Skip to main content

On the Scent - Paola Totaro and Robert Wainwright ***

When I started to read this book I wasn't aware of the significance of the second part of the tag line. I assumed it was a book about the science of the much-underrated sense of smell - and part of it is - but the main theme is that 'how its loss can change your world' part. Paola Totaro lost her sense of smell early in the Covid pandemic, and this would have a big impact on her life, driving forward the urge to find out more about changes that can occur to the sense of smell. 

Loss or modification of the ability to detect odours is more common than we tend to think, but has largely been ignored by the medical profession, in part because we tend to under-rate the importance of the ability to detect odours. Totaro covers both the total loss of detection and also the, arguably more devastating, situation where substances as innocuous as water, along with many foods, can start to smell disgusting - another common impact of Covid.

I'm not a great fan of 'me-centred' science writing, but there is enough on the science here to make it not feel too much like a misery memoir. And there were certainly various parts of it that were genuinely interesting. For example, I have never understood people's enthusiasm for coriander (cilantro) - I find the taste of it highly unpleasant, and it was a relief to discover that this is not at all uncommon. There were quite a few of those 'ooh, that's interesting' moments. Having said that, though, I did find reading the book a bit of a slog - there weren't enough points of engagement, and a lot of the painstaking discovery of what was happening was... well, too slow.

A literary agent I know always says when presented with a non-fiction idea 'Yes, but is it a book or a magazine article?' - it did feel in part that this was a magazine article expanded to book length. The other thing I found really odd - verging on the uncomfortable - is that the book is written in the first person singular, but is co-authored. It took me quite a while to work out that 'I' was Totaro. It might have been better, if such a personal approach was to be taken, if both authors had identified themselves in the text.

If you have lost your sense of smell or had it distorted - something that far more of us have experienced in the past couple of years as a result of Covid - I would strongly recommend this book. But as a general reader I came out of it slightly underwhelmed.

Hardback:   
Kindle:  
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you
Review by Brian Clegg - See all of Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly digest for free here
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Who Invented the Computer? – Ian Watson

Ian Watson is the author of  The Universal Machine  and featured in a recent  Four Way Interview . Saturday June 23 2012 was the centenary of the birth of Alan Turing, the troubled genius who invented the modern computer. Why though do so few people recognize his name and his great achievements? In 1936 English mathematician Alan Turing, published a paper,  On Computable Numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem . This became the foundation of computing. In it Turing presented a theoretical machine that could solve any problem that could be described by instructions encoded on a paper tape. A Turing Machine could calculate square roots, whilst another might solve Sudoku puzzles. Turing demonstrated you could construct a single  Universal Machine  that could simulate any Turing Machine. One machine solving any problem for which a program could be written – sound familiar? He’d invented the computer. Then,  computers  were peop...
Post a Comment
Read more

Ignorance: How it drives science – Stuart Firestein *****

This is a delightful little book that really gets you thinking. I stress the ‘little’ part not as a negative, but as a good thing. There is nothing worse than fat, bloated popular science books where the author feels they have to get 120,000 words to be taken seriously. This is the sort of book that can be read in a couple of hours – but you will get so much more out of it than one of those tedious doorstops. The premise underlying the book is in once sense extremely simple, yet is fundamental to an understanding of what science is and what scientists do. And it is an understanding that is totally at odds with the typical way science is portrayed both in university lectures and popular science books. As Stuart Firestein points out, what is important is not the facts, but rather the area of ignorance. The interesting part and the fundamental heart of science is not about what we know, but about what we don’t know and where we want to look next. Take this lovely quote: ‘Working ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Star Book – Peter Grego ****

This attractive landscape format book combines an excellent introduction to the stars and basic astronomy with a set of star maps, plus in depth looks at some of the stars featured, with a  bonus section on the solar system. Amazon says it’s a hardback, but in fact it’s a paperback with a rather ingenious cover – you can’t tell from the photo, but the words ‘The Star Book’ are punched through as a series of holes that show the white paper of the next page beneath. Like many astronomy/space books, the cover lacks shelf appeal because it is mostly black, but at least there is some original thought here. Unlike many books in this format which tend to concentrate on the pictures, there is a good deal of excellent text by Peter Grego, so there was no feeling that you were only getting the star maps and star ‘biographies’, something these days much more suited to an iPad or smartphone app. Instead, the opening 30 or so pages give a very good introduction that would be valuable to ...
Post a Comment
Read more