The Body - By Bill Bryson
20/09/2020Non-fiction book of the body
Billed as a "A guide for occupants" it's an entertaining romp through the science related to all things human.
Similarly to A Brief History of Nearly Everything, I didn't find it as constantly laugh out loud funny as Notes From a Small Island, but I did laugh out loud and did also feel that I was in the hand's of an expert researcher summarising what is known so far about what goes in to making us tick.
If you've ever had an entertaining teacher or lecturer who knows their onions, then that is about the note of this book. Bang up to date with a brief afterword on Covid-19 - earlier in the book Bryson had highlighted that the only reason we haven't had a flu epidemic on the scale of 1918 is luck, not some miracle advance in medicine - I felt confident in the state of knowledge summarised.
Definitely worth reading for a comfortably unsettling look under the bonnet of your body.
It is miraculous that we exist at all and how every cell in the our bodies tends to just work in harmony to allow us to get up in the morning and moan about the day ahead (maybe just me!).
This book really captures the sublime and the ridiculousness of the human body and our knowledge about it.
Another win for Haringey Libraries ebook collection.