Comments

4 out of 5 stars

Verity is known as the app whisperer and even though she doesn’t like working for big corporations this startup seems more interesting than most assignments, besides she needs the money. They want her to evaluate and test a set of glasses with a phone and an earbud. She’d chosen the plainer grey pair, but plugging them all in and turning on gave her a bit of a shock when the voice talks to her. It is not a recorded voice, rather it is a personal AI that calls herself, Eunice.

Unnerved by this, she decides to head to her local coffee shop, 3.7 sigma, as she walks in the door the barista pushes her favourite drink across the counter to her. It is starting to dawn on her that Eunice is not the usual digital assistant, she is much smarter than anyone she has ever met and is continually scanning everything, what makes her certain of that though is after coming out of the show a courier knocks on the door and hands her a package. In it is $100,000 that Eunice says Verity is going to need very soon…

If that was unexpected, she is contacted by a guy called Netherton, but what she really is not prepared for is to be the fact that he is from 100 years in the future from a different timeline where Brexit and Trump happened. This is very different from her timeline and he is there to stop something nasty happening with Eunice’s particular skills.

I have liked Gibson’s writing since I first came across his in Neuromancer, he has a knack of picking up the trends and projecting them into a future that might happen. It is often a future that has some positives and also some downsides. It is the same in this book, it is dripping with cool tech, drones and AI. Coupled with all of this is a deeply layered plot that is full of moments that happen and make no sense until 50 or more pages later. Snappy chapters keep the pace fast and it has this slightly sinister black ops vibe running all the way through it. The main characters have depth but the rest are a little two dimensional. I liked the use of stumps; alternative storylines to regular time travel episodes in world history that branched the other way to the timeline that you are on, it is a technique that fully messed with my head. Great stuff from Gibson once again.

Holding Unfailing by Edward Ragg

16/04/2020 / Paul / 0 Comments

A copy of this was provided free of charge from the author in return for an honest review.

This is the second collection of poems that Edward Ragg has written and these are about his life in China as it undergoes a rapid and dramatic change. It is a wide-ranging collection, from poems that cover anxiety, travel, his mothers birthday, the sinister surveillance society of China, the pleasure of just watching things happen and the mysteries of punctuation.

Some revelations grow
From the ground,

Some from the
Burning hearth,

Some from
the inquisitive mind

To me, all the poems feel rooted in things that Ragg has experienced, both here and in China. I like his use of short lines of prose that are full of meaning and very much to the point regardless of whether he is writing about leaving Shanghai or finding and following a path. There are poems with longer verses to that add a decent heft to a book that feels refined. Really enjoyed this, and I am reliably informed by the author that there is a third collection, but not sure when that is going to be out this year which I am looking forward to reading in due course.

Three Favourite Poems
Punctuation Points
Day of Reckoning
A Dawning

The Ice House by Tim Clare

15/04/2020 / Paul / 0 Comments

3 out of 5 stars

Delphine Venner has been around a long time, whilst some people the same age as her have fading memories, she has not forgotten anything. She remembers being a child of war, and fighting for her life, she remembers the gateway and the world and terrifying creatures that live the other side of it. Most of all she remember those that she lost. She is offered a chance to pass through the gateway once again. On the other side of the gateway is someone who has been an assassin for centuries. She is waiting for her.

This assassin, Hagar, is planning one last kill, and this death will cost demand from her everything she has, but to do it she needs Delphine. She is there to find her father but is dragged unwittingly into this, the whole society descends into chaos. Venner must learn the art of fighting once again in the battle to destroy an ageless evil.

I hadn’t read the first in the series before picking this book up, and while you didn’t have to have read the first one, I think that the context from the first books would have helped me with a greater understanding of the characters. It has a complex plot with lots going on too and occasionally you have to put the books down and take a moment to get it clear in your head just what was happening. It has a frantic pace at the end and probably not one for the squeamish at times. At times it was very weird but in a Miéville sort of way. That said, this is a richly imagined book of two linked worlds and a very different fantasy from what you might have read in the past. It has a sumptuous cover too.

Origins by Lewis Dartnell

12/04/2020 / Paul / 2 Comments

4 out of 5 stars

A copy of this was provided free of charge from the publisher in return for an honest review.

We may think that we are a separate species from all the others but we are as much a part of the earth as the rocks and soil that we stand on. To start with we are made from the same elements and all the things that you can see around you we are an integral part of this planet. Secondly, if you know where to look and how to interpret the data you can see the traces of our long development in the rocks too.

To begin this story, Dartnell takes us back to that moment in time when we moved down a different and new branch of the family tree, along with other primates. This happened in East Africa in the rainforest belt around the equator, but instead of being dense forest, this part of the world was dry savannah grasslands and it was this difference that altered the trajectory from swinging primate to bipedal creatures. Why this part of the planet was so very different to similar latitudes was down to plate tectonics several million years earlier that led to the East African Rift, a wide deep valley with high mountainous ridges. These cause a rain shadow and stop the formation of forests, hence the dry landscape that was there.

This theme is repeated throughout the book. He looks at the geology of different regions and sees how human beings have exploited the water that seeps up through fault lines or taken advantage of the rich soils close to volcanoes. He explains why the civilisations of the Mediterranean were mostly on the northern coastlines, how we used the rocks beneath our feet to build our homes and how we used cooking to get more nutrients from food. He can even trace the voting patterns of the UK and US in the geology.

This is a book about deep time, how long some things take to come to fruition and pulling together these tiny but significant moments in our history. It also reinforces the view that I have that we are this complex interdependent system and that as a species we have pushed it to the very edge. It makes for a fascinating read and I really enjoyed it. Dartnell is an eloquent and engaging writer and I can highly recommend this.

Awakening by Sam Love

09/04/2020 / Paul / 0 Comments

4 out of 5 stars

A copy of this was provided free of charge from the publisher in return for an honest review.

Even as I write this with COVID-19 totally dominating the news, climate change is still one of our biggest challenges that we are facing as a planet and as a human race. There have been many books written on the science of what is happening, and the possible effects of what our planet could be like with a temperature rise of 4 degrees. There are fictional responses too, Stillicide by Cynan Jones and Doggerland by Ben Smith are two books set in a future UK that has suffered from the effects of climate change.

The barren shelves wait

For just in time deliveries to cities

Where no one can eat barcodes

But there aren’t many poetry books about this crisis, so when I was offered a copy of this to read, I jumped at the chance. This collection by Sam Love is split into four themed sections, Awakening, Origins, Impact and Recovering Hope. The emphasis for each section is fairly clear and the poems open up things that are important to him, such as the way the atmosphere traps the heat from the sun, the imagery of a Plastic bag as tumbleweed before joining the other detritus of our legacy is very poignant, the joy of picking fruit from a bush in your garden rather than a punnet that has travelled a quarter of the way around the world. The view that a forest is a sustainable resource for local people and not just a one-off source of profit for an outsider.

The butterfly’s bright wings offer a glimpse

That tomorrow the sunrise will paint the landscape

What comes across most in the short collection is the fury that he has about the way that we have reached the situation that we are in. The final section gives us a little hope that this is merely a transitory phase and that there will be some positives on the other side of this crisis.

Three (ish) Favourite Poems

Our Legacy

Crazy Water

Ghost Stumps

Awakenings

To The Lake by Kapka Kassabova

07/04/2020 / Paul / 6 Comments

4 out of 5 stars

There are parts of Europe that rarely get mentioned, these out of the way places often have turbulent and complicated pasts. One of these places is mountainous borderlands of North Macedonia, Albania, and Greece. The border of the three countries passes through the two ancient lakes formed by tectonic activity and are joined by underground rivers, Ohrid and Prespa.

It is a place that is deeply rooted deeply in Kapka Kassabova’s heart too, her maternal grandmother was a huge influence on her and she came from the region. It was somewhere where she wants to go to and spend time there, but it hadn’t been appropriate until now. It was a region that had known conflict for years, but there had been peace for a little while now and there was no time like the present.

Amongst all the history here though and there has been an awful lot of history; wars and constantly changing borders and regimes, it is a place scarred deeply by conflict. It is now coming to terms with peace, and she is here for the human stories and to see if there are any traces of her family left. Landing at the airport in Albania, she immediately feels at home, the men who are hoping for work all look like her cousins. They pass through a medieval gate into the town on Ohrid on the way to the villa she was staying at. The owners looked familiar and it didn’t take long to realise that there was a family link.

Form this initial meeting she heads off around the region to meet and talk with the people of the region, from the fishermen, mothers, aunts, poets and border guards. She learns about how and when Sufism appeared in the region, speaks the those that got across the Iron Curtain and visits monasteries high in the mountains and walks in 2000-year-old tombs that were untouched until recently. But all of the trip out centre on these amazing lakes

As she travels between town and villages and crossing the lakes she keeps bumping into people that look familiar. Quite often after a short conversation with them, she invariably finds out that they are related in some way or another. And it is that sort of thing that sums this book up, it is a little-understood area of the world and through her wonderful prose, Kassabova untangles the people from the politics. Slowly the rifts are being healed, even when she is there it is finally agreed with Greece that Macedonia can formally be called North Macedonia. With all these things though, it is a process that has taken far too long, but it does show that even after years of conflict they still have so much more in common than the differences between them.

Quicksand Tales by Keggie Carew

06/04/2020 / Paul / 0 Comments

3.5 out of 5 stars

A copy of this was provided free of charge from the publisher in return for an honest review.

We probably all have that one friend who if it wasn’t for bad luck, wouldn’t have any luck at all. And we have all had those situations where you are genuinely trying to be helpful and manage to put your foot right in it or say the wrong thing. One embarrassing moment was when we were out for dinner with friends and they happened to mention that they thought there was live music there sometimes. We said the last time we were there, there was this accordion player and were quite glad he wasn’t there tonight. Turn’s out that accordion player was her dad…

Keggie Carew is one of those people who has a natural ability to put her foot in it or more by chance to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. This collection is her recollection of the most cringeworthy and embarrassing moment of her life. There is the story of the time when a purse went missing from her home when someone else was looking after it, a dinner party where she was completely oblivious to that fact she was sitting to a Hollywood film star, thinking it was his brother, Nigel. She learns that she is not cut out to be a waitress, mumbles her way through the Latin gardening terms and fails abysmally at matchmaking and camping in a VW Beetle in California.

These stories that Carew has recounted are always awkward, often funny, sometimes hilarious and occasionally terrifying. It shows the strength of her true character too, as what each story shows is her tenacity to keep going no matter how cringe-worthy or embarrassing they are to her. A nice light-hearted read.

March 2020 Review

04/04/2020 / Paul / 2 Comments

Well, that was a long month and possibly one of the most surreal that I have ever lived through. I can’t see it getting any better any time soon though. I hope that you are all safe and well and coping with staying at home. I have been at work the last two week because this was the week that we planned to move at work and we had stock and the production line to move. We did it, we’re in It is all working and I am shattered. Thankfully, I now have a week off and I am looking forward to some government-approved walks and reading.

First some stats after reaching a quarter of the way through the year.

I have read 49 books and 13492 pages. Thirty-three of the authors were male and the remaining 17 were female (34%). I have read 21 review books, 19 library books and 9 of my own.

Top three publishers are:

Faber – 5 books

Eland – 3 Books

Jonathan Cape – 3 books

Top three genres are:

Travel – 11 books

Memoir – 7 books

Poetry – 6 books

Anyway onto the books that I read in March. I only managed to get through 16 from the huge TBR that I posted and they were

I had really enjoyed Alistair Moffat’s previous book, The Hidden Ways and was fortunate enough to get To The Island Of Tides from the library. Partly a memoir and eulogy to a lost grandchild, this is a personal pilgrimage to the island of Lindisfarne walking through the historical landscape of Scotland and Northern England.

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong is one of the books on the Dylan Thomas Prize and I was kindly sent a copy to read by Martina at Midas. It is a semi-autobiographical book about a mixed-race lad who in a letter to thin mother is exploring his past and his sexuality. Well written but not entirely my thing, but it is good to push your boundaries.

Memoirs seemed the be the thing this month. I have always loved electronic and dance music, but never really been into the club scene. The Secret DJ is a funny and sometimes shocking book about the drug-fuelled world of the international jet setting DJ. Even if we knew who had written it, I would probably never of heard of them anyway. Another really funny memoir is This Is Going to Hurt by Adam Kay about his time as a junior doctor. In amongst all the blood is a touching story of helping people who are in great need. Keggie Carew is quite some character, in her first book Dadland we learnt about the amazing things her father got up to, and in Quicksand Tales, she is recounting various amusing and terrifying misadventures. Jean Sprackland is a great writer and was please to get an early copy of These Silent Mansions from the library. In this book, she travels back to places she used to live and revisits the graveyards that were places of solitude and calm in her busy life.

Just as the weekend storms finish and the country enters into lockdown spring arrives and the sun comes out. I try and make a habit os reading a seasonal book each time the world runs on the equinox or solstice and this year I picked up The Nature Of Spring by Jim Crumley. I had read his Winter book in December and was really looking forward to it as he is a writer of immense talent. I wasn’t disappointed either and am now looking forward to his final one in the series, Summer.

Two poetry books last month that dealt with personal matters. the first is fairly obvious, Alcoholic Betty by Elisabeth Horan is about her battle with the demon drink. The second book, If All the World and Love Were Young is about grief set in the context of the Mario Cart video game. This book by Stephen Sexton is another from the Dylan Thomas Prize

Dervla Murphy is a very independent-minded lady and she wanted to see for herself what life is like in Gaza. She stayed there a month and wrote about it in A Month by the Sea. It is not the easiest book to read given its subject matter, but it is still worth doing so just to have some insight as to what life is like there.

This Book Will Blow Your Mind is a collection of stories and articles from the New Scientist brought together in various themes. Not a bad book, but my mind is still intact after reading this. I had read Gaia Vince’s first book, Adventures in the Anthropocene and thought it was a good summation of the mess that we have made of the planet. Transcendence is looking at how we came to be the most dominant species on the planet and how evolution for other species has not had similar results. It was interesting but I didn’t like it as much as her first book

Only read two travel books this month, the first was A Pattern of Islands. This was Arthur Grimble and stories of his time spent in the Kiribati islands in the pacific. He became very fond of the people and their pagan rituals that still existed even with pressure from Christian Missionaries. Trade routes have been around for millennia and one that was specific to Europe was the Amber Route. People bought amber, the fossilised remains of tree sap from the Baltic coast down to the Mediterranean coast where it was turned into fine objects and then shipped it back along the same trail. C.J. Schuller travels along the same route, finding places where amber has been celebrated and finding his own family history in the places he passes through. Even better, I could use both for my #WorldFromMyArmchair.

Two books of the month in March. First is Irreplaceable by Julian Hoffman. This is a celebration and a call to arms of some of the most beautiful and fragile wild places. Places that we are highly likely to lose unless we change our ways.

My second book of the month is Ghost Town by Jeff Young. It is a beautifully written book about family memories of growing up in Liverpool and re walking the streets that he did when younger.