Three Recommendations For Your Lockdown Reading List
With nearly a quarter of UK employees furloughed and most of the rest of the country now working from home, many of us are finding ourselves with more free time available to pursue other interests. Though it may have been fun to binge on Netflix, video games or alcohol to pass the time at the start of lockdown, you know it might be time to find something better to do when you’re rewatching Archer for the fifth time or spending hours grinding Call of Duty just to unlock pink camouflage. With the weather improving, I’ve been making more time to sit quietly up on my balcony with a good book. If you’re fortunate enough to have a private balcony or garden, it is a great way to get out in the sun without having to interact with the public and their rather loose grasp of social distancing.
Recently I’ve been reading a lot of non-fiction. Though I do love a good novel, I find that Netflix more than satisfies my need for escapism and fantasy; check out Hollywood if you haven’t already, if only to be transported back to 1940s Americana and to see Sheldon Cooper actor Jim Parsons in a serious role. Books can provide a level of detail far beyond what TV documentaries can provide and are able to cover topics that are much more niche and without the shallow entertainment value required to fund shows like Tiger King. So if you would like to use your time to learn something interesting, inspiring or even life-altering, join me on a round-up of my top three reads from the last year.
Why We Sleep, Matthew Walker
Sleep, something that many of us take for granted, or worse see as an unpleasant necessity: “I’ve always loathed the necessity of sleep. Like death, it puts even the most powerful men on their backs.” It may have been spoken by a fictional character (Frank Underwood from Netflix’s House of Cards) but it summarises exactly the attitude that Why we sleep is challenging. From recent scientific research, it turns out that sleep is a far more complex state than I imagined, and its benefits to the sleeper are far more than just charging up the biological batteries. Matthew Walker takes the reader on a journey exploring the effects of sleep on people of all ages, the weird and wonderful sleep patterns that exist in the natural world, as well as the challenges facing the role of sleep in today’s always-on society. It may not seem at first glance as the most exciting topic to read about, but this book was anything but boring for me. Considering we all will spend around a third of our life asleep, wouldn’t you like to understand your sleep cycle better? This book changed my view on the importance of sleep in my life and it contains profound lessons on how we as a society can change to maximise the benefits of sleep to our collective well-being, starting from how we can help our children maximise their potential by getting enough quality sleep. If I had to make one criticism, it would be that the earlier part of the book feels a little too academic, especially when it is talking about the sleep patterns in the animal world. My worry is that first few chapters may turn off readers before they reach the really important points on the benefits of sleep to health and societal well-being in the latter half of the book. Whilst it is very interesting to read about how migratory birds or whales manage their sleep, it feels a little tangential to the main lessons of the book about sleep in people. Regardless, this is a very minor complaint and I would still recommend anyone to read Why We Sleep. Whether or not you have any interest in popular science, you will learn a lot that is directly relevant to your own life and well-being.
The Checklist Manifesto, Atul Gawande
I hate daily to-do lists and I would never have expected to spend my time reading a book dedicated to checklists. However, after hearing several recommendations from work colleagues and my girlfriend for Atul Gawande’s Checklist Manifesto I decided to check it out. At just over 200 pages, it is no War and Peace. The Checklist Manifesto manages to be concise and stay focussed to its central point — the importance of checklists. Gawande’s background as a surgeon and his work with the World Health Organisation allows him to describe how abiding by simple checklists has enabled doctors and nurses to save many lives from surgical errors. One of the main reasons for the effectiveness of checklists, it is argued, is that most failures in the modern world are due not to ignorance but ineptitude — not making proper use of the information available to us. By getting more information out of our heads and onto a piece of paper (or digital device), we allow ourselves to focus on the truly challenging parts of a task. Gawande draws upon his personal experience as a surgeon before later going into detail about how checklists are used to great effect in other industries. For example, airline pilots heavily rely on checklists for everything from routine pre-flight checks to dealing with an engine failure. Regardless of whether you work in one of the specific industries that are mentioned, checklists can be useful for almost any area of life in the information age. By using checklists effectively, you can avoid forgetting important steps when faced with any task and save yourself stressing over details. I myself thought of checklists as a tool for amateurs, a crutch to rely on in place of real knowledge and experience. Reading The Checklist Manifesto gave me a new respect for the humble list and gave me a reason to use them in my own life — hopefully it can do the same for you.
Why We Get the Wrong Politicians, Isabel Hardman
It is a question many of us will have asked ourselves recently. In Why We Get the Wrong Politicians, Hardman gives an insider’s view of the Palace of Westminster and the people who fill it (or at least, who filled it prior to the COVID lockdown). With such an attention grabbing title you might be expecting some sort of explanation for the current wave of right-wing populism. However, if you are looking for a commentary on the rise of Trump and Boris or the ongoing Brexit catastrophe you will be sorely disappointed. Instead, Hardman delivers an impressively non-partisan account of the systematic failures of our entire political process. Why We Get the Wrong Politicians starts with the process to become an MP, which requires candidates put in many unpaid hours and a great sum of their own money for a job they are often not that likely to get. Anyone without a substantial sum of money and time to burn need not apply. From there we are taken on a tour of the stages of a new MP’s career. Hardman describes the work done in surgeries in an MP’s constituency, during which they talk with many vulnerable people in the worst situations, dealing with abuse or struggling to make ends meet. In some cases MPs are able to grease the wheels of bureaucracy to help those in need. The positive community work is contrasted unfavourably with the duties as a lawmaker carried out inside Westminster. In theory, one of the main responsibilities of an MP is to understand and scrutinise laws that are being passed. However in practice, Hardman argues, such scrutiny does not occur due to the immense pressure of MP’s to follow the party whip, coupled with the lack of training or required experience to even understand the laws they are passing properly. From reading Why We Get the Wrong Politicians, it is not difficult to see why we have paradoxically managed to put the most self-interested and callous people into positions that should rightfully be reserved for the selfless and compassionate. Though this may all sound very depressing, Hardman at least leaves us with a glimmer of hope that systematic faults can be fixed by reforms to the systems that birthed them, such as an American-style separation of government from the house of lawmakers. We can only live in hope — the first step to addressing the systemic issues with politics that affect every aspect of how we live our lives is to make enough people aware of the issues.
So there you have it — my top three recommendations for your lockdown reading list. The ongoing coronavirus crisis is frightening for all of us and whatever happens next, we know that it is far from over. However, for our collective sanity we must take the silver linings where we can. The extra time we have now away from the daily grind is unprecedented and something that many of us won’t be able to experience again for a long time, possibly ever if the climate and economic crises rumbling in the background continue unabated once everything returns to “normal”. So next time you want to unwind, give the quick-fix digital media a pass and consider relaxing with a book, you might learn something.
