Tag: Non-Fiction Review

Seining Along Chesil- Sarah Acton (2022)

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From the upstairs room where I am writing this I have glimpses between the houses opposite of the sea at Chesil Beach.  This extraordinary 18 mile stretch of “storm driven barrier” was the inspiration for Ian McEwan’s tale of doomed love (2007) and JM Falkner’s classic adventure tale “Moonfleet” (1898) and its unique attraction has been celebrated by poets, including Sarah Acton, the author of this non-fiction work.

The fact that this is somewhere special impresses on every visit.  For an eight-mile section within 10 minutes walk from my house it can only be accessed by crossing the Fleet Lagoon, in past times, flat-bottomed boasts known as “trows” helped with this.

As well as being a place of great geological interest (I visited here on a school Geography field trip as it was part of my O Level syllabus) for many, many generations it provided a source of income for Dorset people.  A method of catching the mackerel which at certain points of the year swarmed into the shallows was developed using nets, thrown most often from a specially designed boat, a “lerret”.  This now almost lost form of fishing, “seining”, is the subject of Sarah Acton’s book subtitled “Voices From A Dorset Fishing Community.”

I have never fished and like most omnivores have no real understanding of how the food we eat reaches our plate, neither in the present nor the past but there was something very captivating about Sarah Acton’s study.  It helps that she is a poet and can talk about the Beach as it “roars and stings, silver shoals of memory dart beneath the sea surface like fragments of mirrors, as memory triggers memory”, finding every opportunity to reinforce the uniqueness of this location but she has also produced an oral history, reminiscences of the last generations who attempted to support themselves financially in this way.  These are men and women who lived their lives according to the sea, men who missed the upbringing of their children, youngsters who skipped school, the elderly who chose to spend much of their retirement on the shingle, all hypnotised by the thrill of the catch and the ebb and flow of the sea.

These were people who did not always do things by the book, large catches were unpredictable, the mystique of smuggling had always touched these coastline families and their ancestors.  They spent their hours in the water yet many could not swim.  They talk of individuals whose achievements have become the stuff of legends, of the most successful families, of crafts and activities which are pretty much redundant.  The same experiences are given a viewpoint form different individuals with the repetition in this case enhancing the sense of the oral tradition.  As the demand for mackerel declined their earnings became more sporadic but they lived with one eye on the waters.  There is a perhaps apocryphal story of pall-bearers who abandoned their fisherman friend’s coffin as they got the call of the sea.

It is all a bit of a fish-stew this book as the author is supported by contributions by different authors on the geology, on boat building and the history of the Fleet Lagoon and this all adds to the layering of this location which is very much brought to life here.  I’ve lived in Dorset just over a year and have barely dipped my toe into local history since I’ve been here (see “The Village That Died For England” by Patrick Wright and I have read the very successful 2022 debut novel by Joanna Quinn, “The Whalebone Theatre”).  There is still a huge amount to discover about my local environment and Sarah Acton here makes the history of this particular location very memorable.

Seining Along Chesil was published in the UK in 2022 by Little Toller Books.

Unleash The Magnificent You! – Christopher Bradbury (2022)

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January is the month for self-help books. “It’s February now!” I hear you cry, “we don’t have to bother with any of that New Year’s Resolution stuff! ” but indulge me a while.  Firstly, I read this in January and more importantly, as we all suspect, the first month of the year is not the best for lasting, positive change.  On a recent health-check a very astute nurse said weight-loss plans are probably not best begun at this time of year when there are unopened Christmas treats lurking and that three quarters full bottle of Baileys calling out to you on the cold January nights so I’m pleased to tell you that Christopher Bradbury’s inspiring self-help book is not just for January and that Magnificent You can be unleashed the whole year round!

There’s no doubt the author’s an optimist- just look at that cover promising us a “Gazillion ways to turbocharge your life”.  I didn’t count up to verify but certainly any of even the smallest changes suggested has the potential to transform lives.

What is provided here is an overview in short snappy chapters full of pearls of wisdom.  There’s little new in the world of self-help, the reason why some succeed more than others is the way in which help is presented and how it is taken on board by the individual.  I like this general overview approach.  It starts by getting the reader to examine personal values, identifying the most important for you as an individual and encouraging thought on ways to stick to them.  Potential is unleashed when these values are combined with your vision and Christopher Bradbury is on hand to help with this.

He does so in 60 sections and 380 (in the hardback edition) motivational pages.  He suggests we can pick and choose the sections which feel most appropriate- I’d say don’t do that, find time to read the whole thing.  I’m not a parent so I might have decided to skip the parenting section, for example, but there’s so much good advice therein which I could apply to other situations that I would be missing out.

I made notes and I’m glad I did as I now have a little personalised handbook on areas such as kindness and compassion, fear, flexibility, thoughts and emotions, worry, gratitude – the list goes on.  He’s practical as well and there’s the odd good statistic to back things up, which makes me happy.  Here are my Top 3:

Only 10% of what we worry about actually happens- therefore 90% is wasted energy.

Only 3% of people write down their goals and these people achieve 5-10 times as much as the other 97%

And one to stop you in your tracks:

The average smartphone user checks their phone 63 times a day, 70% within 5 minutes of waking up.

I also want to add a couple of sayings to help with everyday life.  Take a bow the one beloved by “Love Island” participants, “It is what it is”- but then it really is and taking this on board would remove much stress over what you cannot control and slightly cheesy but none the less effective for that is “Yesterday is history and tomorrow is a mystery.  But today is a gift, so enjoy it before its gone.”

There will inevitably be moments when the author’s whistlestop tour approach will have you wanting more detail and I for one would welcome a bibliography or further reading suggestions linked to the areas raised but he does always provide enough information to start you well onto your road for change.

As a general self-help book this is strong and the emphasis and linking to personal core values (if you only do one exercise make sure it is the one that starts the book which encourages you to identify these) makes it stronger and seem more relevant.  Go on, get that Magnificent You unleashed!

Unleash The Magnificent You is published by Lightning Source and is available to purchase on Amazon.  Many thanks to the author for the opportunity to read and review this book.

In Perfect Harmony – Singalong Pop In 70s Britain – Will Hodgkinson (2022)

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Here’s a book from my “What I Should Have Read in 2022” list.  Its focus is 1970’s pop music.  Looking back from our 21st Century position when we think of the 1970’s we probably give greater importance to punk, glam rock and disco which certainly made a lasting impression in terms of visual style but did not last that long as a market force.  The music with the most longevity throughout the decade can be classed as singalong pop.

Will Hodgkinson studies an era where the first number one of 1971 was Clive Dunn’s “Grandad” and rounding things off so helpfully 10 years later was St. Winifred’s School Choir and “There’s No-One Quite Like Grandma”.  So did nothing change during the 1970s?  Still celebrating grandparents!  Why did singalong pop exert such mass appeal for the whole of the decade.  The author explores this and basically it is because Britain was so grim during this time that we needed pop music to lift the spirits!

Perhaps the inspiration for much of this came from an American song from the late 1960s, “Sugar Sugar”.  This was marketed as being by a cartoon group, recorded by anonymous session singers and was disposable bubblegum music at its finest and importantly, was a massive worldwide hit.  For a time, the song became more important than the artists.  The UK responded to this by session musicians recording singles and then considering the formation of a group to perform afterwards – take a bow Edison Lighthouse, Brotherhood Of Man, Bay City Rollers, the whole range of singles put out by Jonathan King, or 10CC in embryonic form.  One session singer Tony Burrows famously appeared in three (some say four) different acts on the same episode of “Top Of The Pops”.

And then came glam- stomping, singalong music geared towards and enjoyed by a younger audience- led by Marc Bolan, whose innovative influence on British pop has now been somewhat lost followed swiftly by Slade, Wizzard, Suzi Quatro, Mud, Sweet et al, with an even younger audience being feted by Messrs Osmond, Cassidy and Jackson.  Will Hodgkinson explores and analyses all this with interviews, contemporary views and what was going on at the time.  A sudden powercut plunging British homes into darkness could be enlivened by a family singsong of “Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep.”

This is a phenomenon mainly but not exclusively British and also had something to do with huge audiences for TV light entertainment shows, TV advertising jingles and theme tunes and pop music as a regular feature of children’s TV  but mainly a country that ricocheted between Heath, Wilson and then Callaghan as Prime Ministers in a time of strikes, inflation, high unemployment needed something to feel cheered up by.

Given all that can we expect a New Seekers, Boney M, Tony Orlando and Dawn revival in 2023?!! Just nobody mention Gary Glitter….

In Perfect Harmony was published by Nine Eight Books in 2022.

All The Lies They Did Not Tell- Pablo Trincia (2022)

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Amazon had this as one of their monthly free Prime Reads choices back in July 2022.  Its subtitle “The True Story Of Satanic Panic In An Italian Community” had me interested and remembering my desire to read more true crime I went for it.

This investigative work focuses on what became known as the Devils Of The Bassa Modenese Case which I had not heard of but which caused a huge furore in the late 1990s and led to 16 children being removed from families, convictions and acquittals and a number of deaths of adults associated with the case.

Pablo Trincia’s research into this led to a podcast with investigative journalist Alessia Rafanelli and evolved into this book which has been translated from the Italian by Elettra Pauletto.  Structurally, it does resemble a podcast eschewing a strictly chronological approach to focus on those involved and their stories with the interweaving and retreading of material that this structure involves.  Initially, I found it a little confusing to separate the families but this soon falls into place.

The events are extraordinary.  It is hard to imagine what happened here and the snowballing of such panics but similar things were happening in other countries and can be attributed to the way children were questioned by authorities.  Concerns about a family of vulnerable children led to tales of horrific satanic abuse involving almost everyone these children knew of.  Sexual abuse, torture, rituals, decapitations of cats and children killing other children in buildings and cemeteries horrified authorities who began widescale arrests, family separations and trials.

How much was true and how it came about became the author’s obsession.  He says;

“The story was like a black hole.  The more I looked into it, the more it seemed to bend social and behavioural norms and alter the relationship between cause and effect- things I’d always taken for granted.  It seemed like a parallel universe where everything was deformed.”

The author got lucky as he got hold of much information from a couple of people who had been totally driven by the cases and had lots of documentation and who had both died since the trials and from that he began to piece together what had actually happened.  Was this a case of false memory and how could that have affected so many children or was Satanism thriving in this small part of Catholic Italy in the 1990s?  It’s a sobering, involving account.  It is hard to believe that something like this could ever happen again, it reflects a terrifying moment in the history of abuse investigations where circumstances proved ripe for these life-destroying accusations.

All The Lies They Did Not Tell was published by Amazon Crossing in 2022.

Carefree Black Girls – Zeba Blay (Square Peg 2021)

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This is a difficult review to write for a white middle-aged man and I am sure that the author would appreciate the fact that I would find it difficult- it means that the issues she raises have hit home.

I selected this book on the basis of its subtitle “A Celebration Of Black Women In Pop Culture”.  I have often used this site to applaud the contribution of Black women within music, the arts and literature and thought this celebration was something I really wanted to be a part of.  The subtitle is not inaccurate, it is a celebration, but not quite what I had anticipated.

The author is central to this work, she is Ghanaian who has become an American citizen in recent years and works as a film critic and commentator on culture.  She also has struggled with fragile mental health, with suicide attempts and attributes this, at least in part, as her experience of being a Black woman in America.

You can appreciate from this the tone would not be as celebratory as I had anticipated.  An author’s note warns the reader to “be tender with yourself” if likely to be triggered by the issues in this book.

Zeba Blay studies the Black American female experience in terms of racist expectations and stereotypes borne from white supremacy including the body, sexual identity, skin tone, childhood and the quest to be “carefree” using women from popular culture as evidence.  Her arguments are powerful and impressive.  I do not feel it appropriate for me to comment on these truths other than to encourage a reading and an absorbing of what the author is saying.  I’m just going to write 10 quotes from the book which will be enough for you to know whether you are prepared to go on this journey with her.  I read the US edition before publication over here.  I see the UK edition has a Foreword by radio DJ Clara Amfo which may put some of this into context for the British reader.

I’ll give you the quotes as they appear chronologically within the book and also the section in which you will find them.  They will be out of context, perhaps, but I have not distorted them in any way.

“And writing about Black women is the thing that put me together again, that got me through and helped me become reacquainted with the concept of joy and freedom” (Introduction)

“To say that Black women are everything, are indeed essential to American Culture, to the global Zeitgeist is simply to observe things as they actually are” (Introduction)

“… to exist in a Black body is to exist in a persistent state of precarity, to be in constant anticipation of some form of violence” (Bodies)

“Black women’s bodies were once legally considered property.  They were bought and sold, traded and loaned” (She’s A Freak)

“How can a piece of property be raped?  Black women were therefore assumed as always being sexually available and this way of seeing them was sanctioned by the American government” (She’s A Freak)

“The fact that one in four Black girls will be abused before the age of 18, that one in five Black women are survivors of rape and yet for every fifteen Black women who are assaulted just one reports her rape comes as no surprise” (She’s A Freak)

“If Beyonce had a deeper complexion would her dominance within the Zeitgeist be as ubiquitous as it is” (Extra Black)

“My Blackness doesn’t make me depressed, but being Black in this world can be depressing.” (Strong Black Lead)

“the exuberance of Black joy springs forth from Black despair.  Collectively, we made a way out of no way.” (Strong Black Lead)

“Black women are killed in America at a higher rate than women of any other race.  Trans Black women are killed at an even higher rate.” (Strong Black Lead)

Carefree Black Girls is published in the UK by Square Peg on October 21st 2021.  Many thanks to the publishers and Netgalley for the advance review copy.

Gay Bar: Why We Went Out – Jeremy Atherton Lin (Granta 2021)- A Rainbow Read

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I really liked the premise of this non-fiction work.  Jeremy Atherton Lin explores, largely via memoir, the significance of the gay bar in the forging of the LGBTQ+ community, bringing with it a sense of belonging.  At a time when bars and pubs and nightclubs have greatly diminished in number and where the survival of those left is threatened by extended lockdowns and coronavirus restrictions it is important that we recognise these venues as part of our LGBTQ+ history, our present and hopefully, our future.

The author focuses on those places he knows well beginning in more or less present day South London, moving to the Los Angeles of his college days, back to London where he meets his long-term partner, referred to as Famous Blue Raincoat, to San Francisco where the two set up home together returning to London once civil partnerships becomes legal here, with a brief sojourn to the bars of Blackpool.

This book is strongest when it is dealing with history.  Initially, we are plunged graphically into the sleaze of the cruising bars in Vauxhall and then on to the Royal Vauxhall Tavern, an institution for generations, which does deserve its own thorough examination and the author does well to bring this extraordinary venue to life.  I used to frequent it regularly over 30 years ago and memories and the unique feel of the place is evoked by Jeremy Atherton Lin’s writing.

The focus on all the bars is great, I enjoyed the author’s perception of them at the time when he was frequenting them.  It is no fault of his, obviously, but you often get the sense that he has missed the boat, time-wise.  The LA of his college days is a pale shadow of its heyday, ravaged by the decimation of the gay population through AIDS and in most of the other areas he is visiting places past their prime.  This is due to chronology but in many ways it feels typical of the gay bar set-up, on a quiet night there will always be someone to tell you how busy it was the night before!

The author broadens his focus to encompass, well everything, and this is where the book slips for me.  He has much to say about the gay experience and it is extremely worth saying but it’s a scattergun approach of digressions and the books loses the structure I was enjoying so much initially.  It becomes a mish-mash of history, of gay culture, of memoir, of essay.  I would have got more out of the memoir aspect if I felt I knew more about the author and Famous but I was kept very much at arm’s length, which for biography doesn’t work that well for me.

 I do think that there is a tremendous book hidden in here with some extremely quotable passages which sum up the gay nightlife experience better than I’ve ever read.  Here are a couple of examples:

“It dawned on me that many of the people we used to know to say hello to we never really knew.  We just enjoyed recognizing faces.”

“Gays can relax in a gay bar, people will say, but I went out for the tension in the room.”

“We once flattered ourselves that all popular culture was subversively designed to amuse gay men.  It’s become apparent gay men are there to make popular culture amusing to everybody else”.

And with February’s LGBT+ History Month just behind us he quotes Michael Warner from “The Trouble With Normal” (1999), which is another reminder why our stories still need to be told;

“In the queer world memory is very fragile.  You don’t learn from your parents how the gay world is structured.  So there’s not a whole lot of intergenerational transfer.”

I think that this is a significant work but for me it was a little overpowering in its structure, the many elements did not mesh as well as I had hoped, so it just misses out on being a book I would want to keep on my bookshelves.  Just occasionally I wonder if I am too harsh in my judgements and that time will see a book linger in my memory, displaying a lasting power that I had not anticipated.  This might be one such book where I could become convinced to revise my opinion.  The audience for it is niche but that audience would certainly be drawn in by Jeremy Atherton Lin’s attack and relish of his subject.

Gay Bar was published by Granta on 4th March 2021.  Many thanks to the publishers and Netgalley for the advance review copy.

Keeping On Keeping On – Alan Bennett (2016) – A Real Life Review

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Alan Bennett’s autobiographical and diary collections are no strangers to my end of year Top 3’s with his earlier volume of TV plays “Objects Of Affection” (1982) also being one of my favourite books the year I read it (2005).

Perhaps Britain’s best-loved and most recognised living playwright whose work also encompasses the extraordinary screenplay adaptation based on the biography of Joe Orton “Prick Up Your Ears” perhaps in decades to come Bennett will be best remembered for his occasional sizeable publications of a mixture of diaries and other writings which have really established him at the top of best seller lists and are highly critically acclaimed. This is the third such collection following “Writing Home” (1994) – my 3rd best read of 1996 and “Untold Stories” (2005) my 2nd best read of 2006.

I was put off from buying this in hardback because of its size, waited for the paperback and bought it in the first few days after publication, put it on the shelf and forgot about it until I decided last week it was the perfect coming-to-the-end-of-lockdown (hopefully!) reading treat. It fitted the bill and is every much as enjoyable as the preceding volumes.

Diary-wise this encompasses the years 2005-2015 and inevitably reflects the slowing down of a man in his 70’s/80’s (although I’m sure Alan Bennett would be the first to say he was never exactly speedy). Here we get a lovely domestic life in London, regular trips to Yorkshire and the professional demands which continue to push him more to the forefront than he would naturally want to be. There is the filming of “The Lady In The Van” (which, to be honest, I didn’t love) and “The History Boys” (which I thought was a much better film) which is contained in its own separate diary found after the main one. There is also his work on his Benjamin Britten/WH Auden themed play “The Habit Of Art” which I don’t know much about probably because the subject matter does not appeal.

More than the professional it is the domestic side of life which I find most enthralling here. There’s always the feeling, perhaps more than anybody in his field, that we, the readers, know Alan Bennett and are comfortable in his company. I am sure this must infuriate this private man as much as it fascinates him. Of course, the vast majority of us will live our lives having never met him, it is the quality and style of his writing that fools us into thinking otherwise.

The diaries are definitely the star turn here (lots of eating of sandwiches and visits to old churches) but the collection of other writings once again flesh out what we know about him. Whereas his diaries are never going to be as showy or as unputdownable as the diary superstars (the posthumous collections of Noel Coward, Joe Orton and Kenneth Williams immediately springing to mind) they illuminate the man and go a long way to explaining why Alan Bennett is a British national treasure.

four-star

 

Keeping On Keeping On was published by Faber & Faber in 2016. I read the 2017 paperback edition.

The Five- Hallie Rubenhold (2019) – A Real Life Review

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I like this author.  A previous work of hers “The Covent Garden Ladies” (2006) a study of Victorian prostitution ended up in my Top 5 Books Of The Year when I read it in 2011.  I very much applaud what she has set out to achieve with this new meticulously researched work but I would give her earlier publication the edge.

 “The Five” attempts to redress a wrong which has existed for 130 years- the public perception of the five women believed to have been killed by “Jack The Ripper”.  From the early press reports, to the way the case was handled, to the coroners’ reports and the development of the whole macabre industry which has built up around the perpetrator these women have been misrepresented.  They have become very much the foils to The Ripper’s dastardly crimes, their whole lives tainted by the sordidness of their demise.  They have been labelled “prostitutes” with an implication that they may have invited or deserved their fate.  Their individuality and humanity has been forgotten in the telling of a lurid tale.

 Through the sifting of contemporary reports, including the patchy coroners’ transcripts, newspapers and journals and the census returns which all provided a deluge of contradictory evidence Hallie Rubenhold has explored each of the five women in turn and tracked their lives to the point where they ended up, completely out of luck, in the Spitalfields area in 1888. 

 The most horrific thing which runs throughout is how the lives of the Victorian working classes were so on edge, one change of circumstance and a downward spiral was begun from which there was no escape.  This was especially true for women where the miseries of lost loves, dead children, loss of reputation etc. could lead to turning to drink and from then on there was little hope.  And, despite the odd bright moments in most of their lives this is what happened to Polly Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly.

 The author has certainly achieved her aim in giving them a different place in The Ripper story and used the evidence well to bring them back to life.  The nature of the type of evidence she is using after 130 years of them being treated differently means that looking back after finishing the work I felt that individually they blurred into one another.  The author might not have found their voices individually but certainly as a group I very much felt their presence.  Little is actually known about the last victim Mary Jane Kelly, who lived her life enigmatically as many who became lost in Victorian London chose to do.  This is where non-fiction can let us down, lack of information leads to more generic non-specific writing thus affecting the narrative flow which a novelist would enjoy in bringing their work to conclusion.  I think this was why I wilted a little as a reader towards the end.

The character who is kept very firmly in the shadows throughout is Jack The Ripper himself, moving in only in the last few lines of each section.  I understand and applaud this but I don’t know as much about The Ripper Cases as the author assumes I do and by keeping the perpetrator so far in the background I feel I need to know more about what actually happened and how it was dealt with and to do this I’m likely to have to read one of the works Rubenhold is challenging.  But when I do I know I will have this author’s new perspective in mind and will not forget that these women existed and lived a valuable life before perishing in the London streets.

fourstars

 

The Five was published in hardback by Doubleday in February 2019.  It has this week been longlisted for the non-fiction dagger award from the Crime Writers’ Association.

The Child That Books Built – Francis Spufford (2002) – A Real Life Review

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Francis Spufford has featured on my “Must Read” list since his debut novel, the historical “Golden Hill” took a Costa Award in 2016.  For some reason I still haven’t got around to it, although I am convinced I’d enjoy it very much indeed.  On the New Non-Fiction shelf at the library I discovered this with its by-line of “What would you find if you went back and re-read your favourite books from childhood?” Still slightly reeling from the sheer joy of Lucy Mangan’s trawl through the books in her past in “Bookworm” I thought this couldn’t be delayed until I got round to Spufford’s novel.  I was intrigued and couldn’t wait to read it.

I wasn’t that far through it when I realised it didn’t feel as up to date as I was expecting a book sat on the New Non-Fiction shelf to be.  After a little research (turning to the front of the book) I discovered that this was first published by Faber back in 2002 with 2018 being the date this paperback edition (made to look like “Golden Hill”) arrived.  So the image I had in my head of both Spufford and Mangan revisiting their childhood concurrently was a bit out of synch as he did this sixteen years ago.  Then I sensed a whiff of a cash-in.  This has obviously been republished because of the success of “Golden Hill” and probably “Bookworm” too.

The back cover is a tad misleading.  It had led me to think we would be in Mangan territory but with a slighter older male perspective.  It is considerably more complex than this.  Spufford is revisiting his childhood to see how his reading choices impacted upon him and how it formed him developmentally.  He is much more interested in the person rather than the books.  They are important for their impression they left giving it a stronger psychological basis and feel which basically I enjoyed much less than Mangan’s “joy of reading” approach.

Spufford did use books to escape (family ill-health mainly) but seems to have read with a fury which at times I felt a little unsettling and that I was being intrusive.  He was, despite being virtually the same age, a very different child from me anyway.  The first book he read alone, aged 6, confined to home because of mumps was “The Hobbit” a book I grappled with probably five years later (which looking back I still feel was too young).  From here we get the stages of his development through Narnia (which he, like most children of our generation was obsessed by, although for me it was largely just “The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe”).  Naturally, we did have many books in common and I was pleased to recall “Marianne Dreams” by Catherine Storr which has largely edged back into the mists of history but had a lasting effect on both of us (ie: it was terrifying!).  Spufford exhausted much of what children’s literature had to offer before finding Sci-Fi which filled that transition period (never really did it for me) to Ian Fleming (whilst at boarding school) and perhaps inevitably on to porn at the end of his teenage years.

His focus is very much on development.  Good old Jean Piaget is referenced often (taking me back to my Theory of Education days) and Spufford opts to see these developments in physical terms (forest, island, town, hole).  I didn’t follow all of his arguments, in fact it did often remind me of what he pinpoints as one of the memorable stages of learning to function as an independent reader when you pick out what you can as you go along to get the general gist.  (Spufford perceptively says we do this in early years and then again when we discover classic novels.  Well, I found myself doing this quite often here!)

Where this is strongest is when he lets the books take centre stage.  There’s a good section on Laura Ingalls Wilder where I felt totally involved, for example.  I would have liked a list of the books he revisited to really get those nostalgic juices flowing.  I think I’m being largely niggly because this book wasn’t quite what I thought it was going to be and so there was an underlying disappointment throughout.  At one point I was concerned that it might put me off reading “Golden Hill” but I think, having now finished this, that desire is still intact.

threestars

The Child That Books Built was published by Faber & Faber in 2002.  I read the 2018 paperback version.

Night School – Richard Wiseman (2014) – A Real Life Review

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Subtitled “The Life Changing Science Of Sleep” (and yes, it is unusual for me to read a book with “science” in the title) Richard Wiseman pulls together all the theories and research on sleep to produce an extremely readable book on a fascinating subject.  I chose to read it after having had a few days of my occasional struggles with sleep and I am already doing better.

 Basically, we’re not getting enough of it.  Sleep, that is.  Most of us fall short of the 8 hours required to fully recharge ourselves for the next day and the quality of this sleep has deteriorated rapidly over the last half century due to our lifestyles, stress and our obsession with the blue light of smart-phones, computers and tablets.  As a result we are becoming sleep deprived affecting our abilities to function as individuals and at work, causing many road traffic accidents and putting ourselves at risk of obesity, diabetes and cancer all of which Wiseman is prepared to attribute to the wrong type of sleep.

 We still feel guilty about sleep, as if it is a weakness.  Margaret Thatcher, when Prime Minister, was said to thrive on 3 or 4 hours per night and this was held up as an admirable quality.  Running the country is surely more important than sleep.  She might actually have done a better job if she’d put in those extra hours. (There’s also significant research to suggest that those who claim to be thriving on a modicum of sleep actually do a lot more of it than they realise).

 Wiseman also fascinated me by exploring another social no-no, the afternoon nap.  Take one of these and you’ll likely end up feeling guilty.  Wrong!  We’re often being told of the virtues of the Mediterranean diet as an explanation for lower instances of heart trouble and stroke in regions which follow this- but what do these nations also support?  The siesta.  Is this why coronary disease is much lower because of the blood-pressure lowering benefits of a nap? There’s a precise science to getting this right and Wiseman points out how long it should be and when and how to get the most out of it.  He’s convinced me, I’m off to buy an eye-shield.

 What sleep is for and what it does, how to do it when you are struggling and how to enrich your learning potential whilst asleep; the role of dreams and how to use them for your benefit and avoiding and curing other sleep related problems are all dealt with this in this book in a highly accessible way with the author as friendly tutor guiding us, rather than blinding us, with science.  I’m really glad I liked the author’s style as I have another of his books “Quirkology” – a book I bought then wondered why I had done so as it is also not the sort of thing I would normally read and which has been sitting on my shelves for some time.

 He also debunks the many myths that have built up with relish.  The connection between eating cheese at night leading to bad dreams, for example, was actually a fictional creation by Charles Dickens as Scrooge ate cheese before his ghostly visitations.  Experimentation has proved this has no basis in fact.  Yet how many of us still avoid cheese at night because of this?

 If, like most of us you don’t give that much thought to the third of the day when you should be in bed and are not using it to maximise your potential for the other two thirds of the day then this book is a real eye-opener, or yes, go on, I’ll say it, a real eye-closer!

 fourstars

Night School was published by Macmillan in 2014