The town of Abingdon-on-Thames is a unique and special place, which is not to be uncritical of it. There are aspects of the town which are the envy of other towns - its heritage, buildings, history and position on the Thames - and the 'wicked problems' that challenge its vitality linked to changes in society, technology, climate and transport that affect every town in the country.
But there are two pieces of incredible good fortune that make Abingdon such a wonderful place to live and work. One is the sheer number of people in the town who are working to solve some of these tricky and long-term problems, the other is Abingdon's location at the heart of some of the most exciting science and technology in the world.
We call it the 'Golden Science Triangle', and at each Apex you have cutting edge fusion, space, physics and academic research. It means that most days we get to chat about science, technology and nature challenges and solutions with some of the most brilliant brains on the planet...
Which means we have to be at the top of our game when it comes to science and nature writing. We may not always make it - but here are our top picks of the year:
The Brain - David Eagleman (£25)
Where better to start than the source of all the ideas - the three pound mass of moist biological matter, locked away in the dark and silent fortress of the skull. Yet somehow it produces the extraordinary multi-sensory experience that comprises us, every day of our lives. Just how it does this is revealed through six fascinating chapters, as Eagleman shows how the brain - a great storyteller - constructs reality and allows us to navigate a complex world of decision-making.
Eagleman also takes the long view of the human brain's trajectory in the coming centuries and millennia, asking pertinent questions about our future. Along the way, Eagleman meets nuns, extreme sports athletes, convicted criminals, genocide survivors, autistic people, and multi-disciplinary experts from child psychologists to brain surgeons. He takes part in experiments that shine an important light on the brain's inner cosmos. He also explores the dark side of human behaviour, as he comes to the realisation that the best and worst of what humans do to each other can be understood through the prism of the brain.
And the most delightful aspect of this book for us? It shows how reading and hearing stories - by rehearsing different scenarios, and experiencing far more than we could ever hope to in physical form - can improve almost all aspects of our life. An exhilarating and hugely important book - we highly recommend it.
Chance – New Scientist (£7.99)
If you think about it, the chances of you being here today are astronomically small – a mind-boggling series of ‘lucky breaks’ between the Big Bang and you sitting listening to this radio show right now. Science can tell us a lot about luck and chance – from gambling and finding love to the truly weird world of coincidences.
This fantastic and utterly fascinating little book tells you how our brains have evolved to cope with chance – and why pretty much everything you think you know about it is wrong!
The Man Who Made Things Out of Trees - Robert Penn (£16.99)
From the author of one of our favourite cycling books of the last few years, It's All About the Bike, comes another exuberant tale of craftsmanship and human history. Uplifting, revealing, great fun and full of stories, it explores the almost symbiotic relationship that we have with trees, explored through the things we make out of them.
Robert Penn cut down an ash tree to see how many things could be made from it. After all, ash is the tree we have made the greatest and most varied use of over the course of human history. Journeying from Wales across Europe and Ireland to the USA, he finds that the ancient skills and knowledge of the properties of ash, developed over millennia making wheels and arrows, furniture and baseball bats, are far from dead. The book chronicles how the urge to understand and appreciate trees still runs through us like grain through wood. Difficult to overstate how splendid this book is - come in and take a look!
Norwegian Wood - Lars Mytting (£20)
Until you see it, feel the heft in your hands, and fall in love with it, it's tricky to understand just why a book about chopping and stacking wood should be such a pan-European bestseller, but - like Robert Penn's book above - our connection with wood runs deep and profoundly.
One of the biggest Scandinavian publishing successes ever. For a time when we are most conscious of our energy security, a practical-lyrical, beautifully illustrated guide to its most ancient source. Lars Mytting shares a Scandinavian passion for wood harvesting, stacking, storing and burning, combining cultural history and folklore with modern science. 'Norwegian Wood' is both entertaining and instructive, and in delivering a wealth of advice and technical know-how for the armchair reader and for those outdoors. This book really tells you everything you wanted to know about wood but were too afraid to ask...
Gut: The Inside Story of Our Body's Most Under-Rated Organ - Giulia Enders (£14.99)
The key to living a happier, healthier life is inside us - literally! Our gut is almost as important to us as our brain or our heart, yet we know very little about how it works. In Gut, Giulia Enders shows that rather than the utilitarian and - let's be honest - somewhat embarrassing body part we imagine it to be, it is one of the most complex, important, and even miraculous parts of our anatomy.
And scientists are only just discovering quite how much it has to offer; new research shows that gut bacteria can play a role in everything from obesity and allergies to Alzheimer's. Beginning with the personal experience of illness that inspired her research, and going on to explain everything from the basics of nutrient absorption to the latest science linking bowel bacteria with depression, Enders has written an entertaining, informative health handbook. Gut definitely shows that we can all benefit from getting to know the wondrous world of our inner workings.
Thing Explainer - Randall Munroe (£16.99)
One of our absolute science heroes, Richard Feynman, once said that if you can't explain something to a first-year university student, you don't really get it.
In 'Thing Explainer', ex-NASA robotics scientist, author of 'What If?' and the xkcd web phenomenon takes a quantum leap past this: he explains things using only drawings and a vocabulary of just our 1,000 (or the ten hundred) most common words. Many of the things we use every day - like our food-heating radio boxes ('microwaves'), our very tall roads ('bridges'), and our computer rooms ('datacentres') - are strange to us.
It's a wonderful series of brilliantly simple diagrams ('blueprints' if you want to be complicated about it) that show how important things work: from the nuclear bomb to the biro. It's good to know what the parts of a thing are called, but it's much more interesting to know what they do...
This book is fantastic for both smart kids and eager-to-learn adults and practically anyone who you are stumped to give a gift for!
Want more inspiration? We've been blogging all year about other science and technology books, and ahead of Tim Peake's space mission which launches on Dec 15 - go see our big space book post, take a look at our 'Christmas Rocket' in the shop window, and also take a look at 'The Invention of Nature' by Andrea Wulf and 'The Invention of Science' by David Wootton in our review of favourite history titles)
The Naming of the Shrew - John Wright - £14.99
Latin names - frequently unpronounceable, all too often wrong and always a tiny puzzle to unravel - have been annoying the layman since they first became formalised as scientific terms in the eighteenth century. Why on earth has the entirely land-loving Eastern Mole been named Scalopus aquaticus, or the Oxford Ragwort been called Senecio squalidus - 'dirty old man'? With wonderfully witty style and captivating narrative, this book will make you see Latin names in a whole new light.
You Are Here: Around the World in 92 Minutes - Chris Hadfield - £20.00
Hadfield’s 'An Astronaut’s Guide To Life On Earth' became a bestseller in the wake of his photos and educational videos from the International Space Station, not to mention his TED talk, and his much-viewed zero gravity rendition of “Space Oddity”. This is his collection of breathtaking photos taken from the ISS, arranged continent by continent, and representing one (idealized) orbit of the Earth. The photos are accompanied by a commentary from Hadfield, whose expert eye sees more in the images than we ever could.
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind - Yuval Noah Harari - £25.00
As far as themes go, they don’t get much bigger than the entire history of our species. Yuval Harari’s ‘Sapiens’ is one of those monumental works that gives a dizzying perspective on how we came to rule – and threaten – the entire planet. It starts with the changes in our brain that allowed us to tell stories, imagine alternative scenarios, and out-manoeuvre other species (notably Neanderthals). From there we become farmers, develop religion, invent money, harness technology and threaten widespread extinction – including our own. The writing is superb – never dry, occasionally brazen, at times almost sardonic – and never afraid to come off the fence in areas that are controversial: did we domesticate wheat, or did it domesticate us? Did stockpiling food lay the psychological seeds for consumerism? Are we happier now than *any* of our ancestors? And what is going to replace our species, as surely as we replaced earlier species?
What If? Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions - Randall Munroe - £14.99
When will Facebook contain more profiles of dead people than living? How many humans would a T-Rex rampaging through New York need to eat a day? Munroe - ex NASA roboticist and creator of ur-science web cartoon xkcd - answers the absurd questions with responses that are masterpieces of clarity and hilarity - but based on serious science! (Signed copies available whilst stocks last)
Simpsons & Their Mathematical Secrets - Simon Singh - £8.99
Brilliant writers have smuggled in mathematical jokes throughout the cartoon's twenty-five year history, exploring everything from to Mersenne primes, from Euler's equation to the unsolved riddle of P vs. NP, Singh offers an entirely new insight into the most successful show in television history.
The Wisdom of Tees - Max Adams - £12.99
Trees are marvels of nature, still-standing giants of extraordinary longevity. In a beautifully written sequence of essays, anecdotes and profiles of Britain's best-loved species (from yew to scots pine), Max Adams explores both the amazing biology of trees and humanity's relationship with wood and forest across the centuries. Embellished with images from John Evelyn's classic SYLVA (1664), this is a passionate and informative celebration of trees and of man's ingenuity in exploiting their resources: the perfect gift for anyone who cares about the natural world.
Live At The Brixton Academy - Simon Parkes and JS Rafaeli - £9.99
In 1982, aged twenty-three, Simon Parkes paid GBP1 for a virtually derelict building in Brixton. Over the next fifteen years he turned it into Britain's most iconic music venue. And now he's telling his story: full of fond - and wild - reminiscences of the famous musicians who played at the venue, including Robert Plant and Jimmy Page, Lou Reed, The Ramones, New Order, the Beastie Boys and The Smiths.
A Little History: Photographs of Nick Cave and Cohorts 1981-2013 - Bleddyn Butcher - £18.99
When Bleddyn Butcher first saw The Birthday Party play, back in 1981, he was astonished. And then enthralled. He set about trying to catch their lightning in his Nikon F2AS. That quixotic impulse became a lifelong quest. A little history got made on the way.
Collected here for the first time are the fruits of his labour. A Little History is an extraordinary document, tracking Nick Cave's creative career from the apoplectic extravagance of The Birthday Party to the calmer disquiet of 2013's Push The Sky Away via snapshots, spotlit visions and sumptuous, theatrical portraits. It mixes the candid and uncanny, the spontaneous and the patiently staged, and includes eyeball encounters with Cave's baddest lieutenants, men for the most part who long since burned their own bridges down.
It's a week until our annual Mostly Bookbrains Literary Quiz for charity - the questions are now set, prizes have been collected and the infamous bookswap table is being prepared. This year we are raising money for Abingdon-based national charity 'The Pelvic Partnership' who will also be running a bar and providing food on the evening.
There are still places available for both teams and individuals - so learn more about the quiz here.
I wonder if there may be any clues in today's 3 4 Friday?
As we approach the end of the Easter holidays, if you’re looking to get out and about with children this weekend ‘The Usborne Big Spotters Sticker Book’ and ‘Spot the Bird’ are two sticker books that are ideal introductions for children to start spotting and taking a keen interest in the nature around them. And the Usborne ‘Illustrated Book of Nature’ also gives a more detailed insight into the world around, from the biodiversity of woodland, where flowers get their names, to fossil hunting.
Nature books are the perfect way to make walks more interesting and fun for children – and helps adults with all the background they need to know for any questions en route!
Of course if you’ll be trying to keep the children busy indoors you may like to know that the fabulous Jonny Duddle (famed for being the main illustrator behind the Aardman ‘Pirates’ film) has two themed activity books, ‘Pirates Activity Book’ and ‘Pirates Colouring Book’, bursting with pictures to draw and colour, dot-to-dots and word searches to name just a few of the activities children can do. These books are based on the three action-packed picture books that bestselling creator, Jonny Duddle, has written.
And just in from those craft-masters Klutz we love ‘Clay Charms’ a kit to design charms, clay to make them and all the bits and pieces you need to make charms at home, all in one fantastic book.
Klutz do these things marvellously - and if you want any other recommendations, you know where to come this Saturday...
