Perhaps the most important things to say at the start of a review of Bad Pharma is that I think that Goldacre argues convincingly for a sound central thesis. I accept the argument that there are serious flaws in the pharmaceutical industry’s approach to the research, discovery, production and marketing of drugs, and in the pharmaceutical industry’s relationship with doctors (and vice versa). Goldacre’s clear elucidation of many of the issues deserves praise, and makes this a worthy book.

I also, for the most part, enjoyed the conversational tone which Goldacre employs throughout. Normally, I’m irritated by excessive informality in tone, but Goldcare seems to strike a well-judged balance between formality and informality which worked well for me.

I hope, then, that it’s clear that I think this is an excellent book which is well worth reading, for both a general and specialist audience. This is an unambiguous recommendation. But there were a few niggles within that I felt I couldn’t ignore in the context of a review.

Firstly, there are occasions when Goldacre uses slightly sensationalist language without a clear explanation as to why. For example, he repeatedly refers to things – particularly emails – as “secret”, which he seems to use as a synonym for “unpublished”. To me, there is an important difference between something being unpublished, and something being secret. The latter refers to something that has been deliberately hidden and guarded, whereas the former is something that has merely not been conducted in the public sphere. Perhaps Goldcare has a justification for calling things “secret” which isn’t made explicit on every occasion, or perhaps he doesn’t. I don’t know, but I think that use of the term should be openly justified. There are other similar examples where I’d quibble over the use of particular words, too. But these are minor, minor points.

Goldacre argues that the drive for private profits lies behind much of the wrongdoing in the pharmaceutical industry. I think this is probably fair, but there were two points here that I don’t think he discussed in quite the detail I would have liked.

Firstly, the fact that drug companies pursue profits is not really the fault of the drug companies: it is the way we have chosen to structure our society. It could be argued that the pharmaceutical industry should be brought into the public sector, which could serve to remove the drive for profit. I think this is probably unworkable, and could’ve been demolished as a suggestion in a couple of paragraphs, but to me, omitting this discussion meant that there was a bit of a mismatch between saying that profit is the root of all evil within the industry, and a bunch of solutions that don’t address that central point.

Secondly, that motivation doesn’t (presumably) apply to the public sector. I think there are issues in public sector research that are not dissimilar to those seen in the pharmaceutical industry. In particular, there seems to be a frequent problem of publicly funded studies being underpowered. Granted, Goldacre talks a lot about public bodies like the MHRA, but I think that exploring the problems specifically with publicly funded research would have been an interesting exercise, and might have helped reduce criticism that Goldacre is unfairly singling out the pharmaceutical industry.

I also have slight concerns about Goldacre’s demand that every study should be published. In principle, I agree with this completely, and can see the argument for it. But I worry that there are probably oodles of really bad quality trials that are unpublished. So firstly, where do these get published? No journal is going to want to publish a terrible study. And secondly, given that Goldacre also describes a paucity of the skills required to critically appraise studies, is there not at least some risk that bad trials will not be recognised as such? I’m not sure how we navigate around this problem. I suspect Goldacre would argue that if all trials are brought out into the open, then the wheat will separate itself from the chaff, but I’m not entirely convinced.

Overall, I should emphasise again, this is a great read, and an important book. I think it is well worth reading, and I think the niggles I have with it are testament to the fact that the book was engaging and made me consider its arguments. It comes highly recommended.

Bad Pharma is available now from amazon.co.uk in paperback and on Kindle.

This short, classic, harrowing book documents Nyiszli Miklos’s experience as a Jewish GP recruited under the threat of certain death to assit Dr Mengele in his “medical research” at Auschwitz. It describes the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, from the transport to Auschwitz and the so-called “selection” process on arrival, to the disposal of their ashes.

Miklos adopts a largely neutral, clinical tone in his description of the events. Somehow, this dispassionate tone makes the descriptions all the more powerful. Occasionally, Miklos’s neutrality slips, and his obvious abhorrence becomes clear. Sometimes, he lays bare his struggle with the diabolical ethical dilemmas he faced, challenging the reader to consider whether they would have reacted in the same way.

This is a simple, short book, yet the descriptions of some of the most appalling acts in the history of humanity make it challenging to read. The matter-of-fact tone merely underlines the seemingly unthinkable horror of the events which occurred at Auschwitz. The book’s brevity also contributes to its power: it says no more than it needs to.

This is clearly not the sort of book for which it would be appropriate to assign a star rating. I include it here only because I was unaware of this historically valuable volume until very recently, which probably reveals a degree of historical and litererary ignorance on my part. I guess that others might, however, be similarly unaware of it, and I hope that this will inspire them to read it. We must learn about and from history’s greatest mistakes if we are to avoid repeating them.

Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Eyewitness Account is available now from amazon.co.uk in paperback and on Kindle.

I’ve been putting off writing this review for a little while now. It’s a difficult one for me. I only read Flat Earth News because so many people had recommended it, and most of them are people whose views I tend to agree with. But I’m afraid I didn’t really like it.

Flat Earth News is Nick Davies’s “exposé” of the practices of the media. Nick is, of course, a brilliant Guardian journalist, and is perhaps the journalist most responsible for the eventual uncovering of the widespread use of phone hacking by members of the press. Unfortunately, he approaches the task of “exposing journalism” with two central premises which I find bizarre.

Firstly, he appears to labour under the wrongful impression that members of the public imagine journalists to be crack investigators who stalk the streets with notebooks and pens, looking for exclusive stories to serve up to expectant readers. Clearly, as an adult who lives in the real world, I know that’s not what a journalist’s job is like. I know that journalists are expected to churn out multiple stories per day, and I know that most of what they write starts out as wire copy or press releases. It’s true to say that I didn’t fully realise the extent of the number of stories they’re expected to file, nor the extent of the reliance on agency copy, but I didn’t think the world of modern journalism was made up of Lois Lanes. This makes the tone he uses for much of the book seem enormously patronising. I can honestly say that I’ve never felt as patronised by any factual book I’ve ever voluntarily subjected myself to as I did by the first third of this book. It’s horrendous.

Secondly, he claims – and repeats ad nauseam – that the central job of any journalist is to tell the truth. Again, I’m afraid I cannot agree with this. There are many parts of any journalist’s job which are equally as important as telling the truth – engaging readers and selling papers being two of the more important ones. He seems to suggest that an ideal newspaper would simply be a list of facts of things that occurred during the day, with few adjectives and no opinions. That is clearly not sensible, as nobody in their right mind would part with good money for something so utterly dull.

Those are the two big, central problems with the book. They are the two which each and every time they crop up made me want to scream. There were times when I actually had to put this enormously repetitive book down and walk away. But, in a way, this is only the start of the list of problems.

When I read books with the intention of reviewing them, I often make notes along the way. I select key quotes, I list the bits I really like and the bits that made me angry. This book caused me to write more notes than any other I’ve ever reviewed for this site, and almost all were in the “bits that made me angry” category. I don’t intend to make all of those points here, but I will share a select few which raised questions in my mind that Davies failed to answer.

Davies has bizarre ideas on what is and isn’t news. He cites a story in which there was a rumour of Terry Leahy stepping down from his role at Tesco. In the face of these rumours, Tesco issued a denial. Davies then criticises news bulletins for continuing to run the story that a rumour was circulating but that it had been denied by Tesco. Does he honestly believe that this story is not newsworthy? Should flat denials always be taken at face value?

There’s a section of this book where Davies criticises the Daily Mail for not having a coherent economic policy. Seriously, I’m not making this up. He talks about the unexpressed and hence unexamined “moral values” which underpin reportage in newspapers, citing the Daily Mail’s treatment of asylum seekers as an example. I’m afraid it’s a little beyond this reviewer to understand how Davies can argue that the Daily Mail’s attitude towards asylum seekers has not been widely acknowledged, criticised and challenged. But, beyond this, he then goes on to suggest that the Daily Mail’s opposition to immigration coupled with its support of free trade adds up to a deeply flawed economic policy. Does Davies honestly believe that a newspaper like the Daily Mail should put forward coherent economic policies? Really? Of course the Daily Mail picks and chooses causes, and of course they do not add up to anything sensible. I struggle to believe that people – including its readers and editor – would argue that the Daily Mail offers a cohesive policy for government, however it presents itself. This feels a bit like criticising Bram Stoker for opening Dracula with the suggestion that all events within the novel are accurate reporting of a true event.

There’s an odd passage in which Davies criticises a newspaper – I forget which one – for reversing its stance on the Iraq war in the face of plummeting readership. Yet I wonder what he believes to be the alternative? If readers are deserting a paper due its opinions, does Davies suggest that it should continue to parrot the same line until it is forced, by lack of readership, to close?

Davies argues that the BBC’s aim to break news within five minutes of it reaching the newsroom is flawed because it doesn’t allow for checking. Does he honestly think that the BBC should only ever report confirmed stories? Does he believe that repeating clearly identified “unconfirmed reports”, as they so frequently do, harms the practice of journalism? Is it his honest belief that if they returned to the old days of checking every detail before publishing that their readers, viewers and listeners wouldn’t desert them in favour of faster rivals? Or does he believe that it doesn’t matter than nobody watches, provided that there is a news outlet of record?

And how does Davies suggest that journalism should be funded? He suggests several times in the book that the funding sources of some campaign groups mean that their view of the world is, by definition, skewed by the funders and should be ignored. So who does he suggest should fund the media? Who has he thought of as a potential provider of revenue to fund totally impartial journalism? He has no answer to this question, but suggests in his epilogue that money saved from moving to digital publication rather than dead tree publication should be reinvested in journalism. The suggestion, of course, completely misses the point that nobody has yet worked out how to make anywhere like the revenue from digital journalism as from print journalism, so there is no money to be reinvested.

Yet, for all of its many faults, I think this is an important book. Strip away the odd proselytising tone, and within this book there is an interesting, informative and detailed “state of the profession” report. There are still those who believe that the Daily Mail prints literal truth, those that don’t understand how news stories are gathered, and those that think that quotes in newspapers are verbatim transcripts of something that someone actually said. For those people, this book would doubtless be an eye-opener.

All of this leaves me with something of a dilemma. I hated this book. I found it patronising, and a real struggle to get through. It’s irritating tone made me frequently set it aside to read something that made me less angry. And yet, I recognise that it is important, and that many people like it. Indeed, many people like it very much. So how many stars should I give? Since there’s no easy answer, I’m going to plump for an arbitrary three.

Flat Earth News is available now from amazon.co.uk in paperback and on Kindle.

Before I read this, I’d never read a book by Michael Crichton. As he’s one of the bestselling authors of recent decades, that might come as a surprise. I thought it was time to correct that omission. As someone with an interest in aviation (I’m a fan of trashy TV programmes like Air Crash Investigation, and also the excellent Flaps podcast), I thought Airframe was the perfect option to fill the gap.

Airframe is advertised as “a fast-paced, adrenaline-fuelled thriller from the master of high-concept storytelling”. I have some objections to this description: I don’t think it’s fast-paced, adrenaline fuelled, a thriller, or high-concept storytelling. I found it interminably dull.

This may be advertised as a thriller, but there were only about three short chase passages during which I could – at even the most generous push of my imaginations – be described as even vaguely interested, let alone thrilled; and those passages played only the most minor of roles in the plot as a whole.

The story, such as it was, really described nothing more than a particularly stressful week in the life of a dull woman who works for an aircraft company, combining well-rehearsed plot devices about a woman in a male-dominated work environment with well-rehearsed plot devices describing the conflicted life of a journalist. And it is most certainly not worth sticking with 400 pages of this to reach the damp squib of an ending.

Many have criticised Airframe for containing far too much technical detail about the mechanistic of flight; actually, my pre-existing interest in the topic made those sections some of the more interesting bits. But it’s certainly true that pages of technical description does little to heighten the jeopardy of the plot, considering that this is marketed as a thriller.

All of which is not to say that the book is bad, per sé: It’s just exceptionally bland. Much like magnolia paint, it’s dull but inoffensive, nobody’s favourite, but disliked very few.

I am afraid I am one of the few. I like books which have some sort of impact. This has none. If you like your books bland, you’ll probably get on very well with Airframe, but probably not with me. I struggled to finish it, and cannot recommend it.

Airframe is available now from amazon.co.uk in paperback, but not on Kindle.

Never Push When it Says Pull is something of an odd-man in my series of book reviews: it was published eight years ago, and is a collection of inconsequential but amusing newspaper columns. Yet I recently re-read it, and enjoyed it so much that I couldn’t resist including it some time.

Guy Browning’s series of five hundred How to… columns in the Saturday edition of the Guardian, which finished in 2009, remains one of my favourite columns of all time thanks its absurdist satirical view of everyday life. This book is the second collection of these columns – a follow-up of sorts to the previously released Never Hit a Jellyfish with a Spade.

The fact that I find each individual column laugh-out-loud funny means that the book is like a little bundle of hilarity. I read this pretty much in one sitting, but it’s also the perfect book for reading at random, in odd moments – after all, each column is only about 500 words, and each is an individual nugget of joy. Read it when you’re stressed at work and need some light relief, read it while relaxing on the beach, or read it on the toilet. All are decent options, although reading it at work might be inadvisable if this book makes you as prone to outbursts of laughter as it does me.

If you want a taster of what you’ll get in this book, all Browning’s columns are available on the Guardian website. You can read up on how to use a library (aka brothels of the mind), how to wiggle (after all, pleasure is wiggle shaped), or – if this review isn’t doing it for you – read up on how to sulk. I should confess that I’m writing this review in a coffee shop, and have attracted some strange looks thanks to the outbursts of laughter that re-reading those columns has produced.

I cannot give this book anything other than five stars. It might be the case that the slightly strange humour of this book passes you by, but for me, this is pure comedy gold, and I can only highly recommend it.

Never Push When it Says Pull is available now from amazon.co.uk in paperback, but unfortunately not on Kindle.

This third volume in Paxman’s series on British culture essentially presents a well-argued case for retaining the monarchy, whilst simultaneously recognising the manifold flaws, improbabilities, and injustices of the system. And, actually, I rather agree with his point of view – which, to some degree, makes for a less challenging and engaging read. I always think it’s always more interesting to read things which challenge your views, rather than things which reinforce them – though often, things which challenge your views end up reinforcing them anyway.

Paxman uses an awful lot of history of our monarchy, and several throughout the world, to flesh out his argument, and there is obvious potential for this to become very dry and dull – a potential that, fortunately, is never fulfilled. Paxman crafts a cogent, coherent, and entertaining argument, presented with the wry, dry humour for which he has become renowned.

The real joy of the book is in Paxman’s narrative. It would be easy for a title such as these to lose its narrative thread, but by providing a clear argument running throughout the book, Paxman manages to engage the reader and maintain their engagement, even when explaining complex historical events – albeit in a very accessible style.

Paxman provides a robustly constructed, irreverent, and entertaining guide to an institution he argues is simultaneously and paradoxically anachronistic, yet relevant and essential to today’s society. To a person like me – relatively poorly informed about British history – Paxman provides a great introduction and makes a clear argument for retention of the monarchy, whilst also allowing his trademark personality to shine through.

I thoroughly enjoyed On Royalty, and would happily recommend it: Its humour gives it easy-read levity, whilst its recurring themes and central message make it thought-provoking and memorable.

On Royalty is available now from amazon.co.uk in paperback and on Kindle.

Beyond Words by John Humphrys was published in 2006 in the wake of the popularity of Lynne Truss’s Eats Shoots and Leaves. It’s very much in the same vein, essentially a extended rant about the use of language, though Humphrys’s is rather less instructive. The back cover has one of the most accurate blurbs I’ve read in a long time: “What are the words and expressions that irk, intrigue and provoke John Humphrys?”

Amusingly, the book is subtitled ‘How Language Reveals The Way We Live Now’. I hypothesise that this subtitle was not submitted by Mr Humphrys himself. Firstly, I Don’t Think He’d Approve Of Capitalisation Of The First Letter Of Every Word. In fact, he rails against it in the book. Secondly, his narrative does not address ‘how language reveals the way we live now’. Not really. It is just a jolly romp through the modern day use of language.

This is entertaining, engaging, and it makes some interesting points about the development of language. It’s also genuinely funny. He has particularly memorable rants against familiar targets such as “Your M&S” (“The slogan implies that the product or service has been specially designed just for you personally. It hasn’t. The stuff is mass-produced for a mass market and the business – like almost every other large business around the world – is becoming less and less personal.”) and the Inland Revenue (“‘working with the largest customer base of any UK organisation'” is meaningless because the “customers” simply have no choice).

In contrast to Lynne Truss, who, apparently without irony, lamented the decline of formal English in an unnecessarily conversational grammar guide, John Humphrys takes a more reflective and analytical approach to changes in language. His tone is equally conversational and laced with humour, but without the repetitive vitriolic condemnation of the reader typical of Truss. And, in fairness, without the perhaps useful instruction that Truss provides.

Humphrys is easy to read. Perhaps it’s the way his voice is imprinted on my brain from years of listening to Radio 4, but his book reads almost as if one is in the room with him, and listening to a well-argued, highly entertaining monologue. And, unlike lesser authors, Humphrys is not trying to argue that misplaced apostrophes are the cause of social decline: He takes a reasoned approach to his arguments, which makes his conclusions seem all the more valid.

All-in-all, Beyond Words is a great read. It’s interesting and informative, genuinely funny, and short enough not to labour its points. I’d highly recommend it to anyone with even a passing interest in the English language.

Beyond Words is available now from amazon.co.uk in paperback and on Kindle.

Nick Robinson’s Live from Downing Street is a thoroughly enjoyable romp through the history of the relationship between politicians and the media, from the very beginnings of Parliament to the present day. It’s part historical and part autobiographical, with the latter part in particular including lots of amusing anecdotes about Robinson’s time as a political journalist. Some of these genuinely made me laugh out loud. It also has a lengthy “last word”, in which Robinson muses on the future of political journalism, and the opportunities and threats offered by introducing to the UK biased broadcasting in the mould of Fox News.

He has an easy writing style making this an easy relaxed read. He sometimes has a slightly peculiar reliance on turns of phrase which fail to accurately communicate what he means to say: for example, there’s a passage where he introduces Gordon Brown’s disastrous flirtations with YouTube by saying that politicians have always been keen to embrace technology to communicate their message – something which he’s spent most of the first two-thirds of the book disproving.

He gives a very eloquent account of the effect of the plurality of media in the broadest sense meaning that people surround themselves with messages that support their world viewpoint, and the effect this in turn has on perceptions of bias at the BBC. This is something I’ve been banging on about on Twitter for ages, in a far less coherent manner, and it was interesting to see that the same thoughts have occurred to that organisation’s Political Editor. He also gives an interesting discussion of the nature of bias and impartiality, which I very much enjoyed.

There isn’t an awful lot of new stuff in this book. I think many people who follow politics in detail are probably aware of the history of the BBC and the historic developments in the relationship between journalists and the press. But Robinson presents all of this with such a clear narrative and in such a clear way that I still found myself very engaged with the content even when he was describing events I knew well.

The lengthy discussion of recent events and media figures – phone hacking being perhaps the most notable example – will probably make this book date quite quickly. Indeed, the mentions of Leveson “whose report has not been published at the time of writing” already make it feel a little behind the times, particularly since Leveson’s report covers much of the same ground discussed by Robinson.

Either way, this is well worth a read, and comes highly recommended.

Live from Downing Street is available now from amazon.co.uk in hardback and on Kindle.

Mr Dispenser, Twitter’s highly entertaining anonymous pharmacist, has gone and written a book. He’s compiled just over 130 pages worth of pharmacy-based jokes, anecdotes, and blog posts – and the result is genuinely laugh-out-loud funny.

As a former hospital doctor, I didn’t really know what pharmacists got up to – least of all community pharmacists. The ward pharmacists were friendly folk who stalked the wards correcting my prescriptions in green ink, and putting up with incessant questions posed by curious junior doctors like me. They always seemed to know the answers. I guess my closest brush with community pharmacists came when I worked in general practice, and I’d occasionally get a phone call asking if I really meant to prescribe a drug – to which the answer was almost invariably “No”.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that pharmacists were generally the people, along with nurses, who routinely saved my ass, so I guess I’m pretty well disposed towards them. And from Mr Dispenser’s tweets, I was fairly sure they had a good sense of humour, too.

Pills, Thrills and Methadone Spills removed any doubt. Community pharmacists share a similar geeky and absurdist sense of humour with many GPs and hospital doctors, which means that the humour in this volume aimed directly at my funny bone. I laughed out loud repeatedly when reading this, most often at the pithy anecdotes of insane situations in which pharmacists find themselves – and even when the book is gently (or not so gently!) ribbing doctors. I even get quoted in there at one point!

More than just humour, though, Pills, Thrills and Methadone Spills gave me a better appreciation for what community pharmacists do all day. In that sense, it was even a little bit educational. And a proportion of the profits from the book is being donated to charity.

All of that said, this probably isn’t a book for a general audience. It’s very much aimed at pharmacists. As a non-pharmacist, some bits went over my head to some extent, and I’d imagine that those outside of healthcare would struggle to see the funny side of much of the book. And, if I’m being very picky, I’d probably have liked a bit of a narrative thread in there somewhere too. But Pills, Thrills and Methadone Spills is sure to raise a smile among pharmacists, pharmacy students, and perhaps some more of the medical community besides.

Pills, Thrills and Methadone Spills is available now from amazon.co.uk on Kindle. A paperback is coming later in the year. Mr Dispenser is @MrDispenser on Twitter.

In the interests of full transparency, I declare that I was sent a free electronic review copy of this book. In accordance with this site’s ethical review policy, I have not accepted payment for this review, I have written this review without regard to the source of the product, and I have made a charitable donation equivalent to the retail cost of the e-book.

I’ve previously enjoyed a lot of Iain Banks’s work. His first novel, The Wasp Factory, is a work of gothic brilliance that I loved even before I went on to study it at A-Level. And it’s possibly the only book I’ve ever studied that I haven’t ended up hating as a result!

That said, I’m not a fan of science fiction, and so I don’t enjoy his Iain M Banks science fiction, and didn’t like his cross-over book Transition. I think Banks excels in coming-of-age novels of self-discovery, like the aforementioned Wasp Factory, Whit (which I always want to call Isis), and The Crow Road. If we’re going to get all A-Level English about it, I enjoy his bildungsroman. Or possibly his entwicklungsroman. I’ve forgetten the difference.

Whichever it is I enjoy, Stonemouth happily nestles within the genre. It’s a simple story of coming home, facing demons, and growing. Stewart Gilmore returns to Stonemouth, the small Scottish town of his birth, for a funeral. He’s previously been run out of town by a local gang following an incident revealed only late in the novel, and possibly not entirely deserving of the lengthy build-up and sense of forboding.

This is Banks at his best, so there’s plenty of darkness, and dark humour in spades. The strength of this novel is the relative mundanity of the darkness: nobody explodes, nobody floats away with a bunch of balloons, and nobody’s brain is eaten by maggots. Granted, there is a little defaecation on a golf-course, but there’s nothing in this novel that pushes the boundaries of plausability too far. As with some of Banks’s previous novels, the strength is in the evocation of gothic themes within contemporary life.

The story is engaging, and the characterisation is great, with that uniquely evocative description which is a hallmark of Banks’s work. In fact, the characterisation here is so deep even amongst the minor characters that I could readily enjoy a return to Stonemouth at some point in the future, with a plot centered around some of those other characters.

Normally, Banks’s prose pours from the page. I don’t know of any other writer that pulls off the same trick. Sentences are so carefully constructed that they rarely need to be re-read. The dialogue is natural and flowing. There’s simply no effort to reading his novels. However, in this book, I kept ‘tripping over’ the pop culture references littered through the book. I have no idea why Banks feels the need to discuss iPhones, MacBooks, Family Guy, Cee Lo Green and the like so often. They don’t add to the characterisation, and don’t sit comfortably with Banks’s prose, and their inclusion feels like an odd decision which will serve only to make the book date very quickly. It’s a relatively minor quibble, but it is a little irritating.

All things considered, I thought Stonemouth was great. Other reviewers have criticised it for retreading old ground. That’s probably fair, but I can’t honestly say that it affected my enjoyment. This is the first novel I’ve read in quite some time that I’ve felt a little disappointed to have finished. As such, it comes highly recommended.

Stonemouth is available now from amazon.co.uk in hardback and on Kindle.