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Tag: book review

  • Solitude review: New psychology book separates solitude from loneliness

    Solitude review: New psychology book separates solitude from loneliness

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    USA. Nevada. Las Vegas airport. 1982

    Spending time alone may help us regulate our emotions

    Harry Gruyaert/Magnum Photos

    Solitude
    Netta Weinstein, Heather Hansen and Thuy-vy T. Nguyen (Cambridge University Press)

    In recent years, many of us have come to relate differently to the time we spend alone. The globally imposed lockdowns in response to the covid-19 pandemic abruptly curtailed many people’s social networks and sources of support. Some struggled and jumped to restart their social lives as soon as restrictions were lifted. But others found they flourished in solitude and never returned to their pre-pandemic levels of socialising.

    The sudden…

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  • Flavorama review: Arielle Johnson digs into flavour science in a tasty new book

    Flavorama review: Arielle Johnson digs into flavour science in a tasty new book

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    Personnel of the World class Danish restaurant Noma works in the kichten on May 31, 2021 in Copenhagen. - While the six-month Covid-19 closure has been tough for Noma, consistently ranked as one of the world's top restaurants, it's also been an opportunity to reinvent its cuisine. As it reopened this June, the restaurant has reworked its menu -- in part to take the lack of foreign tourists into account. (Photo by Thibault Savary / AFP) (Photo by THIBAULT SAVARY/AFP via Getty Images)

    Copenhagen’s Noma restaurant, where researcher and cook Arielle Johnson has worked

    THIBAULT SAVARY/AFP via Getty Images

    Flavorama
    Arielle Johnson (Harvest)

    WHAT makes roasted meats taste so good? In the 19th century, scientists thought the answer was a mysterious substance known as osmazome, found in the flesh and blood of animals. The influential theorist Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin described osmazome as “the most meritorious ingredient of all good soups”.

    The science of flavour has come a long way. There can be few people better placed to bring us up to speed in 2024 than Arielle Johnson, a…

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  • Sting review: Fast-growing spider becomes the pet from hell in gripping chiller

    Sting review: Fast-growing spider becomes the pet from hell in gripping chiller

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    Sting film still (2024)

    Charlotte (Alyla Browne) sleeps while her pet spider, Sting, escapes

    Well Go USA Entertainment

    Sting
    Kiah Roache-Turner
    In cinemas (US); Releasing 31 May (UK)

    A bratty 12-year-old girl. A feckless stepfather who loses her trust and feels increasingly out of place in his own home. Oh, and a giant spider. Kiah Roache-Turner, a newish director of horror, understands that real originality has almost nothing to do with who and what you put in front of the screen. What matters is how you set those elements dancing.

    Like 2023’s killer-doll hit M3gan, with which it…

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  • The Creative Brain review: Creativity’s origins defy simple explanations

    The Creative Brain review: Creativity’s origins defy simple explanations

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    Male artist, painting a new creative painting in his art studio

    What is it in the brain that allows some of us to create fabulous and complex artworks?

    FluxFactory/Getty Images

    The Creative Brain
    Anna Abraham
    MIT Press

    Creativity is a product of the human mind. But why are some people more creative than others, making it seem elusive or a gift?

    Having a neurodivergent brain has been proposed as one possibility. Take Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s musical creativity. It has been suggested that he had Tourette’s syndrome, a brain condition linked to a range of symptoms including obsessive behaviour, which could have played a role.…

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  • Infinite Life review: Why eggs should be front and centre in the story of evolution

    Infinite Life review: Why eggs should be front and centre in the story of evolution

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    Eastern Hermann's tortoise (Testudo hermanni boettgeri) hatching from egg. Captive, occurs in South East Europe.

    An eastern Hermann’s tortoise prepares to leave its egg for the world

    Edwin Giesbers/naturepl.com

    Infinite Life
    Jules Howard (Elliott & Thompson)

    What do you think of when you picture an egg? Almost certainly something oval – most likely a hen’s egg, at least at first. But eggs as a broader category exist in many forms and have been around almost since the dawn of multicellular life.

    Yet, as science writer Jules Howard lays out at the start of Infinite Life: A revolutionary story of eggs, evolution and life on Earth, they rarely…

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  • Alien Earths review: Hunting for extraterrestrial life in Lisa Kaltenegger’s new book

    Alien Earths review: Hunting for extraterrestrial life in Lisa Kaltenegger’s new book

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    Illustration of life forms on a hypothetical planet with a slightly lower mass than the Earth. It has shallow seas and extreme tides due to its large moon (thin crescent at left). The vegetation is translucent which allows the light to shine through, so it seems to be glowing, due to it being backlit in this image.

    The amazing differences we may find on other planets highlight the basic difficulty in defining life

    RICHARD BIZLEY/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

    Alien Earths
    Lisa Kaltenegger (Allen Lane (UK) St. Martin’s Press (US))

    A planet where a year lasts just one week due to it whizzing around its star 70 times quicker than the fastest fighter jet. A scorched, Earth-sized world, with two suns, where rocks melt into lava, evaporate and fall as rain. Planets with surfaces covered in vast, deep oceans. Others where their sun never sets, unless you travel to the distant reaches of their…

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  • Enlightenment review: Sarah Perry has written a moving story of life, love and astronomy

    Enlightenment review: Sarah Perry has written a moving story of life, love and astronomy

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    Mandatory Credit: Photo by Phil Ball/Shutterstock (356629a) HALE BOPP COMET COMET HALE BOPP

    Comet Hale-Bopp was visible with the naked eye as it passed Earth in 1997

    Phil Ball/Shutterstock

    Enlightenment
    Sarah Perry (Jonathan Cape)

    SARAH PERRY is a writer most famous for The Essex Serpent, recently made into a high-end TV show on Apple TV+. Perry, being neither a sci-fi author nor a science writer, has until now given us no cause to include her on these pages. Her new novel, Enlightenment, however… the clue is in the title.

    In this gorgeously written, witty and very moving novel, our hero Thomas Hart is a man…

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  • Magic Pill review: Johann Hari’s compelling but flawed look at the new weight-loss drugs

    Magic Pill review: Johann Hari’s compelling but flawed look at the new weight-loss drugs

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    2WG9R5W Ozempic injection pen, ideal for visual content related to diet, diabetes management, insulin therapies, & advancements in pharmaceutical solutions.

    Drugs, such as Ozempic, may help turn the rising tide of global obesity

    Eggy Sayoga/Alamy

    Magic Pill
    Johann Hari (Bloomsbury Publishing (UK) Crown Publishing (US))

    AS BOTH a cultural phenomenon and one of the most successful new drugs of the 21st century, it was inevitable we would soon see popular science books written about the weight-loss drug Wegovy (also sold as Ozempic) and other similar medicines. Among the first is Magic Pill: The extraordinary benefits and disturbing risks of the new weight-loss drugs by Johann Hari.

    For two years, Hari has been fortunate…

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  • The Science of Weird Shit review: A sceptic tries to make sense of the paranormal

    The Science of Weird Shit review: A sceptic tries to make sense of the paranormal

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    G2C3CA Tree trunk looks like smiling face in golden autumn garden

    A cognitive bias called pareidolia leads people to see a face in this tree

    Piter Lenk/Alamy

    The Science of Weird Shit
    Chris French (MIT Press)

    DURING a TV show in the early 1990s, a man describes waking up in the night with a weight pressing on his chest. He could neither move nor breathe. He says this is the result of a visiting ghost. Later that week, on another TV show, a different man tells a similar story of waking up in the night with a weight on his chest. He, too,…

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  • The Elephant and the Blind review: Thomas Metzinger hunts for ‘pure consciousness’

    The Elephant and the Blind review: Thomas Metzinger hunts for ‘pure consciousness’

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    C5C65E Long exposure of subway train ride

    The Elephant and the Blind
    Thomas Metzinger (MIT Press)

    Books about consciousness don’t come any more radical (or with a longer title) than The Elephant and the Blind: The experience of pure consciousness – philosophy, science, and 500+ experiential reports. As you might guess, its author, Thomas Metzinger, has carried out a monumental study of the state of “pure”, or “minimal”, consciousness, experienced during meditation and of which we may all have had glimpses.

    In his book, Metzinger sends a powerful triple message: we should rethink how to study consciousness scientifically; celebrate the wonder of these experiences of pure consciousness…

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