Author: Andres Kabel

Welcome to a wacky concept that should not work: on the island of Syracuse in Sicily, thousands of captured Athenians are being starved to death in quarries, until a mismatched pair of poor workers conjures up a production of works by Euripides in return for food and water. Glorious Exploits is told by Lampo, the feckless one of the pair; what’s more, his voice is modern barroom Irish, irreverent and lyrical. Boozy, irreverent, callous, the pair’s actions rachet, at the end of a wonderfully executed plot, into transcendent striving that hinges on the power of art and language to change the world. Reminiscent of Irish author Ferdia Lennon’s more established compatriot, Kevin Barry, Glorious Exploits should founder on the shoals of its savage wit but instead it transports and moves. Heartily recommended, another Irish novelist in fancy, superb flight.

If, like me, you are curious about sleep and keen to sleep better, no doubt you have also read books by Matthew Walker (Why We Sleep), Christie Aschwander (Good to Go), and Guy Leschziner (The Secret World of Sleep). Perhaps you have absorbed and tried to apply the current principles of sleep hygiene: food-free for 3 hours prior to sleep; an hour in bed reading without blue light screens; darkness; coolness; lack of stress. Well, sleep clinician Stephanie Romiszewski is here to tell you, in her new book Think Less, Sleep More: From Panic & Perfectionism to Stress-free Sleep, that sleep hygiene is helpful but of minor import compared to a more fundamental idea: a fixed morning routine of rising, light, exercise, and eating that harnesses the most critical biological systems of tiredness and your biological clock. What’s more, she believes our current preoccupations with sleep hacks and using wearables to track sleep are, in many cases, causing sleep anxiety that in itself is driving insomnia. It’s a powerful, simple message and the author’s book is beautifully laid out and paced and written. Simple principles conveyed with clarity, an exploration of our most frequent questions, and encouragement to relax and let the body do what it does so well … Think Less, Sleep More is a brilliant book that trumps all those that came before it.

Peter Matthiessen has long been an idol to me, ever since reading the passionate, brilliantly written nature voyage epic, The Snow Leopard (1978); his feverish book on American Indian rights, In the Spirit of Crazy Horse (1983); and, closest to my heart, his majestic paean to the fifteen Crane bird species, The Birds of Heaven: Travels With Cranes (2001). Now Australian author Lance Richardson has penned the first comprehensive biography of the man (Matthiessen died in 2014), making wonderful use of extensive personal archives. True Nature: The Lives of Peter Matthiessen covers the man and the writer in all his glory and grubbiness. Throughout his illustrious career, which kicked off with the joint founding of The Paris Review in 1953, Matthiessen longed to be known most for his novels but nonfiction writing, mostly hard-won, remote-travel-based nature articles and books, swamped the latter decades of his life, until his amazing Killing Mister Watson trilogy of novels (later condensed into one prizewinning volume) from the 1990s. Notwithstanding his heartfelt writing in support of nature suffering under humanity’s predations, his championship of indigenous peoples, and his embrace of Zen Buddhism, Matthiessen’s personal life was fissured by childhood woes and serial love affairs; Richardson unfolds this aspect of his life judiciously and fully. Richardson is an elegant and precise stylist and the 700+ pages of this book slide by easily. Artfully plotted across the many arcs of Matthiessen’s life, the biography never fails to excite and interest. Biographies rarely shine brighter than True Nature. Read it to understand a dazzling novelist and a pioneer of nature and environmental writing.

British author Carys Davies’ third novel Clear is slim but packed with language and an unwinding plot that starts slowly but then rockets to an unexpected climax. In the mid 1800s, a Scottish minister, strapped for cash, travels to a remote island to expel its sole inhabitant, a silent, gentle, hulk of a man. When the minister falls and is cared for by the primitive tenant with his strange language, a bond develops between the two, even as the minister’s wife embarks on a fraught journey to rescue him. The author is a stylist of rare beauty, able to conjure up the harsh, storm-lashed rock on which the action takes place. The moral dimensions of this seemingly simple but complex tale are clear but the human reactions of the characters are rich in suspense and weighted with ethical import. Not much longer than a novella, Clear is an easily read jewel that raises as many fundamental questions as it attempts answers.

Frank Kennedy’s superb space opera omnibus of series, set in a fascinating Collectorate of planets, concluded last year. Luckily he has launched a new, markedly different series. Set on a semi-blighted but fantastical planet called Teton, The Rogues of Teton will be a five-book venture, and Blend kicks it off. When a blue-skinned “blend,” an enhanced human created to save the planet, returns to mega-city Vandress (the author’s depiction of this wondrous, scabrous city reminds me of the best of William Gibson) after a lunar prison shift, he struggles to reunite with his son and wife. All three are thrust into the foment of rebellion, a rebellion that somehow is underpinned by forces from beyond Teton. The author is a kinetic stylist and fierce plotter, and the characters (including an evil high official) spring to life from the book’s pages. Blend is a hoot from start to finish.

If you read a decent number of food/diet/health books, as I do, you become jaded with their earnest stories that never seem to surprise. I knew a book by Kevin Hall would be different, because Hall, a highly analytical physicist who was drawn to his field of nutrition science, is at the forefront of high-quality, important diet research. Moreover, he has a reputation for absolute integrity, a quality that in other food/diet/health authors can be smudged by conflicts of interest and careerism. My worry, upon turning over the first page of Food Intelligence: The Science of How Food Both Nourishes and Harms Us was whether his writing and narrative storytelling would match his scientific fame, but I need not have fussed, for his co-author, health journalist Julia Belluz, is a splendid, cogent, readable writer, as well as an intelligent, dogged researcher in her own right. In this book, the authors range over the entire gamut of modern diet wars, beginning by tackling calories, metabolism, protein, and fat, before turning to the nervous system’s role in eating and the impact of our food environment (which Hall has proven, beyond doubt, messes with human brains and directly leads to the obesity epidemic blighting modern society through heart disease and diabetes), before tackling some possible solutions and criticizing elements of the “individual responsibility” paradigm pushed by the food industry. The final chapters tackle the overall food system and its horrors. Although the authors strike an optimistic note in the climax to Food Intelligence, the overall message is hugely troubling. Readable, full of food/diet insights I can guarantee you do not know, and inflamed by a passion for proper science, Food Intelligence is THE health book you must read this year.