Books and Me

By Matthew Syed (2016) This book has proved to be the most essential read so far this year.  Matthew Syed explains his ideas about human error, learning from failure, marginal gains, creativity and the neurology of a fixed versus a growth mindset using the most vivid and poignant examples from a variety of fields including aviation, medicine, cycling, Formula One and manufacturing.  Syed combines all the best thinking from various sources, including the likes of Karl Popper and Carol Dweck, to produce a thoroughly convincing argument about how we should reform so many of our institutions and work places.  I only wish he could have applied his arguments to the education system as that is more than overdue for the same treatment, but perhaps that is another book all of its own. Rating 10/10

By Tom Sharpe (1971) For those with an exaggerated deference for the ruling classes, this satirical novel should prove the most powerful antidote - far more powerful than non-fiction works such as "The Establishment".   This because there are things you can say in fiction that are completely unsayable in factual books, but that really get to the nub of reality nonetheless.  You might be tempted to assume that most of the situations and characters in Riotous Assembly are hyperbolic, but actually humans are indeed awful.  Take, for example, the first few chapters of Matthew Syed's "Black Box Thinking" which demonstrate very clearly, albeit in far more measured tones, that humans, when given power and prestige, are indeed utterly ridiculous to the point of being stupid and pernicious to the nth degree.  Tom Sharpe actually isn't stretching a point very far. It is also riotous good fun and very funny in places. Rating 7/10

By Dr. Giles Yeo (2018) This is a thoroughly useful book, describing what we currently know about how genes influence obesity.  It also makes it quite clear that we still need to know a lot more but, as far as it goes, it is very handy to know where we're at at the moment, at the very least so that we don't continue to make bad dietary choices.  And making a mess of dietary choices we clearly do!  Giles does his best to sort the wheat from the chaff with the best arguments and explanations to date: various cleanses, the GOOP madness, gluten free diets and many others come under the spot light and shrivel under the scrutiny. The only quibble: the tone is somehow a bit wobbly, as if English isn't actually the author's first language, or as if he would far rather be writing a scientific paper and dumbing down is desperately counter-intuitive.  However, the effect is endearing rather than annoying and certainly doesn't detract from the "must read" natur...

by Rod Liddle (2014). True to form, Rod continues to entertain and infuriate by turns .  Actually, if I'm honest, he never does manage to infuriate me, but regular headlines, including one  today , demonstrate that he does successfully irritate a large number of people.  The thing is, unlike the likes of Katy Hopkins, I suspect that being vexatious isn't Rod's entire raison d'etre.  Instead he primarily wants to say it as it is even when what it is he has to say completely unsayable in this day and age.  You have to respect that, even on the few occasions when you suspect that he might also be wrong.   And of course on the entertainment front, he is quite often very funny, turning out perfectly pitched, humorous ridicule annoyingly easily, which is always admirable. The stand out unsayable, the elephant that has occupied my particular room ever since I floundered around for most of my youth as my mother worked her socks off as a doctor, was the...

by Nick Littlehales (2016) I have to admit that at 3 am in the morning and after the first few chapters, I was just about to throw this book out the window as I simply wasn't sleeping. Nothing the book suggested was helping which wasn't a huge surprise as it hadn't told me anything that I hadn't already tried, but just when I was about to give up, it came good and offered up a couple of gems that made it all worthwhile. Even though the last few chapters became tedious again, being either reiteration of what he'd said earlier, just plain common sense or marketing of his sleep kits, I have slept more in the past few days since reading the middle of the book, so I reckon it is worth a punt to see if there is something you might have forgotten. Rating 5/10

by Owen Jones (2014) In this book , Owen Jones sets out to expose the way in which the wealthy and the powerful protect their interests at the expense of the rest of us and to this end, he produces a wealth of pretty convincing evidence.  Admittedly he sometimes puts slightly more contentious assertions into the mouths of his interviewees, and leaves these assertions hanging without any serious discussion, but all in all the welter of first hand testimony and argument leave one in little doubt that he has a pretty strong case. Of course, events have rather taken over since 2014, but Jones in describing the immediate history, goes a long way to explain the current confusions of, for example, Brexit and the rise of populist politics, elucidating as he does the ambivalent nature of the Establishment's relationship to Europe and shining a light on quite why so much of the electorate are so utterly fed up with the previously indistinguishable political parties. I'd say his ...

By Edward Bullmore (2018) This is a persuasive and exciting read, so exciting in fact, that it's extremely hard not to skip to the end to see how things turn out, but it is worth resisting the urge as there are so many gems along the way.  The author, a professor of Neuroscience and Head of Psychiatry at Cambridge University, is clearly attuned to explaining things in simple language whilst at the same time somehow managing not to seem patronising, and you learn such a lot along the way that you don't mind that you are reading an "Immunology and Medical History for Dummies". In the course of discussing his central hypothesis, (that depression may be caused by inflammation), we find out not only about macrophages, lymphocytes, microglial cells, cytokines, anti-TNF antibodies and the vagal nerve, but he also untangles the theories of Descartes and covers Celsus, Paracelsus, Hippocrates and Darwin to boot, and all this encased in a gripping narrative of med...

by Dr. Michael Mosley (2018) True to the scientific method, Michael moves where the evidence takes him with this book  and updates his  5:2 Fast Diet book of 2014 .  The thing is, I have been enjoying the results from the 2014 version, having relatively easily lost a reasonable amount of weight (5kg and down to my target BMI of 19) following its prescriptions, so I was worrying that the update involving a significant revision would leave me confused and in a bit of dilemma as to what to do next. As it happens, it simply opened up the options, which turned out to be useful since a friend has recently challenged me to actually do that 5k parkrun  that I have long talked about but have not actually trained for in any shape or form, having been focusing more on HIIT and walking the dogs and certainly not doing the paced jogging that my version of a park run would entail. When I did start to try to do longer runs on fast days of only 400 cals (sadly that is a qua...

By Grant J. Smits (2018) This book leaves you feeling as if you have just been yelled at for an hour (it's a quick read) by someone who channels the energy of a very enthusiastic trainer along with a dose of sanctimony and disapproval of a Dr. Phil, all bundled together with the conviction of a cult leader.  The exhortatory street style could make it easy to dismiss, but actually the content pretty much sums up the current consensus on how to lose weight, whilst also usefully dismissing some of the more outlandish and exploitative methods that do the rounds.  Of course, the science around all this sort of stuff remains rule of thumb and is an on-going argument, so it would be very dangerous to think this is the last word on anything, and there are at least a couple of issues where the author appears to be behind the times on the current consensus: ie: his assertion that people need not worry too much about micro-nutrients and can solve the problem by simply popping ...

by Hiroaki Tanaka and Magdalena Jackowska (2016) In stark contrast to the current trend for intense interval training, this book offers a very gentle introduction to achieving cardio vascular fitness, weight-loss and a host of other useful physical and mental outcomes.  Given the slow burn approach, this method would involve greater time commitment than interval training, but at the outset at least, is almost certainly less painful and the eventual results seem pretty impressive if the numerous testimonies are to be believed.  If nothing else, the book is likely to ensure that you are getting your running posture right, and it offers a number of other useful parameters for calculating whether you are doing the requisite amount of work.  Having owned a Fitbit for about three weeks now, I've found jogging/running to be the quickest way to raise the heart beat to fat burn, cardio and finally peak levels, and although this method suggests that you only take your heart...

by Richard L. Currier (2015) This is a massive book in terms of scope, being a review of the whole of human history.  Much of the contents will, of course, be familiar to people with a passing knowledge of history, but for the rest of us, it is a concise, thoroughly useful romp through all the key elements that one really should actually already know but somehow don't.  It would make a visit to the British Museum or the Ashmolean for more interesting, and dinner parties with informed guests far less intimidating. Despite the authorial voice being almost non-existent, reading as the book does almost like a collaborative effort of a Wikipedia page, it manages to hold the reader's attention through a spattering of rich historical anecdote and often rather astonishing answers to enormous questions about the nature and form of humanity. When the author does reference himself, it is all the more startling for its rarity. Questions answered include why humans became so mu...

            by Kevin Horsley and Louis Fourie  (2018) Of all the books on positive psychology that have been reviewed in this blog so far, this book contains by far the most straightforward description of the happy state of mind and is by far the most transparent in describing the sort of behaviours that contribute to this way of being.  There is no equivocation about the exact nature of happiness and there's no discussion of how difficult it is for people to predict what will make them happy .   Instead the authors just get about describing the features of a broadly happy life-style; for example, the authors explain that it takes work to be happy, but by implication, that this is happy work.  They particularly stress that happiness is a creation borne of an approach where a person seeks to solve problems rather than to dwell on them. Overall this book is an invigorating, quick read, and is pretty convincing in that thos...