This account of the development of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine combines science and recent history, showing how the team came together to put out a Covid vaccine in such a short time. There's a lot of science in this and it's interesting to see just how casually they describe things that would have seemed miraculous just a couple of decades ago, like the way they manipulate DNA. The book could have been two or three times longer explaining a lot of the intricacies of this, but as it is, it's a fascinating tight read, the pace of it echoing the pace of the creation process.
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I read a lot, and try to keep things varied and am always interested in broadening my outlook through something new. Currently writing a memoir about walking, mental health, and grief. Can be found elsewhere on the fediverse talking about things other than books at nickbwalking@zirk.us and nickbwalking@me.dm
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Nick Barlow's books
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28% complete! Nick Barlow has read 14 of 50 books.
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Nick Barlow finished reading Violencia : A New History of Spain by Jason Webster
Nick Barlow finished reading Vaxxers by Sarah Gilbert
Nick Barlow reviewed Vaxxers by Sarah Gilbert
Heavy on science, but worth reading
4 stars
Interesting overview and introduction to Spanish history
4 stars
This is an interesting and engaging introduction to Spanish history, beginning in prehistory and continuing right up until the 2010s and the abdication of Juan Carlos. It's about themes and interesting moments and incidents rather than trying to tell the whole sweep of everything that went on in Iberia across those thousands of years but helps to give an idea of what Spain is, where it came from and where it might be going. Some of his arguments for Spanish exceptionalism are a bit weak, though. While the idea of different regimes defining what makes Spain and Spanishness in contrast to an "anti-Spain" is interesting, nationalism defining itself by what it is not is a feature in many countries (see Linda Colley's Britons, for instance). An ongoing metaphor about the three faces of Santiago doesn't work because two of those faces are too similar to work as separate analytic prisms. …
This is an interesting and engaging introduction to Spanish history, beginning in prehistory and continuing right up until the 2010s and the abdication of Juan Carlos. It's about themes and interesting moments and incidents rather than trying to tell the whole sweep of everything that went on in Iberia across those thousands of years but helps to give an idea of what Spain is, where it came from and where it might be going. Some of his arguments for Spanish exceptionalism are a bit weak, though. While the idea of different regimes defining what makes Spain and Spanishness in contrast to an "anti-Spain" is interesting, nationalism defining itself by what it is not is a feature in many countries (see Linda Colley's Britons, for instance). An ongoing metaphor about the three faces of Santiago doesn't work because two of those faces are too similar to work as separate analytic prisms. However, overall, this is interesting, and a good starting point on Spanish history before jumping into more detail on other areas.
Nick Barlow reviewed The Patriarchs by Angela Saini
Good, but disjointed
4 stars
There's lots of really good information in this book, and Saini makes a very good case for how we've missed a lot of the stories about how society came to be in an attempt to fix a gendered narrative on it. The problem I have with it is, like her earlier Inferior, it reads more as a series of pieces sharing similar topics rather than a single boo with a cohesive argument and narrative. Feels like there's a lot more that could be said about how the different parts of this link together but then it ends with a very brief conclusion.
Nick Barlow reviewed Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
Great ideas, but dated in parts
4 stars
I love Vonnegut's style in both the way he evokes huge images and events with sparse words and in his ideas, like this most banal and final of apocalypses with the world ending in ice-nine. The problem is that as we get further from the period it was written in, the assumptions it was written under, especially about the role of women and non-white (and non-American) people in the narrative and society, jar even more with the inventiveness going on around them.
Powerful shifts in perspectives
5 stars
Well, it has The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas in it, so that's worth the admission price alone, but the rest of this collection is very good too. Caught my attention much more than the first volume (other people's take may vary, of course) with her use of science fiction tropes and ideas to tell stories from alternative perspectives, raising questions for the reader about our world and our priorities.
Nick Barlow reviewed Lion and the Dragon by Lawrence James
Unfocused and shallow
2 stars
This is more a vague summary of bits of British and Chinese history over the last couple of hundred years than a look at the relations between the two countries. There's no focus to it, no thesis being examined, no argument being made, just "this happened, then this happened" for a couple of hundred pages. I spotted one glaring error - Chris Patten wasn't appointed Governor of Hong Kong by Thatcher in 1992, because she'd been out of power since 1990 - and some of the statistics he quotes about China's growth are suspect and appear to contradict each other. There are interesting books to be written - or have already been written - about a lot of the subjects here, this fails to be interesting about any of them.
Nick Barlow finished reading Official DVSA Guide to Riding by Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency
Including for completeness!
Nick Barlow reviewed The Stars Are Legion by Kameron Hurley
Somewhere on the outer rim of the universe, a mass of decaying world-ships known as …
Didn't click for me
3 stars
Didn't really click with the characters, too much people saying how terrible they were and doing terrible things because they were working for something they couldn't explain. Then the explanation is very obvious, and has the logic of a game rather than a story.
Nick Barlow finished reading The Stars Are Legion by Kameron Hurley
The Stars Are Legion by Kameron Hurley
Somewhere on the outer rim of the universe, a mass of decaying world-ships known as the Legion is traveling in …
Nick Barlow reviewed The sense of an ending by Kermode, Frank
Literary criticism
4 stars
Was interesting to read, and got some useful ideas from it about apocalyptic endings and visions, but it is quite a densely argued piece of literary critique that makes a lot of references to many different texts I wasn't familiar with.
