Books | The Guardian's Journal -- Day [entries|friends|calendar] Books | The Guardian [ website | Books | The Guardian ] [ userinfo | scribbld userinfo ] [ calendar | scribbld calendar ]

Dorothy Day review: biography of a radical rebel is the masterpiece she deserves [19 Apr 2020|06:00am] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/apr/19/dorothy-day-review-biography-john-loughery-blythe-randolph John Loughery and Blythe Randolph achieve wonders in their life story of one of Francis I’s four morally exemplary Americans An iconoclast with a long, peripatetic life is an ideal subject for a biography. Add in motley enthusiasms and fierce convictions, plus connections to many of the most audacious artists and activists of her time, and you have the makings of a masterpiece. Related: Every Drop of Blood review: how Lincoln's Second Inaugural bound America's wounds Continue reading... post comment

The Better Half: On the Genetic Superiority of Women review – bold study of chromosomal advantage [19 Apr 2020|06:00am] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/apr/19/the-better-half-on-the-genetic-superiority-of-women-review-bold-study-of-chromosomal-advantage Sharon Moalem offers an intriguing theory on how two X chromosomes give women the edge in everything from colour vision to coronavirus It was noticeable from the initial outbreak in Wuhan that Covid-19 was killing more men than women. By February, data from China, which involved 44,672 confirmed cases of the respiratory disease, revealed the death rate for men was 2.8%, compared to 1.7% among women. For past respiratory epidemics, including Sars, Mers and the 1918 Spanish flu, men were also at significantly greater risk. But why? Much of the reason for the Covid-19 disparity was put down to men’s riskier behaviours – around half of Chinese men are smokers, compared with just 3% of women, for instance. But as the coronavirus has spread globally, it’s proved deadlier to men everywhere that data exists (the UK and US notably – and questionably – do not collect sex-disaggregated data). Italy, for instance, has had a case fatality rate of 10.6% for men, versus 6% for women, whereas the sex disparity for smoking (now a known risk factor) is smaller there than China – 28% of men and 19% of women smoke. In Spain, twice as many men as women have died. Smoking, then, is unlikely to account for all of the sex disparity in Covid-19 deaths. Continue reading... post comment

Zonal by Don Paterson review – rich, masked musings on midlife crisis [19 Apr 2020|07:45am] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/apr/19/zonal-by-don-paterson-review-rich-masked-musings-on-midlife-crisis The prize-winning poet’s new collection, inspired by The Twilight Zone, is a witty, wily hall of mirrors There is a scene in the black-and-white sci-fi TV programme The Twilight Zone, created by Rod Serling, where a character is unmasked only to reveal a second mask beneath the first. Don Paterson’s new collection, partly inspired by the 1959-1960 first series of the show, is rather like this. In its opening pages, he issues a teasing warning. He writes that readers should not be deceived by what might be assumed to be his confessional tone: “It isn’t, except on those occasions when it is.” The first thing one has to feel comfortable with is the knowledge that Paterson will not wear his heart on his sleeve, that he is more likely to borrow a sleeve than to let us know, directly, what it is he is feeling and that any emotional authenticity – or the fleeting confessions to which he alludes – are to be dispensed via a fantastical autobiographical hybrid, a mix of disclosure and disguise. The idea of the collection – which sounds barmy at first – is of the midlife crisis as a permanent state of mind, akin to being marooned on some godawful planet where your other half is likely, at least some of the time, to be an alien. This, I thought, after taking a brief look at the poems, has to be self-indulgent baloney. But as soon as I settled down to read these poems properly, I felt different: I love the collection’s minutely wrought originality and the way that even dismaying subjects – loneliness, insecurity, botched relationships – have hilarious side-effects. The book made me laugh aloud. It is bracing to see Paterson – a dab hand at form (40 Sonnets won the 2015 Costa poetry prize) – returning with eloquence and vim to rhythms of speech. And it is worth adding that, although The Twilight Zone is brilliant, you need not be acquainted with it to enjoy the poems: they speak for themselves. Continue reading... post comment

Sitopia by Carolyn Steel review – big questions about food [19 Apr 2020|08:30am] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/apr/19/sitopia-by-carolyn-steel-review-big-questions-about-food To live better we need to see food as more than a commodity, argues the author of Hungry City in this ambitious ‘all-you-can-eat buffet of thoughts’ In the opening passages of Sitopia, Carolyn Steel talks about the “Google Burger”, a €250,000 (£218,000) prototype piece of cultured meat, grown in a laboratory from bovine stem cells, with backing from, among others, Google’s co-founder Sergey Brin. This technology may, as George Monbiot has recently argued, help to save the world, but Steel is sceptical. She mistrusts the urge to find a technical fix, especially one that would put tech giants in charge of the world’s diets. Wouldn’t it be easier, she asks, if we just ate more vegetables? To which the answer is both yes and no. Eating more vegetables is not difficult. The hard part is silencing all those cravings – biological, cultural, psychological – that urge people to eat a lot of meat. The still harder part, once some virtuous souls have disciplined themselves away from animal products, is to persuade billions of other people, for many of whom plentiful meat is a newlydiscovered and hard-earned luxury, to do the same. Continue reading... post comment

Naoise Dolan: 'I'm not good at presenting myself as likeable' [19 Apr 2020|12:00pm] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/apr/19/naoise-dolan-im-not-good-at-presenting-myself-as-likable The young Irish writer, who has won acclaim for her debut novel, on writing in a time of crisis and finding comfort in small routines It’s the author’s equivalent of the no-trousers-in-class nightmare: your first book is finally published but almost every bookshop across the world is closed. With the outbreak of coronavirus, this once unimaginable vision is now reality for hundreds of writers who have been cruelly caught out – a book newly published and no shelf to put it on. Naoise Dolan is one such author. We were supposed to meet in a London cafe in mid-March, but events intervened and our cosy meeting was hurriedly changed – to a socially distant interview across two park benches, then a very socially distant chat on Skype. The 28-year-old Dubliner, who is here to promote her novel, Exciting Times, groans: “I just did a bunch of interviews in Ireland and now I know every single one is going to start: ‘I met Naoise Dolan in simpler times, in a simple cafe, as she sipped her simple flat white and simply shook hands.’” Continue reading... post comment

navigation [ viewing | April 19th, 2020 ] [ go | previous day|next day ]