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Ecology & Environment, Natural World Mind and Body, Medicine, Psychology Non Fiction

Is a River Alive? by Robert Macfarlane

Review by Peter Reason It is very unlikely that many readers of Shiny New Books have missed Robert Macfarlane’s new book. It has been reviewed in most of the major…

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Shiny New Books May 27, 2025
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Biography & Memoir, Diaries Mind and Body, Medicine, Psychology Non Fiction

You Don’t Have to be Mad to Work Here by Benji Waterhouse

Reviewed by Liz Dexter This book is also about me and about why anyone in the right mind would choose to be a psychiatrist. I hope that it serves as…

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Shiny New Books June 4, 2024
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Mind and Body, Medicine, Psychology Non Fiction Philosophy

How to Be Multiple: The Philosophy of Twins, by Helena de Bres, illustrated by Julia de Bres

Reviewed by Simon Thomas When I discovered there was a new collection of essays out about the philosophy of twins, and that it was written by an identical twin, I…

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Shiny New Books April 9, 2024
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Biography & Memoir, Diaries Mind and Body, Medicine, Psychology Non Fiction Reprint

A Fortunate Woman by Polly Morland & A Fortunate Man by John Berger

Reviewed by Rebecca Foster When I first heard about journalist Polly Morland’s A Fortunate Woman: A Country Doctor’s Story, which was later shortlisted for the 2022 Baillie Gifford Prize, I…

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Shiny New Books April 6, 2023
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Mind and Body, Medicine, Psychology Non Fiction Sports & Leisure

Good for a Girl: My Life Running in a Man’s World, by Lauren Fleshman

Review by Liz Dexter Millions of women carry an abundance of positive memories of their time in sport, but they also carry the invisible wounds of their sports experiences. As…

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Shiny New Books March 15, 2023
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Mind and Body, Medicine, Psychology Non Fiction Self-help Uncategorized

Hanging Out: The Radical Power of Killing Time by Sheila Liming

Review by Annabel The New Year always brings with it a slew of self-help books about becoming the better/fitter/healthier/wealthier you. I look at these books and think – really? Why…

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Shiny New Books January 30, 2023
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Mind and Body, Medicine, Psychology Non Fiction

The Book of Phobias & Manias: A History of Obsession, by Kate Summerscale

Review by Basil Ransome-Davies This book coaxed me onside before I had begun reading it, for its design and artwork. Its appearance is bold, charming and slightly creepy. On the…

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Shiny New Books October 4, 2022
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History & Politics, Feminism, Sociology Mind and Body, Medicine, Psychology Non Fiction

The Facemaker: One Surgeon’s Battle to Mend the Disfigured Soldiers of World War I, by Lindsey Fitzharris

Review by Annabel Lindsey Fitzharris is an American with a doctorate from Oxford in the History of Science, Medicine and Technology, and a post-doc fellowship from the Wellcome Trust. Her…

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Shiny New Books June 28, 2022
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Mind and Body, Medicine, Psychology Non Fiction

The Expectation Effect by David Robson

Review by Terence Jagger We are all aware of placebos and their effects – the idea that a totally inactive substance can have a similar effect to, for example, a…

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Shiny New Books May 31, 2022
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Biography & Memoir, Diaries Mind and Body, Medicine, Psychology Non Fiction

Maternal Mental Health Awareness Month: Birth Notes by Jessica Cornwell & After the Storm by Emma Jane Unsworth

Reviewed by Rebecca Foster May is Maternal Mental Health Awareness Month and so the perfect time to consider two memoirs of postnatal depression, one that was just published this month…

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Shiny New Books May 12, 2022
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Essays Mind and Body, Medicine, Psychology Non Fiction

Brainspotting: Adventures in Neurology by A. J. Lees

Reviewed by Annabel Dr Andrew Lees is a neurology professor at the National Hospital in London the first English hospital dedicated exclusively to treating the diseases of the nervous system….

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Shiny New Books April 12, 2022
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Lit Crit Mind and Body, Medicine, Psychology Non Fiction

The Science of Life and Death in Frankenstein by Sharon Ruston

Review by Annabel Gaskell Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, her novel conceived during that momentous trip to Geneva in 1816 during ‘the year without a summer’, is supremely concerned with the subject…

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Shiny New Books March 3, 2022
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Biography & Memoir, Diaries Mind and Body, Medicine, Psychology Non Fiction

Everything is True: A Junior Doctor’s Story of Life, Death and Grief in a Time of Pandemic, by Roopa Farooki

Reviewed by Rebecca Foster I don’t know about you, but I can’t get enough of Covid-19 chronicles. My favourites of the twenty-some I’ve read thus far have come from the…

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Shiny New Books February 8, 2022
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Essays Mind and Body, Medicine, Psychology Non Fiction

Everybody: A Book About Freedom by olivia laing

Reviewed by Rebecca Foster Olivia Laing has established herself as a group biographer par excellence, taking as her subjects alcoholic writers for the superb The Trip to Echo Spring (2013,…

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Shiny New Books December 7, 2021
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History & Politics, Feminism, Sociology Mind and Body, Medicine, Psychology Non Fiction Philosophy

The Transgender Issue by Shon Faye

By Liz Dexter This book is primarily concerned with explaining how society, as it is currently arranged, often makes trans people’s lives unnecessarily difficult. Yet, in posing solutions to these…

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Shiny New Books September 30, 2021
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History & Politics, Feminism, Sociology Mind and Body, Medicine, Psychology Myths & Legends, Fairytale Non Fiction

The Oxford Illustrated History of Witchcraft and Magic, edited by Owen Davies

Reviewed by Harriet If there’s one thing that this impressively learned and wide-ranging volume amply demonstrates, it’s that an interest in magic and witchcraft has persisted through the ages in…

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Shiny New Books August 19, 2021
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Mind and Body, Medicine, Psychology Non Fiction

Hidden Spring: A Journey to the Source of Consciousness, by Mark Solms

Review by Terence Jagger This is a fascinating book, one I bought after hearing the author give an inspiring presentation to the Royal Institution. He starts by recounting how his…

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Shiny New Books June 24, 2021
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Biography & Memoir, Diaries Mind and Body, Medicine, Psychology Non Fiction

Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family by Robert Kolker

Reviewed by Lory Widmer-Hess Schizophrenic. The very word is a trigger for aversion, a signal to run away, with its spiky, spluttered consonants and imprisoned vowels, four foreign syllables meaning…

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Shiny New Books April 13, 2021
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Biography & Memoir, Diaries Mind and Body, Medicine, Psychology Non Fiction

Heavy Light: A Journey through Madness, Mania and Healing by Horatio Clare

Reviewed by Peter Reason It was on a family skiing holiday that Horatio Clare finally went mad. This was the culmination of a period of high activity and stress, coupled…

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Shiny New Books April 8, 2021
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Mind and Body, Medicine, Psychology Non Fiction

Spoon-Fed by Tim Spector

Reviewed by Annabel Kings College Hospital-based Professor Tim Spector’s name is, I hope, becoming more widely known in the UK since the pandemic began. He’s been involved in the development…

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Shiny New Books October 13, 2020
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Mind and Body, Medicine, Psychology Non Fiction

The Changing Mind by Daniel Levitin

Reviewed by Terence Jagger This is a wonderful book, and the real title is the sub-title: A Neuroscientist’s Guide to Ageing Well.  It is not in any sense a self…

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Shiny New Books August 27, 2020
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DIARY OF A YOUNG NATURALIST
Biography & Memoir, Diaries Ecology & Environment, Natural World Mind and Body, Medicine, Psychology Non Fiction

Diary of a Young Naturalist by Dara McAnulty

Reviewed by Rebecca Foster When the Wainwright Prize longlists (for writing on UK nature and global conservation themes) were announced in early June, Dara McAnulty broke two records as the…

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Shiny New Books July 2, 2020
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Ecology & Environment, Natural World Mind and Body, Medicine, Psychology Non Fiction Science & Technology

Wayfinding by Michael Bond

Review by Terence Jagger I found this book absolutely fascinating. I have always been fairly confident in my abilities as a navigator (though with occasional disasters) but I have always…

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Shiny New Books June 11, 2020
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Mind and Body, Medicine, Psychology Non Fiction Philosophy

‘Not’ the Wellcome Prize Blog Tour 2020 #2 – Galileo’s Error by Philip Goff

The Wellcome Book Prize is on hiatus this year – we really hope it’ll return in 2021 as this unique prize, which celebrates literature with health, illness and medicine themes,…

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Shiny New Books April 23, 2020
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