Welcome back to Book Break. Today I want to know what is your favourite weird and wonderful
nonfiction book that opened your eyes to a whole new area? Because I think that's what's
so great about nonfiction is sometimes it's perfect for researching an area you were already
interested in, but other times, you might come across a nonfiction book about a topic
you'd never even thought about before. And actually, that just happened to me. So I'm
here today filming at Daunt Books in Marylebone, one of London's most beautiful bookshops,
and they've got a fantastic nonfiction selection, and I was just having a quick look at their
shelves before starting filming, and even though I'd already picked the books before
that I wanted to tell you about, I ended up grabbing a few more off their shelves that
just looked too intriguing.
So I really want to know your favourite weird and wonderful niche nonfiction books that
showed you a whole new topic you'd never thought about before, and in the meantime, I'm going
to give you a few of our recommendations.
So that feeling of coming across a whole new topic that you'd never even thought about
before is exactly the feeling I got when I picked up A Place for Everything by Judith
Flanders. So this is the curious history of alphabetical order, which is so cool, because
alphabetical order is something that we use literally every day, but we never even think
about it. But think how lost we would be without it. For example, in a bookshop! So library
bookshelves used to be arranged by heirarchy instead. So you would have the Bible first,
then theology more generally, and pagan authors would be all the way down the bottom. And
even the chapters of this book are in alphabetical order, so you have A for Antiquities, through
G for Government, all the way to Y for Y2K. Really exciting book.
Something else that we're confronted with every day but never really think about is
knowledge itself. How do we know this stuff? And particularly before the Internet, how
did these ideas build and reach us? So in The Map of Knowledge, Violet Moller takes
the ideas of three scientists from antiquity, Galen, Euclid and Ptolemy, and traces their
ideas through thousands of years and literally through the cities that their ideas travelled
through. It's such a cool idea and she's done so much research, and it really just makes
you realise the fact we have so much shared intellectual heritage is incredible. And where
do we keep all that knowledge but in our brains? Something else that we never really think
about until they act out. So the author of this book, Oliver Sacks, was a neurologist.
And this is a collection of stories of some of his patients with various neurological
disorders, including the title of the book, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. So
it's fascinating learning the different ways our minds can play tricks on us, and it's
also a really moving book, thinking about the people throughout the years who've been
dismissed as being mad when actually they have incredible talents for art or maths,
it's just that their brains are working in slightly unexpected ways.
And one more medical one, Quackery, A Brief History of the Worst Ways to Cure Everything,
by Lydia Kang and Nate Pedersen. So this is a look at all of the terrible medicines we
have genuinely tried over the years. So we all know about leeches, but did you know that
doctors used to prescribe morphine for crying babies, and instead of Viagra people used
to take strychnine. As in yes, the thing in rat poison. So this book is a mix of things
that doctors actually prescribed, old wives tales people used to believe in, and some
just straight up scams, it's really funny and just completely unbelievable at some points
the things people used to fall for. Hindsight is everything.
So the next few books are going to take us travelling the world a bit, which is perfect
because one of the really cool unique things about Daunt Books is that this whole section
is arranged by country. So for the next book, I'm going to go up there through Britain.
So first we're going up to the English Scottish border, where there was once an independent
territory called The Debatable Land. And this was once the bloodiest region in Great Britain.
It was constantly being fought over by Henry VIII, Elizabeth I, and James V. In the end,
after the union of Crowns, it was brought under British control, and the entire population
were either slaughtered or deported, which was charming. So this is a book by Graham
Robb, which explores the history of this now rather forgotten piece of land, all the way
back from a time when England and Scotland didn't even exist, up to the present day.
Next we're going even further afield to Japan. So I didn't know this before because my Japanese
history is severely lacking, but starting in 1603 for around 300 years, Japan essentially
closed itself to outsiders, developing its totally unique culture in isolation. And during
that time, the inhabitants of the city Edo, which is now Tokyo, relied on the public city
bells to keep time. And those bells were linked to nature, so in winter the hours were shorter,
and in summer the hours were longer. So, in this book, The Bells of Old Tokyo, Anna Sherman
went on a journey through Tokyo to try and find evidence of those city bells. And along
the way, she spoke to loads of people to develop an understanding about the significance in
Japanese culture of time. And the significance in Japanese language. So we only have the
one word for time, but in Japanese there are a myriad of words, all with slightly different
meanings. So it's a really interesting book, partly for learning more about Japanese culture,
and also partly for questioning our own rigid understanding of time.
And next a book that takes us to cities all over the world, but I've come here to the
USA section because the author is American. So A Burglar's Guide to the City by Geoff
Manaugh is a really fun book. This is an architecture book but that looks at a building through
the eyes of someone planning to rob it. So Geoff Manaugh has spoken to FBI agents, reformed
bank robbers, the LAPD, to form a really full picture of the city through the eyes of a
burglar. So he looks at gaps in a museum's surveillance system, or goes back through
history to look at home invasions in ancient Rome. If you're anything like me, and have
watched Ocean's Eight a million times, and are planning one day to pull off a heist,
this is your homework.
And then back to where I started for the last couple of books that I just grabbed from the
shelves here. So the first one is The Secret Lives of Colour by Kassia St Clair. So in
this one St Clair has picked 75 different shades and hues, and it's really fun because
the pages are actually coloured according to what she's talked about, and told their
histories. So whether it's hair colour, or colours used in art, or colours used in language
like scarlet women or feeling blue. I actually had a whole debate in a pub recently with
some friends about which 'orange' came first: the fruit or the colour. I guessed it was
the fruit, so if this book proves me right I will like it even more than I already do.
And finally, as a massive fan of all things Christmas and snow, I had to pick up The Secret
Life of Snow by Giles Whittell, which asks questions like 'Where is the snowiest place
on earth?' because I will definitely go there, and 'When will the last snowflake fall?' which
is a question I don't even want to think about.
But right before you click off, I wanted to tell you about one more book coming up soon
that will be right up your alley if you like this kind of thing. And that is The Gospel
of the Eels by Patrik Svensson. So this is part memoir about Patrik Svensson's odd relationship
with his father, who devoted his whole life to fishing for eels, and part a science book
about eels, which are actually the world's most enigmatic fish. We know almost nothing
about them, noone has ever seen them mate, nobody knows why they are born and die in
the Sargasso Sea, and in fact, no human has ever seen a mature eel in the Sargasso Sea,
ever. So they are very mysterious fish but everything you can know about them is going
to be in The Gospel of the Eels.
So I really hope some of those sound interesting to you and again, I would love to know your
favourite weird and wonderful nonficton, because it's just so much fun having your eyes opened
by these kinds of books. And of course do come and check out Daunt Books, I will link
to their website in the description box below, and give this video a thumbs up if you liked
it, and hit that subscribe button for new videos every week. See you next time.