The Imaginary Girlfriend is a short autobiography by American author John Irving. In it, he explains the interwoven roles of writing and wrestling in his life. As always with Irving, the book is absorbing from the off, and it’s tempting to use the anecdotes here to explain why most of his novels seem to have an underdog narrating them. It’s because he loves the work of Dickens so much. I kid.

“Hillbilly Elegy” is the autobiography of JD Vance, a self-professed hillbilly made good who graduated from Yale Law School. I read it because reviews touted it as illustrating the economic conditions leading to Brexit and the implausible election of Donald Trump. As I wrote in an earlier post, I’m keen to learn about why Brexit happened. However, I think this book fails to provide an explanation. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the book.

After I read “Hello America” and “Like a Mule Bringing Ice Cream to the Sun” to Ingrid, it was her turn to read something to me. We settled on Matt Haig’s memoir of anxiety and depression “Reasons to Stay Alive”, which is as uplifting and life-affirming as its title suggests. The book begins with its author standing atop some cliffs in Ibiza, crushed by depression and anxiety and determined to die.

“Command and Control” by Eric Schlosser is about the history of nuclear weapons and their safety. This might not seem like a thrilling subject, but it’s absorbing from start to finish. I started it three years ago but only finished it more recently as the subject of nuclear weapons has become more pertinent to current affairs1. There are many people who would stand to gain a great deal from reading this book2.

Y-12 is the United States’ most secure weapons-grade Uranium storage facility. It is known as the “Fort Knox of Uranium”. In 2012 it was infiltrated by three elderly peace protesters, sparking a major scandal about the safety of US nuclear sites. “Gods of Metal” by Eric Schlosser tells the story of that break-in alongside a history of both the anti-nuclear movement (in particular the Plowshares movement) and nuclear security in the United States.

As indicated by my reading list posted a couple of months ago (which has since been added to here), I’ve started to try to read more about the things that I felt that I did not understand so well. Most notably perhaps is this book “on love” by Helen Fisher. Lest there is any innuendo it is not a book about technique nor does it attempt to explain love to those who have never known it, instead it assumes that we have all been there.

I saw that a friend had ‘liked’ this book on Facebook and reading about it on amazon, I was curious enough to give it a go. It is the autobiography of the philosopher Mark Rowlands, specifically the experiences and lessons learned from raising a wolf, Brenin, from cub to maturity and beyond. The book addresses different aspects of philosophy including the nature of evil and the interaction between humans and other animals.