Just Finished Reading: Don’t Die Young – An Anatomist’s Guide to Your Organs and Your Health by Dr Alice Roberts (FP: 2007)

Although I’ll deny it’s a New Year’s Resolution I decided around Christmas time that I should really read more useful, practical or at least contemporary non-fiction rather than being continually focused on the past and often the deep past. My recent book on combat robotics was an attempt to bring things up to date. This book was an attempt at something at least potentially useful. Unfortunately I found it somewhat less so than I had hoped. My copy was a medium format book with lots of medical style photographs and graphic cut-away’s showing all of the major organs. Indeed this book is so illustrated that it seemed to leave precious little space for the words! Of the 260 pages I’d have to say that at least 100 of them were photographs. The text itself was, in my opinion at least, aimed at someone who either took school level biology many years ago if at all. It was really too basic to be of any great use. Likewise the advice on how to keep our inside bits healthy bordered on the banal: Eat plenty of fruit and veggies, drink plenty of fluids, take regular exercise, don’t drink alcohol to excess and don’t smoke at all. Nothing new there then……. [yawn] I think what irritated me most about this book – especially as it was by someone I like and respect (and find very attractive if you must know) – is that its entire contents could have been distilled to probably 5-10 pages at best. It felt very, very padded with the same advice trotted out time and again. OK, it’s generally good advice but there was no real need to repeat it 10-12 times in such a short book. Hopefully my next foray into health issues will turn out to be a bit more enlightening!