COVID-19 Reading Log, pt. 8
41. The Paranoid’s Pocket Guide to Mental Disorders You Can Just Feel Coming On by Dennis DiClaudio. I had fond memories of the author’s previous book, The Hypochondriac’s Pocket Guide to Horrible Diseases You Probably Already Have. I am now questioning said memories. This book is supposedly humorous, but the “funny” parts are mostly just mean spirited and ableist. In addition, the author comes across as racist, misogynistic and transphobic throughout. Skip this one.
42. The Ape in the Tree by Alan Walker and Pat Shipman. The titular ape is Proconsul, which sits near the base of the modern anthropoid ape radiation. The book is a decades-spanning account of Proconsul’s discovery and interpretation, with many chapters being the lead author’s accounts of field work and lab analysis (the second author is his wife, and she appears as a contributor to some of the research as well). This book is a great account of the actual process of doing science, in all of its fine detail and occasional tedium and danger. Recommended for people who want to know what field work and lab work are like (say, any undergrads who are contemplating whether or not they want to get their masters and PhDs).
43. The Sick Rose by Richard Barnett. A collection of artwork from pre-photography texts, there isn’t a lot of actual writing in this book. A lengthy prologue talks about medicine in the Early Modern era, and each chapter is introduced with a page or two about the disease or diseases discussed. The book does a good job of talking about the inherent biases and inequalities in medicine of the time, as well as colonialism, classism and other evils that influenced the era. My only complaint is with the labeling of the illustrations, which in the text-heavy sections is done by footnotes instead of captions on the images. The flipping back and forth was somewhat tedious.
44. Harryhausen: The Lost Films by John Walsh. Another art-heavy book, this covers concept art and armatures from various stop-motion films of Ray Harryhausen, focusing on unfinished projects and deleted scenes. The book is arranged chronologically, and also refers to the movies Harryhausen was approached to do, but rejected for various reasons. The book is coffee-table sized and appropriately so, with some (usually black and white or sepia) illustrations taking up an entire page. The book makes multiple references to Harryhausen’s style being influenced by the engravings of Gustav Doré, which I had never thought of before and can now not believe I missed. Perhaps most delightful are little tidbits about the sausage making of the movie industry in general that are scattered in—for example, the skeleton fight in Jason and the Argonauts was filmed in broad daylight because the censors said that the original plan (to have them emerging from graves in the underworld) was so lurid as to offer an X rating in England.
45. A Century of Supernatural Stories by Richard Sugg. I love that little sleep paralysis imp on the cover, BTW. Sugg is our first repeat author in the reading logs, having first appeared with Faeries: A Dangerous History in Part 2. There, he was coy about his belief in the fey, but he’s in full true believer mode with this book. The book proper is a collection of 100 newspaper accounts from 19th Century England about supernatural matters, and Sugg uses his commentary to argue for the literal existence of poltergeists, ghosts, psychic powers and the evil eye. He also throws in a bit of Biblical literalism for good measure. Although he seems to be aware that newspaper authors and editors can lie, he stubbornly refuses to believe they actually do. The text presents obvious hoaxes, literary fiction and anti-Catholic propaganda with a straight face as if these were true accounts. I’m sure if this were a book written about American newspaper weirdness, he would find a way to argue for the literal existence of hundred foot fire-breathing snakes, airships piloted by eccentric inventors, and escaped circus gorillas in all 50 states.
