Anatomies

Author: Hugh Aldersey-Williams
Year: 2013

Pages: 320

Time It Took To Read: Months to finish

I am a student of health and social care, but I'm not really studying health and social care at all. I'm studying the philosophy, evolution, science and practice of medicine. The social aspect comes into it, but as I believe the health and social care systems need to be fully integrated, it's all part of the whole and shouldn't be separate. I think one of the most dangerous parts of modern medicine is cartesian dualism - that the body and person are separate entities. Healthcare needs to be holistic. I don't mean alternative medicine, I mean actual NHS healthcare needs to take into account the person across the board. It's something I feel intensely strongly about, most particularly in psychiatry and obstetrics.

Anyway, I got this book because I've read the author's book on chemistry, Periodic Tales, and it was one of the first really interesting things I've read about elements. And I have a long fascination with physiology and anatomy. It took me ages to read, because I literally wanted to discuss every single thing I read in it with someone, so didn't get very far very fast.

Everyone has, at some point, been treated as a body. You've got a throat infection? Observe the swollen throat and treat. If you're lucky, you have a GP who understands that you can't take time off work, or rest, or afford your prescription, but otherwise your throat is the issue, divorced from your personhood. This book takes the opposite view, relating anatomy and systems to a culture and philosophy. Why is there no standard of beauty? Why is someone's gender so important and unimportant at the same time? Why do we develop symmetrically: how does the left arm know it is left? Why are left handed people historically treated as freaks? If we could live forever, would we want to? The author manages to discuss complicated scientific ideas without it becoming arduous, and uses endless sociological, cultural, and philosophical ideas and models to remind the reader that their body is simultaneously their whole reality and their empty shell. 

If you're interested in health, medicine, anatomy, society, sociology, demography, philosophy, culture or just generally in people, this is a fantastic book. I loved it. 

Book count: 12/50

After Dead

Author: Charlaine Harris
Series: Southern Vampire Mysteries
Year: 2013

Pages: 200

Time It Took To Read: Fifteen minutes. I'm not lying.

This is the most disappointing book I've ever read. Ever.

I thought it'd be akin to The Sookie Stackhouse Companion, which is a meaty fan-friendly book of trivia, extra and ACTUAL CONTENT. Alas, I was wrong. 200 pages which could easily be condensed to 45, with a few lines to sum up the characters' ending. Quinn, for example, gets a WHOLE PAGE to describe his ending, but only five words (He had many more adventures). It's an affront to trees, this waste of paper. I don't know why Charlaine Harris even bothered writing it, except as a money spinning exercise. Nobody has a satisfactory ending: it's all misery, death and mundanity. The combination of this and the last proper book has taken away all the joy I had in this series. If I'd paid for this, I'd be LIVID, it's going for NINE POUNDS on Amazon and I doubt there's more than 3000 words in the whole thing.

I am taking this deeply personally, I know.

Book count: 11/50

Dead Ever After

Author: Charlaine Harris
Series: Southern Vampire Mysteries 13
Year: 2013

Pages: 352

Time It Took To Read: Three hours

I have been waiting for this to come out in paperback since last year. I cannot be doing with cluttering my house up with hardbacks. The covers fall off, they take up immense amounts of space, they hurt to hold too long because I've got a faulty wrist. But this is one of the few book series that I have read AS a book series, rather than started with book ended in ebook. I needed an ending.

In preparation, I read all twelve preceding books in order over a few days. 

I was a bit worried in case the ending was shit. A series you've invested in has the potential to disappoint in a way non-series books do not. And lots and lots of fans DID think the ending was shit, and loudly declaimed this only. I avoided spoilers, and this is a non-spoiler review.

I liked it. I don't see how it could have ended any other way, while still being true to the central character. But there were lots of things left unsaid and undone that I would have liked a better ending on. As a postscript, she's written a book about What Happens Next, which I plan to read as soon as my beloved brings home my charger cable for my ereader... 

It does suffer slightly from a change in narrative style. Sookie has upset a lot of people over the years and they want revenge, and this point of view doesn't fit with the narrative of any of the other books, so it jars. Then it lapses back into the usual style. There's only one sex scene, and it's appallingly written. The sex itself is believable, but the way it's written made me cringe. It's not a particularly well thought out plot: the final villain isn't really believable in motive, and I was disappointed. The series deserved to go out on a bigger bang than this.

I'm a bit sad it's ended. I do love vampire mystery soft core, and I don't watch True Blood because bleeding wrists make me faint. But perhaps it's better this way than Charlaine Harris just churning out books to make money.

Book count: 10/50

The Filth of Roald Dahl

Author: Roald Dahl
Year: 1979

Pages: 208

Time It Took To Read: A couple of hours

Author: Roald Dahl
Year: 1974

Pages: 208

Time It Took To Read: About an hour

My eldest son bloody loves Roald Dahl. He is obsessed with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, but loves all of them. I loved them myself as a child, loved the edge of darkness. I have read Dahl's story about the leg of lamb murder, but this was the first time I've read his adult fiction.

Dear reader, it is filth.

And I love it.

My Uncle Oswald is a story about a debauched man who develops an aphrodisiac akin to Spanish Fly, but stronger, and then collects the sperm of the famous to sell to greedy women hoping to buy genius. He has help from Yasmin Howcomely, a girl with a similar worldview. Oswald's motto is to never sleep with the same woman twice. The book is littered with food, drink, luxury, sex and snort-inducing hilarity. 

Switch Bitch is a collection of four stories. Two are about Oswald again, getting his end away (or trying to) in rather improbable conditions, and more experiments in aphrodisiac. One is about two men who organise a secret wife swap, with a genuinely hysterical twist at the end. And finally, in the darkest short story I've ever read, a widow tries a new relationship with awful results.

I really enjoyed these books, and I want to read more dark Dahl. 

Book count: 9/50

The Cuckoo's Calling

Author: Robert Galbraith (or J.K Rowling, as he's better known)
Series: Cormoran Strike

Year: 2013

Pages: 464

Time It Took To Read: Three days

That J.K Rowling's a wily one. Instead of writing an encyclopedia of Potterdom (which she should), she diverts us by writing a detective story in the guise of a man. And I absolutely understand why, and why she adopted a pseudonym. I haven't read The Casual Vacancy, because I'm not a massive fan of fiction (not that you'd know, reading this blog), but my sister lent me this and I was in PAROXYSMS of AWE throughout.

Everyone knows you can't have a normal detective. Detectives always have a flaw, preferably several. They smoke, they drink, they're ugly, they can't keep relationships down, they are shit fathers, they cry out for vengeance, they are gruff, they have no friends, they enclose themselves in such a cloak of dour arseholeness that nobody wants to work with them. Cormoran Strike, the detective of this book, has many of the above flaws, plus an absence of leg, but manages not to be either defined by his flaws, or irritatingly unlikeable because of them. 

Detectives also need a long suffering sidekick. Holmes had his Watson, Morse had his Lewis, and Strike has his Robin. Robin, a temp, turns out to be surprisingly good at detective groundwork. Which is handy. 

And the victim, a beautiful, fucked-up model, has fallen to her death from her luxurious mansion. None of the police involved go quite as far as saying "Are yew saying it was MUR-DUR?" like Doris in Hot Fuzz, but that's the general gist. 

I loved it. It was immersive, on the nose with celebrity culture, and not too obvious. I can't wait for the next one, which is apparently due out June.

Book count: 7/50

A Place of Greater Safety

Author: Hilary Mantel

Year: 1992

Pages: 880

Time It Took To Read: Over a week - it's MEATY

I've been swamped, literally swamped, with uni work since Christmas. If I'm not ignoring one module to concentrate on a TMA, I'm doing the reverse. This book was a treat for getting my January essays in on time, but I didn't start reading it til last week.

Oh my God, you guys, she needs to crack on with the last Cromwell book.

Anyway, prior to reading this book, I knew absolutely nothing about the French Revolution. I studied it briefly in year 9, but spent more time sniggering about people having to sleep in the corpse of their horse. I was a heartless child. I knew that a lot of people got their head cut off, and that it was probably ultimately not a terrible thing, but no details.

Well, now I feel like I lived through it. That's the power of Mantel's writing; one sentence and you're there. One line, one tiny piece of description and the scene is set. I think, as with her Cromwell books, it's a lot better to read if you already have a fair idea of who's who and what actually happened.

It portrays the lives of Maximilien Robespierre, Georges Danton and Camille Desmoulins, three leading revolutionaries who began as lawyers. Their love, their pain, their hate, aggression, anger, humour is all in the book. They become three dimensional, but oddly inscrutable. Their women are as important as the men, acting as a domestic balance to their almost fantastical political world, but also involved in it.
As the book drives on through death, factions, more death, insurrection, and death, you KNOW people that have been fully developed are going to die. As I couldn't remember the facts of the Revolution, I didn't know til the very end who died in what order. The last forty pages were compulsive.
It's brilliant. I am sad that I've finished it.

Book count: 6/50

A History of Ancient Britain

Author: Neil Oliver

Year: 2012

Pages: 480

Time It Took To Read: About five days

It can be difficult to find a book about prehistoric Britain that isn't laden with so much jargon that it makes it impenetrable. It's also difficult to find one with a good narrative. The simple fact is that it's hard to make a story out of limited evidence and no written artefacts.

Neil Oliver manages to weave a narrative that MAKES SENSE, that doesn't require specialist knowledge, and that is peppered with little imagined events that give it life, rather than simply being fanciful. I particularly love the way he points to the lore found in nonsense rhymes and stories, and if anyone can recommend more books that do this, please let me know.

I loved this book. I wasn't really expecting to, but I got really immersed. It takes you right up to the Roman invasion, and it's an excellent overview. 

Book count: 5/50