The Body: A Guide for Occupants
Written and Narrated By: Bill Bryson
Length: 14 hrs and 4 mins
You’re not just a brain/thoughts/feelings—You’re attached to something AWEsome!
I’ve spent my entire life traipsing about, not judging spaces/distances, running into walls and furniture, lifting heavy objects without care, imbibing in things without thought. And it wasn’t until I hit my 50s, and as of late, tweaked my wrist, like bad, that my body started telling me things like: Ooooooh, you shouldn’t have done that!
Like with this whole wrist thing, obviously I’m not lifting, carrying, pushing, pulling properly, and I started really wishing that this vast appendage, known as a body, came with a manual.
Enter my sister’s pick for our audiobook club, The Body by the inimitable Bill Bryson, a book that gives a vastly entertaining overview/guide to the thing that’s been containing me and taking me from point A to point B. That it’s narrated by Bryson himself is a definite Plus. The man has warm, desperately tongue in cheek tones, and he rather reminds me of Jon Ronson, with his obviously wry delivery, keen wit (Only without the Ronsonesque total freak-outs). Kudos to Mr. Bryson for making 14+ hours fly by - me engaged and chuckling all the way.
The book is a guide throughout the body, separated by organs/systems and ending in what goes wrong. And sometimes a whole LOTTA things can go wrong. But that’s kinda the beauty of this bit of light science writing from Bryson: He goes into great depth about the things we do to ourselves, but then he cheekily reminds us that no matter how goshdarned yoga-doing and kale-eating we are…? Uhm, we’re still gonna wind up dead…
For some reason I found that to be a vaaaaast relief. Not to mention, funny as hell.
If you’re looking, however, for deep science writing, I don’t think you’ll find this work to be what you’re seeking. A broad, a huuuuge, amount is covered, but Bryson only skims the surface of each subject/system. Personally, I was fascinated by the gut and dearly wished he’d gone into greater depth before remembering that I have the audiobooks Gut by Giulia Enders, and Gulp by (naturally) Mary Roach should I wanna think more deeply.
Still, those books don’t have Bryson narrating, neither do they have the set of anecdotes that he would add. So wah wah wah for me…
What I appreciate like all get-out from Mr. Bryson is how he manages to combine (some) depth, with broad overview, precise history, and generous portions of anecdotes. Seriously? It’s the anecdotes that make or break a “science” book for me, however lowbrow that paints me to be. I do so love The Teaching Company’s Great Courses, but only when those professors get out of the clouds and come down to earth with witty: And this and this and this is what happened, just as Bryson does with his own writing.
I should note also that some reviewers complained that the book has far too many statistics and facts and percentages about physiology, anatomy, and biochemistry when all they wanted was an entertaining jaunt. Also, they griped, there are no charts, or images of MRI results when he refers to them. Okay, okay, yeah—it should be noted that there’s no PDF that accompanies this audiobook, so I get that. It would indeed be nice to see what’s being referred to, but personally, my interest wanders when I have to stop and use a different part of my brain to make sense of visual images, so that didn’t completely bother me. As for the former, honestly! I swear! The stats and facts are conveyed with wit, style, and in such a humane way… AND with anecdotes!… that you don’t even realize you’re learning amazing stuff.
Trust me. I’m a total boob, and if I could listen to this and be chuckling as much from Hour 1 all the way to Hour 14? That can only mean the author did a marvelous job that’s accessible to the majority of us.
Thank you, Bill Bryson, for educating and enlightening me, all without making me feel like a dolt!
Warning about the way my brain works: I just called myself a “boob”, and now I’m, like an ill-educated guttersnipe, thinking of the demeaning word “boob” when used to refer to a breast. I’m sooo sorry, and usually yes, I’m lowbrow, but this time it’s like this, see: In the book, the part on cancer, there’s how a mastectomy was carried out way back in the day (So THAT’S what surgery was like in Europe during the Regency era!). In a letter where Fanny Burney recounts the ordeal done without anesthesia, Fanny was lying on the table, a handkerchief over her face, when the sawing began. The pain was so intense, she passed out, but when she came to, part of her breast was still attached. At which point the surgeons continued their sawing and pulling, 17 1/2 minutes of unmitigated horror, terror, and agony…
So, uhm, see? You’ll be thinking about things like that after you listen to this book. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m shuddering like crazy, hairs standing on the back of my neck and shivering. But a good old-fashioned freakout is quite enjoyable in a Listen.
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