Tag: non-fiction (Page 1 of 2)

Outlive by Peter Attia is one of those bestsellers that you cannot avoid. Originally published in March 2023, Attia made the rounds on the podcast circuits, published any number of guest articles, and appeared on multiple talk shows. But I don’t begrudge him the success (2 million copies sold so far). The book is an in-depth manifesto on increasing your health span (healthy years of life). It’s not just about longevity. Attia really wants people to live better, not just longer.

The first half of the book looks at each of the 4 horsemen: heart disease, cancer, neurodegenerative disease (i.e., Alzheimer’s), and Type 2 diabetes and related metabolic dysfunction.

The second half of the book outlines practical steps that anyone can take to improve their own life and ideally avoid things that increase risk of one or more of the four horsemen coming for you.

The key takeaways are:

• Modern medicine is not so modern. It is great at dealing with infection and trauma. But we wait too long to treat chronic disease. Instead of looking at biomarkers on a continuum and addressing issues in advance of blood work or other issues falling outside the guidelines, we wait, until it’s too late to reverse track.
• Blood work “standards” or the range for healthy blood work is a shifting scale. It’s a standard based on what is “normal” today in the population, not what is actually healthy.
• Exercise is under-rated and we should really be thinking like centenarians. To open a jar at 90 or carry your groceries down the block at 80 or to hike up a hill at 70 — you really have to think about how active you are in your 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s. If you can’t do it now, there is no chance you can at 90. Attia has a ton of information on how to approach fitness.
• The feverish cult-like behaviour around food and diet needs to dial down. A lot of the food adjustments people make are based on studies done on fasting studies in mice, for example. Many studies do not translate to human subjects. Attia calls out many of these studies and outlines how his thinking on the role of food has changed.
• Sleep should be taken seriously. We haven’t evolved to not need sleep for a reason. It’s critical. Attia has a number of terrifying anecdotes about life as a resident, doctor, surgeon and why we dismiss this necessary state of being.
• Mental health is the last issue Attia addresses in the book and all I can say is that it is a miserable life you do not have good emotional regulation, good relationships, and a good sense of self.

Overall I enjoyed this book. I listened to it as an audiobook and in some ways Attia’s narration kept me going. There is a bit of a slog through theory and studies and medical information. But the autobiographical elements of the book keep it interesting, and help the reader apply the lessons to their own situation. I have now purchased the print copy so I have it as a reference.

If you liked Good Energy by Casey Means then this is the precursor to that book. They must have been writing at similar times since the books are published only a year apart. Perhaps most telling is that here are two medical professionals who are sounding the alarm about North American’s poor metabolic health. These books are more than a warning sign. They are an essential read.

Months ago I heard Suzanne Heywood interviewed on CBC Radio and her story captured my imagination. At seven, her father pulled her and her brother out of school in England and they set sail following Cook’s third voyage. Suzanne’s mother is seasick off the bat, they get hit by another boat before leaving the country, and their intermittent luck comes and goes from there.

What was promised as a year adventure, maybe 3 years, becomes 10. Suzanne does not have a romantic view of this adventure. Her younger brother John adapts more easily to no school. He learns the ropes (literally) and makes friends as needed. John is less than a year younger, but it’s the 70s and he’s a boy. Suzanne gets stuck in the galley making meals with her mother and running domestic errands (i.e., get mommy a G&T).

Imagine being away for 10 years of schooling. The lack of friends, the wayward lifestyle, the survival instincts needed to deal with storms, rollicking waves, life on a boat, customs and immigration—it’s crippling for Suzanne and also the catalyst for her plan to escape. It not all horrendous. There are some amazing moments, and she does live an incredible life at sea. But I’m amazed that young Suzanne was driven enough to figure out correspondence courses, when her family mostly couldn’t be bothered by whether the kids could do more than read, write and do a bit of math. Suzanne not only graduated, she graduated with top marks and got into Oxford University.

Wavewalker is a stunning autobiography about living someone else’s dream.

Travelogue meets memoir in this fascinating trot around the world in search of 17 of the world’s most precious ingredients that make up the majority of perfumes on the market.

Dominque Roques is a master sourcer of natural ingredients like rose, vanilla, vetiver, Peru balsam, and frankincense. Each chapter is dedicated to a different country and ingredient: Laos for benzoin, Madagascar for vanilla, Venezuela for tonka bean, India for patchouli, and more. At each stop, Roques introduces the reader to the properties of the ingredient used in perfume and to the politics of the country and to the small communities of people responsible for cultivating these luxury materials.

This is a story of small farmers, tree tappers, distillers, and producers who source the best ingredients, often with traditional tools and techniques. And their counterparts in the luxury food and fragrance industry who create amazing scents based on those source materials. The book is travelogue, history lesson, political science, agriculture and climate science rolled into one.

It’s a beautiful book to listen to, and I must order a print copy for reference.

On the Ball is a masterclass in the mental strategies coaches and athletes can use in sports, but it’s also full of personal anecdotes that resonate with parents of athletes and even working adults. There are tips here that work for work as well as they work for sport.

Michael Lodewyks has spent over 25 years coaching volleyball and tennis and this book is a massive brain dump of everything he’s learned and observed in his time. The book is well organized with key takeaways at the end of each section and a big-picture plan as a final summary of the tips. The strategies are well tested in professional sports beyond volleyball and tennis and again this book really is a resource for anyone wanting to up their game.

Available on Amazon or from the author’s site.

April 21, 2023 marked seven years since Prince’s death and June 7 would have been his 65th birthday. Oh, Prince. Talk about Great Expectations.

Nick Hornby has crafted a wonderful extended essay that looks at two prolific geniuses. I listened to the audiobook hoping for some musical accompaniment, alas no. Thankfully the narrator provides all the quirks and liveliness of Hornby’s turns of phrase. An enjoyable listen.

Hornby draws connections between the two artists. He delves into their trying childhoods, their business acumen, and the excessive amount of content they both created (before age 25 and after).

Give it a listen: https://www.audible.ca/pd/Dickens-and-Prince-Audiobook/B09V1ZYXR7

My friend DaveO gifted me this amazing book about an island that is near to where he lives in Japan. In celebration of Asian Heritage month, I have been eagerly reading about septuagenarian and octogenarians (even nonagenarians) on the tiny island of Shiraishi (population 500 — and dwindling) .

Shiraishi Island is in the Inland Sea of Japan and part of Okayama Prefecture. Author Amy Chavez moved there in 1997 and is charmed by the seclusion and way that the aging population is holding on to its traditions and ways of life. The books offers vignettes of the island’s many charming characters, who each share with Amy their stories of growing up on Shiraishi, the island’s culture, their fishing practices and sacred rituals.

I love being introduced to different people in each chapter. Memorable stories include that of Eiko, the elderly woman whose house Amy rents, Hiro, one of the last two octopus hunters on the island, the four Chinese brides who come to Shiraishi to marry, and Mimiko who runs a little beach shack.

The stories are interspersed with Amy’s observations from her window looking out on the port, her participation in island rituals, and her American perspective as an outsider looking to fit into the community.

Give it a read: Published by Tuttle.

Available in fine bookstores (and Amazon)

Check out Amy Chavez’s website for photos of Shiraishi.

John le Carré is a masterful storyteller and listening to his voice telling the stories of his life is epic. In The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories from My Life, he covers his short years of service in British Intelligence and how that paved the way for the writer he became and the opportunities he had to meet politicians and leaders around the world.

This type of memoir could be a bit of a brag but instead it’s like your worldly uncle telling you his crazy stories. I loved it.

There are funny asides and mishaps, like a certain parrot meeting his end due to alcohol in his feed and wrong number phone calls that lead to late-night bar dates. Then there are serious tales of interviewing terrorists and navigating the security around Yasser Arafat. At every turn, le Carré is giving us glimpses into his life and how you might connect real life people to his story characters.

You can hear the wisdom and humility in his voice, along with the cheek.