Review: The Origins of Sex

Faramerz Dabhoiwala explores the shift in attitudes of all things sex from seventeenth century England and how the changes have ultimately affected the present day. Or in short, 'A History of the First Sexual Revolution'.

I'm positively terrified of non-fiction, injecting it with a dose of social history will have me cowering in a corner. It most likely has to do with my rubbish memory and my short attention span so I'll freely admit I wasn't excited about reading this book. Although I was willing to power through it in hopes of some interesting tales of debauchery.

And tales of debauchery there was. Dabhoiwala covers everything from Church law and state regulation to bawdy houses and good old fashioned Buggery. The book is divided into subtopics where the author is free to explore certain topics in more detail be it the change in attitudes to prostitution and the rise in sexual celebrity.

This book should definitely be aimed at an academic audience and not a curious reader, at times I felt as though I was reading a string of words and sentences without fathoming a single meaning from them, so at best I got a very vague idea of what I was being told. However, when I begin to understand what was being said I did start to find the information interesting.

I noticed throughout the book that there were a fair amount of quotes from Lord Byron and I'm not entirely sure what they were doing there. Lord Byron left the country in 1816 because of the sexual repression, never returning to England until his death in 1824. With this in mind, I feel that the quotes were an unnecessary and inaccurate addition and it made me wonder which other parts of the book have questionable historical merit. With my limited knowledge on the subject (save the free love movement) I have no other choice in believing it to be a true depiction of life at that time.

Overall, it did make for an interesting read although I do wish that a wider perspective was used. After all, you can't have a complete sexual revolution without the world following suit. I would have seen how the rest of the world dealt with the changes.
I'm offering up a word of caution to anyone who wants to pick up this book- it is fairly academic and very verbose. Full attention is required.

RATING: ★★★☆☆

Review: Quiet

Susan Cain looks at the plight, sorry, power of the introverts in a seemingly extrovert world in her debut book Quiet.

I had no choice but to read this, I'm fairly certain if I was given one, I would have put it down and walked far, far away. It wasn't from a lack of interest but rather the sheer grating feeling I got from reading it.

It seemed to focus a lot on corporate America and how introverts can actually be an asset to the work force and even more valuable to their extroverted counterparts. It seemed less about equality and understanding at work and in society and more about how much more advantageous it is when you're an introvert. This is something that didn't sit right with me, perhaps it was too much for my British taste buds but I felt this could have worked a lot better if she had spoken about personal experiences and struggles rather than other people's anecdotes on success over their rivals.  It's almost as if she wants to counteract the 'Extrovert Ideal' with an introverted one.

The book was split into several sections all of which seemed to reiterate information over and over and over again. There was enough repetition to drive me to madness. The kind of madness that introverts suffer at the hands of an open-planned office.
The levels of stereotypes were astounding, I have come to the conclusion that extroverts are rash, love to party and don't really think all that too much and the introverts, well they're the serious thinkers, the creative types; level headed. It acts as much as a validation tool as it does as a self help guide: You're an introvert? Don't worry, you're a thinker, you're smart. J.K Rowling is an introvert, so was Steve Jobs, they were rich and powerful. You're going to be a-okay. 

There are parts that do get quite interesting, you know as much as informal science experiments can get. She seems to bollix it up by making out as if introverts are a league of extraordinary hipsters, with their bespeckled faces, poor fashion choices and curiously described facial hair.


My problem is I hate anything that tells me we live in a one-or-the-other society. Gay or straight, male or female, good or evil and yes, introvert or extrovert.
The current world population stands at approximately 7 billion. With such a staggering number to consider, I'm not sure why or how we allow ourselves to think so simply.

RATING: ★☆☆☆☆

Review: The Fabulous Baker Brothers

I decided to buy this book after watching the Channel Four programme of the same name. (You can catch up here.) A cookery show offering two new faces to British television; a show with so much eye candy it quite frankly left me with a bit of a toothache.  

Each week, armed with flour and fire, brothers Tom and Henry Herbert, (a fifth generation baker and butcher respectively) give us 30 minutes of no-nonsense and theoretically idiot-proof recipes.
Well, that and a huge side helping of increasingly infectious innuendo and somewhat cheesy dialogue I never thought I would grow to love.

Quite simply put, this is one of the most beautifully written cookbooks I’ve read and a quite unconventional one compared to most. I was expecting to flick through a ream of recipes, but what I got was quite different:
Within two minutes of cracking it open, I was in my fluffiest robe and curled up on my sofa-leaving my sister to hold the fort in the kitchen. (Incidentally we were making a toad in the hole from this week's show.) I sat and read the whole thing, cover to cover.

I decided to read other reviews before writing my own, which is unusual for me and was surprised to see how many people didn’t take the book in as a whole. After all, this isn’t just a book of recipes.

The first two chapters, ‘An Introduction to Hobbs House’ and ‘The Baker’-swept me away to an unadulterated world of magic. It’s an inspiring story of a hard work ethic being passed down through the generations and it’s difficult not to hold them in a high respect because of it.
Occasionally, I read excerpts aloud to my sisters and the words just dripped from my mouth like honey. ‘Passionate’ just isn’t a strong enough word to describe these two, at times I felt I could literally taste the love they have for what they do and this is before I got to the recipes!
Of course, it was probably over romanticised in my head-as things usually are. 

Having an insatiable capacity to learn, the recipes themselves sent me in a frenzy of excitement*. They start off basic and increase in difficulty in the latter part of the book, it’s a good method to build up the confidence of novice bakers such as myself.
I have to admit, I’ve not tried out anything from this book yet-but only because I don’t know where to start; I just want to do it all at once. I know I’ll never fully master any of it-but trying to is going to be half of the fun; the other is feeding my wolf pack of a family. 

If there is a food heaven, I think I've just found it. 

Rating: ★★★★★

* A lot of people seemed to be disappointed that the recipes from the show weren’t included, but you can find all those here. Problem solved, really. Shame on you, low rating amazon users!