IN SHORT
Sydney Morning Herald
Saturday February 20, 2010
LIFE STORIESBy David AttenboroughCollins, 224pp, $39.99Last year, the BBC's Radio 4 asked David Attenborough to do a series of weekly 10-minute talks on topics of his own choosing. This handsomely illustrated collection of 20 "life stories" is a sample.There are short pieces on sloths, huge flowers, the platypus, bowerbirds, dragons, birds of paradise, the dodo, bird's nest soup and amber. The book is a superb exercise in clear, detailed and entertaining stories of adventures in the natural world.His "life story" of the platypus places the initial European scepticism in a larger context (apparently in the 18th century it was commonplace to sew the head of a monkey on to a fish and call the end-product a mermaid, so the arrival of a creature with the beak of a duck, the fur of a rabbit and four webbed feet was greeted with suitable scepticism) and he recalls his attempts, with no success, to film a platypus giving birth.His description of how a radio transmitter, augur and endoscope were used to facilitate filming gives a rare insight into the complexities of modern nature photography.To use a bad cliche, T.S. Eliot, who was once a director of Faber & Faber, would roll over in his grave if he could see the number of egregious typos in this book.Nonsense phrases produced by typos such as "Her back to was to me" on the third page of text and "This is seems" on page eight. "Word" when it should be "world". But I digress. This is a spin-off from Stephen Fry's successful QI television series.It is written by the show's producer and researcher, and the aim is to explore the lives of 78 famous people and present lots of quirky information including such gems as "everyone living on the planet is related both to Confucius and to Nefertiti"; Leonardo da Vinci was a vegetarian; Sigmund Freud once dissected 400 eels but could find no evidence that male eels had testicles; Casanova regularly used a condom made from sheep's intestines; and a personal favourite, when a former lover of the actress Tallulah Bankhead said he hadn't seen her for years, she replied: "I thought I told you to wait in the car."THE QI BOOK OF THE DEADBy John Lloyd and John MitchinsonFaber & Faber, 435pp, $29.99The appeal of Buddhism as a way to lead a worthwhile life is that it is practical, non-confrontational, non-fundamentalist and full of common sense.Thus this remarkable and remarkably useful book about the relationship between mothers and schoolchildren emphasises such practical strategies as taking full responsibility for your behaviour, particularly when you are dealing with stress; living in the present rather than spending useless time thinking about past mistakes; and trying to avoid future problems by finding a path of moderation "where we non-judgmentally observe our experience with curiosity and openness".The problem with all self-help books is that the underpinning philosophy, no matter how sensible, is rarely matched by realistic suggestions as to how theory can be turned into practice.Still, for all those mothers grappling with the inevitable problems of school-age children this is a book guaranteed, at least, to offer comfort and provide good advice.BUDDHISM FOR MOTHERS OF SCHOOLCHILDRENBy Sarah NapthaliAllen & Unwin, 257pp, $27.99
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