What I’ve been reading this month
Hans Rosling was an amazing man. In Factfulness, which he worked on right up until his death, he distilled his lifetime of learning about global public health into a series of simple lessons readers can all use to improve their understanding of the world. This book was simply brilliant, and I would heartily recommend it to anyone. It was one of those books that has the potential to elegantly and persuasively shift the general frame of reference. I think (and hope) this will become one of those books that defines our time and dominates our collective thinking for years to come.
Sam Guglani’s Histories was a collection of characters’ stories from across a week in an NHS hospital. The stories were intertwined, with several characters mentioned by other characters. Despite being a short book, this felt like a complete world which existed before the period contained in the book and continued afterwards. This felt like a true reflection of life in the NHS. It felt real, current, and somehow strangely complete.
In Less, Andrew Sean Greer painted a less-than-successful American novelist who accepted a string of minor literary engagements around the world in order to avoid attending the wedding of a former lover and also to avoid publicly marking his fiftieth birthday. Of course, the round-the-world trip caused him to reflect on life while the narrator filled in Less’s backstory. There were some marvellous lines in this book – in terms of imagery, philosophy, humour and more besides – and a great deal of wit. It was one of those rare books that actually made me laugh out loud from time to time. It got insidiously under my skin, and I was almost surprised by how much I cared about Less by the end of the novel.
In my lifetime, no human has travelled even 400 miles from Earth’s surface. In 1968, the astronauts of Apollo 8 travelled 250,000 miles from Earth on the first manned mission to the moon. Robert Kurson’s Rocket Men was a compelling narrative of a journey many consider to be the most important in human spaceflight to date. Kurson wove in a lot of American social history as context to the daring of the mission. So much that is written about the Mercury and Apollo programmes focuses narrowly on the US/Soviet ‘space race’, and it was refreshing to read something that talked about the historical context in a broader sense. Fascinating stuff.
Somebody I Used to Know was Wendy Mitchell’s fascinating and poignant autobiographical account of being diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease at the age 58. I was interested to read about the stigma faced by the author, including from the NHS (in her roles as both patient and worker). Michell also brought insight into the coping strategies she has developed over the three years since her diagnosis. It was touching, moving and often rather funny.
Desperately Seeking Self-Improvement was an autobiographical account by two academics – Carl Cederström and André Spicer – who spent a year following the advice of self-help gurus, tackling a different area of their lives each month. Much of the outcome seemed to be played for laughs, but the humour wasn’t really up my street. When Caderström and Spicer included more sober reflection on the self-help movement or the effects on their lives, it often struck me as a bit superficial. The tone was very uneven. This book didn’t really do much for me at all.
Jospeh Reid’s Take Off was a far-fetched thriller in the time-worn subgenre of “damaged rogue agent defies the incompetent system to try to save the day”. It had a substantial body count, James Bond-esque antics which went far beyond stretching credibility (people leaping off the roofs of buildings, a gun battle in flight between a Cessna and a helicopter), and a final resolution which raised more questions than it answered. Reid clearly had more novels about the protagnosit Seth Walker in mind, and gave hints about tragedy and heartbreak in the Walker’s backstory in a way that I imagine was supposed to be tantalising, but just felt forced.
This post was filed under: What I've Been Reading.