Reviews and Comments

Doesn't feel like a story at all, more a bunch of thoughts about genetic engineering bundled together. It's like the writer had too many ideas and couldn't choose one to stick to. My main problem with this is that there are just way too many characters, some are important to remember for later and some exist in one chapter and are never heard from again. All characters are unlikeable except for Gerald the parrot. On the positive side, I found this an easy read despite the structure. All his ideas both interesting and horrifyingly possible. Many chapters start with a real-world news article about genetic engineering and at the end of the book is a well thought out list of the real worries about the science and what laws could be changed for the better. In the beginning of the book a man is constantly being given blood tests, he worries something is wrong with it but in reality his blood was found to have a valuable attribute and the doctors are harvesting without his permission for profit. This is totally legal as his blood becomes their property after extraction. His part of the story is how he deals with this betrayal from medical professionals and how the legalities effect him and his family. After the story the writer explains how it's true that a business can own your blood (or other body bits) after taking them US under current laws and even try to patent parts of it/you.

When I picked up this book I was a person who was deeply frustrated by my running exercises. Focusing on my finishing time, which I'd decided was my measurement of fitness, so that every time I had to slow down to catch my breath felt like failure. Worst of all I found that I wasn't improving at all since day one. I was rubbish, useless, incurably unfit. I picked this book up from my library it changed everything. Now I'm a person who runs because it feels good to move my body, to gently push it to great lengths, to see the slight seasonal changes in nature. Sometimes I pause to smell the hawthorn flowers or watch all the butterflys on the big buddleia bush because the time doesn't matter anymore, my enjoyment has priority. My fitness tracker still times me incidently, and reports that I'm faster than ever before. I'm trying not to care about that but I'm secretly thrilled! Amazingly, the author predicted this. I liked this book as it uses proven science and lists resources and avoids being too fluffy and wishy-washy like some mindfulness/self-help books can be. Some of the chapters are targetted towards the marathon-type runners but there still some wisdom in them for weekend-type runners