BOOK REVIEW: Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin

People who are passionate about their subject tend to fall into two categories. There are those who will bore you at length on such subjects as the taxonomy of sponges or the structure of the inner ear. Then there are those whose passion is matched by an ability to communicate, who will make you understand why the taxonomy of sponges or the structure of the inner ear are actually amazing and fascinating subjects.

Neil Shubin covers both those subjects and more in his book Your Inner Fish. Shubin definitely falls into the latter camp of interesting experts – he refers several times to his teaching work and in the book you feel that you are being gently led through the subject by an excellent teacher. Shubin’s passion is using both fossils and DNA to assess what humans share with other forms of life. He refers not just to inner fish but inner flies, inner chickens and inner skates, among others. Like the best teachers, he has the ability to simplify difficult concepts without talking down to his readers. The book is suited to a general readership and no prior knowledge of the field is assumed. In fact, you have the sense that Shubin is particularly targeting those people who might have thought the subject boring. From genes called “sonic hedgehog” to an exploration of why tadpoles hiccup, Shubin is never less than engaging, and his enthusiasm for the subject shines through. In an era when science and in particular genetic experiments on animals have become the subject of a thousand horror films, it is refreshing to find someone who talks unashamedly of his love for science and his joy of living in an “age of discovery.” By the end of the book it is almost impossible not to share his wonder at “finding the basis for our humanity…nestled inside some of the most humble creatures that have ever lived on our planet.” Shubin should be congratulated on translating his passion into a readable and fascinating book.

BOOK REVIEW: Trick or Treatment by Simon Singh and Professor Edzard Ernst

I added this book to my “to-read” list upon hearing that as a result of its publication, the authors had been sued by the British Chiropractic Association.* My reasoning went something like: defamation case = scandal = juicy secrets. As it turned out, while the book is not at all dry, “juicy” is probably a description that the authors would scorn. In fact they clearly pride themselves on the meticulous research that went into their examination of alternative medicines.

Trick or Treatment looks at the evidence for or against five of the main streams of alternative medicine, being homeopathy, chiropractic therapy, herbal medicine and acupuncture. It also examines the history of evidence-based medical treatment and its applicability to “alternative” forms of medical treatment.

Simon Singh, one of the authors, works as a science journalist, and I expect the books readability is largely his work. In contrast, Ernst is a doctor with a great deal of experience in natural therapies, and I suspect the level of scientific rigour brought to bear is a testament to his influence. You can’t help but feel that the authors also brought a pre-existing level of scepticism to the project, but perhaps this is necessary for a scientific and objective enquiry.

The general thesis of the book is that if alternative medicines were proven to work, they would have been adopted by the medical establishment and ceased to be “alternative.” While this could be debated, it is difficult to refute the number of studies cited by the authors, almost all of which show no or dubious benefit to the patient by alternative therapies. The book also provides an interesting window into the field of medical ethics, particularly in its examination of the ethics of exploiting the placebo effect (if a placebo makes people feel better without side effects, should doctors prescribe placebos?) The authors’ reasoning is too detailed to go into here but also makes sense to a layman, as is characteristic of the rest of the book.

So his is clearly an interesting and informative book – but is it useful? I think so, with some caveats. It is unlikely to change the mind of those who are already convinced of the benefits of alternative therapies. They are unlikely to accept the contention that the results of these therapies can be “measured” and compared with any other treatment. However, for those who are unconvinced one way or another, the book does provide a clear summary of the current state of medical knowledge. It even has an exceedingly useful index listing the therapies they were unable to cover in detail and outlining the main points of any research done in relation to them. Where the evidence is insufficient to conclude either that a therapy is effective or ineffective, the authors say this clearly.

Trick or Treatment is certainly a very blunt book and pulls no punches where a therapy is not supported by evidence or could potentially harm a patient. They are particularly critical of chiropractors as an organisation, hence no doubt the court case. The book concludes by suggesting that if alternative medicines carry some of the risks of conventional treatment, they should be regulated to the same standard and the same warning labels should apply. It’s difficult to see this happening if alternative treatments remain on the fringe, but if they do move into the mainstream (for example by obtaining government funding) it may yet come to pass. In that case it would remain to be seen whether a warning label stating “this product has been shown to have little or no effect” would be detrimental to the alternative medicine industry, or whether its follows continue to believe in its intangible, immeasurable and probably illusionary benefits.

* Wikipedia tells me that Singh was actually sued over a column, not over this book. I expect the content was similar though.

How I learned to read without paper

Today I am interrupting normal transmission to tell you how much I love Readwithoutpaper.com. If you are the kind of person who goes to bed clutching a paper book to your chest, feel free to leave now. This post is for those people who have discovered that with an eReader you can carry a hundred books in your pocket, and have never looked back.

Firstly, you have to understand that in the world of eReaders I am doubly disadvantaged. Firstly, I have a Sony Reader, which reads ePub format. It was a deliberate choice not to get an Amazon Kindle – I’m not a fan of the whole “walled garden” thing – but it does make it a bit trickier buying books. I can buy from Kindle but need to convert to the ePub format, which I can only do if the book doesn’t have digital rights management. Then there are those like Readings' online store which provide books that can only be read in a browser – a fact I only discovered after purchasing a book that I now can’t read on my eReader. I’m disappointed, because I think they have great books and offers, but there’s no way I’m reading a book on my laptop. ePub files are where it’s at for me, but for a supposed industry standard they are harder to find than I thought.

The secondly and worst problem I face is that I’m located in Australia. Australia is more than an afterthought when it comes to eBooks. We are the forgotten pimple on the afterthought’s bum.  Think about this for a minute – if I go to amazon.com today, it tells me there are around 968,000 ebooks. Only 717,000 are available to Australians, and for some reason quite a few of those missing seem to be by Australian authors. Australians have become very familiar with the messages  cheerily announcing “I’m sorry! This book is not available in your location.” It tends to induce a red mist and an urge to commit grievous bodily harm on the computer (which can only be overcome by thinking about how much that infuriating screen actually costs to fix).

And that’s the problem, really. It’s not that they tell you upfront it’s not available. Oh no, it’s not until you put it into your cart and go to check out that they spring the news on you. In fact, it's happened more than once that I've filled my cart with books, only to be told that none of them are available to purchase. Diesel eBooks is the worst have experienced – they let me purchase a book and then wouldn’t let me download my purchase because I was apparently in the wrong territory. It took an email  to the help desk to get a refund, and even then they didn’t refund the credit card charges I paid for making an overseas purchase (okay, it was only about a dollar, but it’s the principle of the thing).

And hence to Read Without Paper. Despite the .com address, it’s an Australian site. It offers ePubs that are easily downloaded to my Sony Reader. Even better, they tell you upfront – when you are actually considering buying the book! – where it is available. It’s a sad comment on the state of eBook sites to say it, but this is revolutionarily wonderful.  They have a great range of books that I actually want to read, and they are set out in a way that actually makes sense.

I spent around a hundred dollars on books a couple of months ago. I haven’t spent that much in years. It just goes to show the potential when sites can actually get this thing right – and in my opinion, Read Without Paper definitely have. Cheers guys!

BOOK REVIEW: A short history of nearly everything by Bill Bryson and The Pursuit of Italy by David Gilmour

I started reading Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything a couple of years ago, and soon found myself hopelessly bogged down. More enticing books beckoned, and I put it aside.

Similarly, it’s taken me at least a few months to get through David Gilmour’s The Pursuit of Italy.

It’s not that these books are not interesting, because they are absolutely chockers with fascinating facts and interesting information. Between the two of them, I feel like I’ve absorbed a fairly large amount of knowledge. No, after a lot of thought, I’ve concluded that  the real problem is the lack of structure and narrative.

Both books start out with vague goals – it’s doesn’t come much more indefinite than a history of “nearly everything,” and you can’t get much more ambitious than attempting to nail down a whole country. Of the two, Bryson’s structure is more consistent throughout the book. Each chapter deals with a specific discipline and its history, such as geology, astronomy, and physics. David Gilmour on the other hand starts out by describing various aspects of contemporary Italy (which was utterly absorbing) and then jumps backwards and goes through the history of Italy in chronological order. His book picks up again towards the end, but the middle section dealing with events in the various kingdoms prior to unification is something of a hard slog. Of course, this may just reflect the fact that this was not a particularly interesting period of time (at least for non-Italians),

Because of the broad subject matter they are attempting to cover, these books don’t tend to go into deep analysis of their subject, although David Gilmour does make an effort in this direction towards the end. Both authors write well, with an informal tone that engages the reader. Bryson in particular has become so well know n that he could get away with a much lesser book, but I was impressed by the amount of research that he put in in order to explain difficult concepts in plain language. It must have been a monumental undertaking. David Gilmour’s book is similarly well-researched and unlike Bryson the author is familiar enough with his field to offer his own insights on some of the sources he cites.

I ended up taking these two books to the beach. They are not everyone’s definition of a beach read, but it turned out that they were perfect for the disjoined nature of summer reading. I would read a chapter, have a swim, come back and pick up where I left off. To extrapolate out, I think these books are best tackled in small chunks – to read from beginning to end is to ask for fact fatigue, when all the information starts to blur into a monotonous whole. These books deserve better than that, and if you make the effort they are truly rewarding reads.

BOOK REVIEW: Manhattan Dreaming by Anita Heiss

There are books that are good for you like all-bran or brussel sprouts, and there are books that are the mental equivalent of junk food – tasty, devoured in a flash, but vaguely unsatisfying (hello, Dan Brown).

In Manhattan Dreaming, Anita Heiss tries to have a foot in both camps by creating chick-lit with a message. Serious points about Aboriginal rights are disguised inside a frothy story about finding love in New York.

This wouldn’t be such a problem if the disguise was actually convincing. I wanted to overlook the constant moralising, because I liked this book a lot. But every few pages Heiss would pour a metaphorical bucket of cold water on the story by having her characters make a serious point about indigenous rights and racial equality in general. Perhaps people do have these earnest conversations in real life (although I have my doubts) but frankly I can do without being lectured when reading fiction.

So apart from the morality issue, what was my view on the book? I read it on a plane, and found it to be perfect plane reading. The characters were well-developed, and I didn’t end up wanting to shake the main character while yelling “get over it!” (always a good sign). The story was engaging, predictable to a point but not simplistic. I think Heiss has real potential as a writer.

But oh, those morals. I like the idea of an aboriginal woman in New York – the setup would have worked fine on its own to gently get the point across. But Heiss feels the need to add paragraphs like this:

“We have the same discussions back home,” I told him. “What constitutes “Aboriginal Art” and who is an “Aboriginal Artist”? It’s complex and takes the focus away from the art itself, which is problematic.”

Or, have you ever heard anyone, whatever their race, say “I hate being the exotic ‘other’?” As a line of dialogue it comes straight from a thesis and it shows.

I don’t believe that Heiss should leave the Aboriginal perspective out of her books, and I’ll admit that I learned some things about Aboriginal culture while reading Manhattan Dreaming. However, I do think that she needs to avoid lecturing readers. If her goal is putting forward Aboriginal and Indigenous perspectives, in the long run subtlety is likely to be more effective.

The verdict? I’m happy for my chick-lit to come with a message, but I don’t like to be hit over the head with it. Heiss may be a Adjunct Associate Professor but she should save the lectures for the classroom.

BOOK REVIEW: Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

For a book that is subtitled “The story of success”, Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers contains one strange omission. Nowhere in the book does he define or discuss the concept of success. The closest he comes is his comment that outliers are “men and women who do things that are out of the ordinary.” He discusses geniuses, business tycoons, rock stars, and software programmers, without ever identifying why he considers them to be successful. In most cases they have built a successful business and made lots of money – but isn’t there more to the concept of success than that?

After a lot of consideration, I’ve come to the conclusion that the book fundamentally reflects a male point of view and a go-out-and-conquer-the-world mentality. Most women in contrast would consider success to be a more holistic concept. I think we can all agree Bill Gates is a successful man, but would we still consider him “a success” if he had a dysfunctional family life and a drug addiction? In other words, by Gladwell’s standards, Charlie Sheen would arguably be up there as a success story.

This bias also flavours the rest of the book. Gladwell’s thesis is that environment is the fundamental predictor of success, much more so than innate talent. He claims that as a general rule, 10,000 hours of practice at something are required to become successful at it, although again it’s not clear what success is likely to mean in this context (does this get you to worlds-best standard or country-best, or only best in your city?) I don’t argue with the claim that practice makes perfect, or even that practice is more important than innate talent. However I do think that this criteria also explains why all Gladwell’s examples are men. Women’s lives are often a balancing act as they try to manage various responsibilities. Success for us is often getting through the day without dropping any of the balls we are constantly juggling. Dedicating 10,000 hours to something is often simply out of the question. If Gladwell is correct, perhaps this explains why there are not more women at the top levels of business.

To summarise, I think that Gladwell has both failed to define success but at the same time defined it too narrowly. Or perhaps the real question is whether the word “success” is the appropriate one. I enjoyed reading this book – it’s extremely well written and interesting – but upon finishing it I felt somewhat disappointed. I accept Gladwell’s conclusions as far as they go, as a model of the factors that create one type of “success,” but I think he has failed to realise the limitations of the questions he is asking. In particular, half the population seems to have been excluded from the analysis. If Gladwell couldn’t find any examples of successful women to interview, I would suggest there is a flaw with his definition of success, and the fact that the definition is never explicit to begin with only compounds the error.

So judging him by his own standards: Gladwell’s book has sold a lot of copies, therefore he’s a success. By the standards of academic rigour and gender equality however, if not a fail, I’d mark this book “can do better.”

BOOK REVIEW: Murder in the Bastille by Cara Black

 For a writer, crime novels come with their own particular challenges. As well as the usual aspects of characterisation, narrative voice, and plot, there is the additional task of posing and answering the question “whodunit?” The writer must provide enough information to give the reader a fair chance to solve the mystery, yet hide the essential clues in plain sight.  It’s the literary version of the magician’s sleight of hand – the trick is to get the audience focussing on the flimflam so that they miss what is going on elsewhere. It’s only when the magician reveals how the trick was done that we cry “Of course! The butler did it!”

I’ve been thinking about the art of the crime novel while reading Murder in the Bastille by Cara Black. This is the second novel of Black’s that I have read, and both have left me feeling unsatisfied. I’m not sure Black manages to balance giving the reader enough information, but not too much. With both novels, I turned to the final chapter thinking not “Of course!” but “Where did that come from?” It’s not a fatal flaw, particularly in the private detective genre, but it did spoil to some extent an otherwise enjoyable book.

There is plenty to enjoy in Murder in the Bastille. Lovers of Paris should put this book at the top of their reading lists – Black lingers over the descriptions of its alleys and passages, squares and quartiers. Most of the time she succeeds in evoking a sense of the layers of history in the city, although more impatient readers may find the level of detail irritating. Despite this, Black maintains a good pace and keeps the plot moving along.

The book opens with private detective Aimée Leduc being attacked in a passage in the Bastille area of Paris. The police believe she was the latest victim of the serial killer known as the “Beast of Bastille,” but Aimée and her partner René have their doubts. Their search for the attacker unfolds against a backdrop of conflict between conservationists and developers over the future of the Bastille area, while Aimée and René delve deeper into its past in search of the killer.

Aimée and René are both likable, and their relationship believable. Black avoids cliché and delivers well-rounded characters, police officers and villains included. Of course, the main character is Paris itself. From an armchair travel perspective, Murder in the Bastille is truly excellent. Here’s hoping that in later books, the whodunit lives up to the setting.