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Dubbo Weekender | Friday 26.02.2016 to Sunday 28.02.2016 midwife. As an advocate of home births, she often comes up against those who feel it is dangerous. She becomes disillusioned by the negativity as well as the financial cuts to her maternity unit. With Emily at the end of her tether, a solution from her university friend Rebecca appears to be the answer. Heavily pregnant Rebecca owns a boat catering to holidaymakers off the Scottish coast, and desperately needs a cook for the summer. Despite having no experience of working on a boat, Emily believes a change in scenery will get her life back on track. During her stint on the boat, she forms new friendships, and even becomes attracted to her boss’s brother-in-law. But the summer is about to end, so what will happen when Emily goes home? Another lovely read. 7/10 (Review by Julie Cheng) NON-FICTION When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi is published in hardback by Bodley Head. THE line between life and death has never been explored quite so personally as in Paul Kalanithi’s wrenching memoir. Its opening casts the shadow: Paul and wife Lucy, clutching one another on a hospital bed following his diagnosis with terminal lung cancer at 36. In lucid prose, Paul explains his shift from English degree to neurosurgery – a conscious search for life’s meaning, an irony not lost on him – and subsequent
lessons learned either side of the doctor/patient divide. The life of a junior neurosurgeon is gripping and relentless: Paul struggles with the pastoral more than the procedural, gradually accepting his primary role of helping patients and families to acknowledge their circumstances; to face their own shadows. When his illness catches up with him, Paul explores his condition and altered self-definition with impossible grace – is he a doctor? husband? – probing until the last. The final pages, from Paul and then Lucy, are moving, humble, and impossible to ignore. 7/10 (Review by Michael Anderson)
society debutantes and ordinary servicemen and women brought together in what is now a nondescript suburb of Milton Keynes. The story is not told through Alan Turing-tinted glasses, introducing a wide range of people working at the Park and also those living around it, who were totally kept in the dark, including some who thought it was a special lunatic asylum. This isn’t a book for someone wanting an in-depth history of Enigma code-breaking or Turing’s disgraceful post-war treatment, but is a tactile dipin-and-out primer on a fascinating time and place in British history. 7/10 (Review by David Wilcock)
Bletchley Park: The Secret Archives by Sinclair McKay and Bletchley Park is published in hardback by Aurum Press. JOE Public gets a whistle-stop tour behind the scenes of Britain’s Second World War code-breaking nerve centre in this official history. It is less an examination of the Top Secret work than an introduction to the place and the people who made the magic happen, and how they lived their covert lives. It takes in the transformation of the Park from pre-war society destination to a vital espionage hub wreathed in secrecy (which carried on for decades) as it broke Axis codes and played a vital role in Allied victory. The book is at its best when it describes the human collision of Oxbridge classicists, introverted mathematicians,
CHILDREN’S BOOK OF THE WEEK A Beginner’s Guide To Bear Spotting by Michelle Robinson and David Roberts is published in hardback by Bloomsbury. IT’S very unlikely any of us in this country will ever get up close and personal with a bear in the wild... but that’s exactly what children’s books are all about – to transcend the stuffy, grown-up boundaries of possibility and fire little imaginations. And A Beginner’s Guide To Bear Spotting does that in spades. From the pen and pencil of awardwinning author-illustrator team Michelle Robinson and David Roberts (There’s A Lion In My Cornflakes and Mouse Noses On Toast, respectively), this autumn-hued volume is a visual delight. “Going for a walk in BEAR country?”
The power of the brain D ESCRIBED as ‘a guided tour’, “The Human Brain” has been written by Susan Greenfield. She notes that even for those who have dedicated a lifetime to its study, the brain remains a tantalising mystery. Still, she explores the roles of different regions of the brain and explains how it continuously changes as a result of experience to provide the essence of who we are as individuals. In the “Emotional Life of the Brain” by Richard Davidson, we read about understanding our emotions, why each one of us responds so differently to the same events experienced in life, and what we can do to change and improve our emotional lives. The author helps us identify our own emotional ‘style’ and explains the chemistry that underlies it. He gives us a new model of the emotional brain and deepens our understanding of the mind-body connection – as well as conditions like autism and depression. A key chapter deals with the mind-brain-body connection and how emotional style influences health. Dan Hurley is the author of “Smarter” which deals with the new science of building brain power. Apparently there has been a conception that our intelligence is fixed – you are either born clever or not and there is nothing you can do about it. Hurley maintains that this idea is wrong and sets out how IQ works (and often doesn’t). He discusses the views on pills, super foods and fitness, learning a language or an instrument and do they work? He puts the sci-
ence to the test and provides insight for those who want to better their own thinking and even stave off the decline of advancing years. Why do we laugh? What makes memories fade? Why do fools fall in love? These questions and many others are discussed in Steven Pinker’s “How the Mind Works”. It explores aspects of human life, showing how our minds are not a mystery, but a system of organs of computation designed by computation. One commentator notes that the book is a “witty and popular science that you enjoy reading for the writing as well as for the science”. It will change the way your mind works. Dr Chris O’Brien’s memoir is a remarkable example of a battle with cancer. As a brain surgeon he was well aware of the risks involved when he decided to undergo the surgery that enabled him to live nearly two more years. Now his widow has her story “This Is Gail”
which relates her life with and after Chris O’Brien. One of her achievements is to continue the development of the Chris O’Brien Lifehouse at RPA hospital. Norman Doidge is a highly respected writer and, as an MD, has compiled “stories of personal triumph from the frontiers of brain science” in “The Brain That Changes Itself”. Oliver Sacks has reviewed the book and comments that it is a remarkable and hopeful portrait of the endless adaptability of the human brain. We see a woman born with half a brain that rewired itself to work as a whole, a woman labelled ‘retarded’ who cured her deficits with brain exercises and now cures others, blind people who learn to see, learning disorders cured, IQs raised, ageing brains rejuvenated, stroke patients recovering their faculties, children with cerebral palsy learning to move more gracefully, entrenched depression and anxiety disappearing, and lifelong character traits changed. Doidge tells of people of average intelligence who, with brain exercises, improve their cognition and perception, develop
` We see a woman born with half a brain that rewired itself to work as a whole, a woman labelled ‘retarded’ who cured her deficits with brain exercises and now cures others... a
it asks the reader and our proxy, a genderless, nameless child in a blue balaclava with a huge backpack. “You’d better make sure you know your bears.” So we’re introduced to a black bear and a brown bear (sketched simply on graph paper) – and the child’s little blue soft toy bear. We (and child) set off through the forest – and oh, bump into both types (“This must be your LUCKY DAY.”) How to defend ourselves? Hmm... By turns funny and sweet, it’s a real pleasure to devour – there are bound to be more awards on the horizon for this pair. 9/10 (Review by Kate Whiting)
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From the bookshelves by Dave Pankhurst The Book Connection their muscle strength or learn to play musical instruments – simply by imagining doing so. In his second book, “The Brain’s Way of Healing”, Doidge writes on the discovery that the human brain has its own unique way of healing. For centuries we believed that the price we paid for our brain’s complexity was that, compared with other organs, it was fixed and un-regenerative – unable to recover from damage or illness. This book challenges that belief, showing how the amazing process of neuro-plastic healing, really works. When it is understood, it is often possible to radically improve and even cure, many conditions thought to be irreversible. Doidge introduced us to patients who have alleviated years of chronic pain, children on the autistic spectrum or with ADD or learning disorders, who have used neuro-plastic techniques to complete a normal education and become independent. Sufferers with symptoms of multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, brain injuries and cerebral palsy have seen their conditions radically diminish; and we learn how to lower risks of dementia by 60 per cent. Through these astonishing stories the book explains how mind, brain and body, and
the energies around us work together in health and healing. Daniel Klein collects some wisdom of the great philosophers in his book “Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It”. In his eightieth year, he relates how during his time as a young college student studying philosophy, he filled a notebook with short quotes from the world’s greatest thinkers, ranging from Epicurus to Emerson, and Marcus Aurelius to Peter Singer, hoping to find some guidance on how to live the best life he could. In the book he revisits that wisdom of philosophical gems. One example comes from Machiavelli (1469-1527) who wrote: “A man who strives after goodness in all his acts is sure to come to ruin, since there are so many men who are not good.” Klein responds to this by writing, “When I am feeling bad about not being good. It is always invigorating to take a deep swig of Machiavelli, The Ethics of Bad.” In his famous essay “The Prince”, Machiavelli laid out a detailed strategy for getting ahead in the world. The decisions we make about life are determined by the way we think – the brain and its composition has that influence. Enjoy your browsing, Dave Pankhurst.