Tag: book review

Review | Mistakes were made (but not by me)

2 May 2025 / Sinead

Normally I review a book after the first time I finish reading it, but this one is a little different. I’ve read Mistakes were made (but not by me) multiple times in the ~10 years that it has lived on my bookshelf, and I can recommend it almost wholeheartedly. Its writing is clear and accessible, the example and stories involved are chosen well and discussed with compassion, and the sourcing appears sound. Plus, the ideas it discusses are certainly relevant right now!

“These metaphors of memory are popular, reassuring, and wrong. Memories are not buried somewhere in the brain, as if they were bones at an archeological site; nor can we uproot them, as if they were radishes; nor, when they are dug up, are they perfectly preserved. We do not remember everything that happens to us; we select only highlights”.

The book also sets an appropriate scope, as it does not proclaim that its central subject of dissonance theory and self-justification is the sole cause of the world’s ills nor that understanding and correcting our bias towards self-justification will solve all problems. Instead, the authors more reasonably claim that the knowledge of cognitive dissonance will “make sense of dozens of the things that people do that would otherwise seem unfathomable and crazy” and that “understanding is the first step towards finding solutions that lead to change and redemption”. For me, this more measured approach to its potential value makes the book more trustworthy.

However, the main flaw this book has is the field it come from. As a social psychology book written in 2007, this book has more potential than most to be built on flawed foundations. I’m not saying “older research is bad”; I’m referring here to the way that the replication crisis has created a large, justified, doubt in psychology research findings, especially in social psychology findings.

Review | Sounds Fake But Okay

10 June 2024 / Sinead

Sounds Fake But Okay is a friendly exploration of the “rules” of romance, sexuality and dating, and what society might be like if those “rules” were broken. It is written by Sarah Costello and Kayla Kaszyca, the hosts of the podcast of the same name.

The podcast initially started as an offshoot of the two hosts’ attempts to make sense of dating, romance and sexuality, and (for one host) figure themselves out along the way. In the book, having had time and space to make sense of the world (and make ~300 podcast episodes) the authors are now encouraging people of all orientations to try asking the kind of questions that they ask each other. Their aim here is to show that most of the rules humans have about dating, romance, and partnership – and even wider topics like families and gender – are not unchangeable requirements of life but are instead patterns and habits that societies have collectively locked themselves into.

This process of setting the defaults aside and asking questions about the rules of romance/dating/society is phrased as putting on the “purple aspec glasses”, an analogy which to me effectively conveys the authors’ aim of encouraging readers to explore in a controllable, temporary, non-binding way. (Note: “aspec” is an existing slang term for the “asexual spectrum“; the range of different orientations under the wider umbrella of asexuality). The authors make clear that they are not using the book to say “one way of living in the world is right and another way is wrong” but instead to say “any way you choose to live is good, as long as you’re consciously thinking about and choosing it for yourself”, a standpoint that I greatly respect.

Review | The Importance of Being Interested – Robin Ince

19 May 2023 / Sinead

The Importance of Being Interested went on my book wishlist as soon as I saw its back cover description and its promises of exploration and wonder. It aims to be a book of science communication rather than a book of science facts, where author Robin Ince tries to convey why he finds science wonderful and inspiring rather than clinical and cynical. Spoiler alert: he does this really well.

Each chapter focuses on a topic – including time, the universe, conspiracy theories, and religion – and features answers and discussions from scientists who work in areas related to that topic as well as people from other fields who have interesting perspectives to offer, from astronauts to authors to paranormal investigators. These chapters and their discussions will probably introduce you to areas of science that you didn’t know existed. For me, this book was my first introduction to the idea of space archaeology, and Ince’s brief explanation of the field demonstrated both the sheer coolness of that title and the meaningful value of the field. (He also gets bonus points for not following up any of the odder-sounding aspects of the book with the usual tired jokes about research funding!).

The input from the experts also feels “just right”: Ince gives each expert space to explore ideas rather than being forced into simplified soundbite answers, but without just parroting their words. Some experts reappear across multiple topics and chapters in a way that feels natural and contributes to the book feeling like a larger conversation rather than a linear list of topics.

“Black holes are the reason spaghetti needed to be transformed into a verb”

Review | Homo Deus – Yuval Noah Harari

10 April 2021 / Sinead

I restarted Homo Deus this week, as I had previously been put off by the reviews which claimed it was far less impressive than Sapiens (which I had enjoyed). But the more I read Homo Deus, the more ambivalent I became about whether or not to continue reading. I felt like Harari’s style could work when applied to topics that I’m already interested in such as AI and big data. Yet, Homo Deus quickly fell from being interesting to infuriating, as I learned just how badly it misrepresented one of its main subjects. (See the The Turning Point section below for details).

The Starting Point

The first few pages impressed me, as Harari painted a memorable picture of an improving world. Within the prologue there are some fascinating ideas and questions that are worth thinking about. Pages 71-74 go in to the history of garden lawns; this narrative shows how ideas about what an object means travel across countries and over time, and how those ideas become unquestioned assumptions baked into our societies and world-views.

Homo Deus also keeps the same casual and accessible writing style as Sapiens. Harari’s explanations contain bursts of flair, like rhetorical devices, assonance, and pop-cultural references, that make the text engaging and occasionally humorous. It almost reads like fiction, and sometimes that’s a downside; its smooth nature meant I found myself sliding from one chapter to another and then suddenly realising that I hadn’t questioned whether the segues and connections Harari made were logical as a result.

As I kept reading, my opinion of the book kept changing even within pages. There are paragraphs which contain thought-provoking questions, and which make predictions that have to some extent been shown to be correct. For example, Homo Deus contains this description of how targeted algorithms might affect voting:

“in future US presidential elections, Facebook could know not only the political opinions of tens of millions of Americans, but also who among them are the critical swing voters, and how those voters might be swung. Facebook could tell that in Oklahoma the race between Republicans and Democrats is particularly close, identify the 32,417 voters who still haven’t made up their minds, and determine what each candidate needs to say in order to tip the balance. How could Facebook access this priceless political data? We provide it for free.”

This was written in 2015, before the Cambridge Analytica-Facebook scandal was widely publicised, but its certainly close to what happened. At the same time, Harari makes other predictions that have already been proven false. Talking about Microsoft’s Cortana, first developed just a year before Homo Deus was written, Harari envisions that;

“Next thing I know, a potential employer will tell me not to bother sending a CV, but simply allow his Cortana to grill my Cortana….As Cortanas gain authority, they may begin manipulating each other to further the interests of their masters…”

That’s already wrong, because Cortana is being switched off from most of its planned customer-focused purposes, even on Microsoft’s own devices. Harari’s rush to ascribe world-changing powers to the 12-month-old Cortana is a red flag that should make readers question how many of his other predictions could be similarly over-hyped.

Review | Toksvig’s Almanac – Sandi Toksvig

26 March 2021 / Sinead

I received a small pile of books for my birthday last month, and Toksvig’s Almanac was the one I wanted to get stuck in to first. As I only knew of the almanac genre as being something from the 1700s/1800s, I sort of assumed they had been rendered obsolete by the internet, so first I went to a dictionary to check that I knew what an almanac actually was.

Here’s the history lesson for anyone who wants it: an almanac is a usually-yearly publication that holds information about multiple subjects at once. Ancient almanacs contained information about all sorts of topics that farmers, sailors, and astronomers would need. They were like a focused encyclopedia that covered what those readers would need to know in the year ahead. This included planting dates for crops; dates for natural events like eclipses and cultural events like holidays; plus celestial information like when stars and constellations could be seen. Modern almanacs still exist, though they expand the concept beyond farming and calendars into statistics, history, and collections of facts.

As a reference book, Toksvig’s Almanac isn’t really meant to be read from beginning to end (although it can be). It also isn’t meant to be a exhaustive dive into any of the individual people featured, which Toksvig makes clear in her introduction. Toksvig’s Almanac is a collection of jumping-off-points, a signpost pointing readers to the existence of hundreds of names, stories and events so that they can learn more about the ones that interest them. Its main focus is a chronological tour through the year, which highlights a different woman on each day. (To do this, it also has a good introductory explanation of the Gregorian and Julian calendars, and of why September-December seem to be in the wrong place in our calendar – short version, blame Augustus Caesar!).

The entries for each date are supplemented by quotes, poems, information about worldwide holidays and festivals, and longer entries about stories that connect multiple historical figures. The entry about how suffragists began to use cookbooks to spread political education and information about the suffrage movement to women was the most novel of these for me, as its a connection that I would never have thought to look into without being informed about it from outside.

Review | Hello World – Hannah Fry

8 February 2020 / Sinead

I received Hello World for Christmas along with a few other books, and it was my favourite of the set … I actually abandoned one of the other books part-way through as this one was so much more appealing.

Hello World opens with the famous chess battle between grandmaster Kasparov and Deep Blue. Fry shows how Kasparov’s shock defeat wasn’t caused by Deep Blue’s mechanical power, but by how Kasparov interpreted and reacted to the computer’s actions. The engineers who programmed Deep Blue’s algorithm tactically let it appear hesitant. Deep Blue couldn’t play mind games, but the programmers understood human reactions well enough to make Deep Blue seem like it could, which threw Kasparov off his game.

This example lays out one of the three principles which run through the book – that we often blindly trust algorithms because we see them as infallible machines rather than instructions written by other humans. The other two principles are first that all systems, whether human-led or machine-led, are flawed, and second that algorithms and humans working together creates a better future than either rejecting algorithms or replacing humans with algorithms.

Review | Because Internet – Gretchen McCulloch

27 September 2019 / Sinead

The blurb for Because Internet calls it “essential reading for anyone who has ever puzzled over how to punctuate a text message or wondered where memes come from”. But this book is not a fussy “how-to” guide for internet etiquette. Instead, it’s a broader look at how the weird world of the internet has changed how we use English.

McCulloch’s primary point is that writing produced on the internet – from Twitter and Tumblr to reactions and memes – is important because it lets linguists explore the missing piece of a linguistic puzzle.

We use different versions of speech – formal and informal speech – at specific times and contexts. While the same is true for writing, informal writing has historically been nearly impossible to study. McCulloch argues that our current era of internet communication marks the first time that linguists have been able to see people’s spontaneous informal writing in real-time. Positioning internet writing as the key to a previously-inaccessible aspect of studying language is a powerful approach, and this chapter conveys its importance well.

Review | Reaching Down the Rabbit Hole – Dr Allan Ropper and Dr Brian Burrell

24 May 2019 / Sinead

Reaching Down The Rabbit Hole is a collection of medical stories from patients at the renowned Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Jointly written by neurologist Allan Ropper and neuroscience researcher Brian Burrell, the book melds Ropper’s perspective and experiences with Burrell’s extensive notes and related information.

“If (an aneurysm) reaches a critical size and form, it can burst open with the entire force of the body’s blood pressure. Blood then fills the spaces around the brain in a split second and causes a thunderbolt of a headache that no one forgets and many don’t survive.”

Review | Quackery: A Brief History of the Worst Ways to Cure Everything – Lydia Kang and Nate Pedersen

2 March 2019 / Sinead

10 years ago, I took a GCSE history course on Medicine through Time, which was so engaging for me that I now credit it as part of why I ended up studying science communication. Since then, medical history has stayed as one of my cyclic background interests.

Quackery aims for a tone somewhere between a medical history textbook and a standard popular-science narrative, then strikes that note precisely throughout. It focuses on information about historical treatments, figures and ideas, rather than any autobiographical elements or personal narratives. Because Quackery is so consistent, it skirted the edge of monotony when I read much of the book in one sitting. However, the authors’ quick pace, and their frequent dry-humoured side notes and reactions, liven up the text.

“Edinburgh physician James Young Simpson was another nineteenth-century pioneer in anaesthesia. That is, if pioneering meant inhaling random substances with your colleagues, just to see what would happen.”

Review | In the Land of Invented Languages – Arika Okrent

13 January 2019 / Sinead

Although we use language in everything we do, we rarely need to wonder about how our languages could be improved. Even if we do, the thought of making a whole new language to fix those flaws seems ridiculous.

Language creators, from scientists to philanthropists to eccentric sociologists, take centre stage in “In The Land of Invented Languages”. The book makes sense of invented languages — languages developed by just one person — by explaining why some of those languages were developed and what the inventors were trying to achieve by creating new languages.