Review dump time
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The Junior Officers' Reading Club by Patrick Hennessey
It's always awkward when an author isn't hugely likeable. This one isn't helped by his unabashed social privilege, frequently testing your empathy as he demobs with the champagne set or identifies with the Bullingdon club (a group known for smashing up restaurants simply because they can afford to). This makes it harder to care as he struggles through his gruelling officers' training. Thankfully it's still interesting to see how the minds of the UK's fighting elite are formed, and this interest doubles once they're put to the test in Afghanistan.
He foreshadows the 'adventures' to come with a pulsing yet picturesque introduction: a surreal incident on top of a dam, where locals drop their idyllic tea session in the shade of a tree to pull out RPGs, and come to his aid, all viewed through an effective perceptual blur. This pattern of explosive drama relived after thoughtful introspection mirrors the 'quick, quick, wait' nature of military life, and underscores much of the later writing. You may not approve of the way he embraces this deadly boys-with-toys lifestyle, but you can admire his honesty about it and his skill at recounting its highs and lows. Getting an officer's eye view means we're not completely down in the trenches, but he seems to have got himself dusty enough out there, slumming it on IED-plagued convoys and getting caught out in confined firefights. The fact that he's had trouble shaking the dust off again when home completes the aspects that make this a journey worth embedding yourself in.
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The Spark of Life by Frances Ashcroft
A strangely frustrating book, but rewarding none-the-less. The author is at her most adroit when discussing her field of expertise: the ion channels which allow our cells to maintain their positive and negative charges (and the way they impact on everything from nefarious poisons to miraculous cures). She manages to make this academic topic pretty engaging, and to expand it into a broader spread of histories & oddities. What's unfortunate is that, even with some unique research extending the insights, the rest of the book is something of a hotchpotch. She's just too glancing about a lot of the tangental material - so if you're familiar with it, you won't learn much that's new, and if you're not, you won't get much more than a taster of its potential interest. It makes the book feel uneven, and increasingly lightweight, despite the unifying theme and knowledgeable guide.
It's a shame, because I should love any book that reveals the following: Mediaeval people were accidentally diagnosing cystic fibrosis by kissing children's heads. (If the kids tasted salty, due to sodium imbalance, & hence electrically unbalanced cells etc, they were deemed to be due a short life). And in many ways I did find it both loveable and stimulating, it's just that the big sparks seemed to come too infrequently. (Full disclosure: I read an uncorrected proof copy, but can't imagine they've managed to make it a corruscating whole since).
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The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg
A sort of self-help take on
Blink, this also sees a journo collating many schools of investigation into a central thesis, without perhaps fully understanding all of the facets involved, and taking some leaps of faith as he goes. The eager extrapolation is at its worst when he extends his thesis from individual compulsions to institutional foible, despite the latter being interesting in their own right. None of this stops his ultimate conclusions from feeling like useful advice though, and he also has that classic magpie preference for exotic examples (married with a neat line in introducing exciting sports narratives) making the book very readable throughout. If you're interested in: neurology with concrete applications, the history of advertising, the methods of sporting & corporate underdogs & champions, the algorithms of radio success, and the elements which help drive social movements (from the ending of segregation to the rise of the super-church) this is well worth a dip. If it helps you figure out the cues, cravings, routines & rewards that drive your habitual actions, be they good or bad, then so much the better.
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(I've also read a large chunk of Samuel Pepys' most informative diaries, but was eventually defeated by the font size in my cheapo copy. Will definitely be going back to it tho
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Tarkovsky was also a very, very passionate artist who worked with religious vigor on his films. The force and purity of his movies are derived from his own intense religious passion.
