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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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….
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…
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…
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,…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
‘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,…