Sometimes People Die - Simon Stephenson

64%

22.07.25

This was almost a murder-mystery-fantasy, such was the world-building of the life of a '90s junior doctor fighting addiction. Both very funny and profound (often at the same time), the detached tone worked well with the descriptions of an underfunded hospital and the unnamed narrator's weakening grasp on a rather dystopian reality. The end was a bit silly, though.

 

One - Sarah Crossan

65%
02.06.19
Blank verse was an interesting prose choice, and its natural rises and falls and gaps and intensities generally works but isn't quite engrossing enough to be lost in the story. That said, I did need a lot of tissues for the end.

The Case Against Sugar - Gary Taubes

62%
02.05.19

Well, sure, Taubes is biased and selective in his facts, but that's how to make a case against something that is inexplicably not generally accepted as being as dangerous as it is. And the case is pretty conclusive - I didn't want to consume sugar for at least a week after reading this. (Full disclosure: I don't eat much sugar these days anyway, so he's preaching to the converted.) But, still, it's an important and persuasive book.

Fat for Fuel - Dr Joseph Mercola

59%
17.11.17

I'm starting to know quite a bit about this subject - enough to be critical of this book, anyway. While Mercola offers much good advice, he also made me laugh out loud with his suggestions of moving to Florida for the Vitamin D, adding ground eggshells and earth to smoothies, and walking on dewy grass for direct medical benefits. Oh, and constant promotion of a particular website he sponsors. It's that kind of thing that undermines the good science.

Medicus - Ruth Downie

54%
28.10.16

What it lacked in immersive historical veracity, it made up for in joie de vivre. It's no Cadfael but it was a fun mystery in an unusual setting. And sometimes that's just fine.

Human Traces - Sebastian Faulks

Didn't finish
10.09.15

This started out promisingly, with vivid descriptions and a feisty-yet-historically convincing heroine, but it soon became flabby and dull. I read about half of it but, when I realised I couldn't go to the reading group meeting that would discuss it, I didn't see the point in battling on.