Logo
Prev
search
Print
addthis
Rotate
Help
Next
Contents
All Pages
Browse Issues
Home
'
Good Reading : December 2017
Contents
GOODREADINGMAGAZINE.COM.AU GOOD READING DECEMBER 2017 / JANUARY 2018 52 The Smell of Fresh Rain: The unexpected pleasures of our most elusive sense Barney Shaw Imagine opening a book and taking a whiff. It’s a complex smell. Old soggy wood with hints of vanilla. Now think of the burnt nuttiness of coffee; the fragrance wakes you up as you inhale it. We have thousands of descriptors for the scents of wines and perfumes, but what does 3am smell like? This is the strange puzzle that the son of author Barney Shaw asked his father one day. Most of us aren’t awake at 3am, but even if we were, we would struggle to understand and verbalise what we were smelling. It’s this gap in our comprehension of, and vocabulary for, smells that propels Shaw to investigate the world exper ienced by our noses. The Smell of Fresh Rain unpacks the way we think about our senses and how we perceive the world. Though Shaw cites many scientific papers, you don’t need a degree in chemistry to understand his explanations. It gets a little repetitive at times, but I found myself engrossed by the simple yet poetic descriptions as the author journeys from fish markets to woodlands to the pub. He breaks down the most complex of smells (using a four-sniff approach that you’ll master by the end of this book) and shows us that bread and cucumbers share some of the same scents. After reading the first chapter, I found myself more aware of the smells around me. As I took a walk by the seaside, I paid attention to each change in the wind as it carried the piquant fragrance of vinegar on fish and chips, the sweetness of ice-cream, and the tang of salt for me to delight in. I was suddenly present in my environment, no longer caught up in the virtual world of technology. My world was richer – and smellier and more fragrant. The Smell of Fresh Rain is a breath of fresh air. ★★★★ Icon Books $29.99 Reviewed by Emma Stubley BIOGRAPHY / MEMOIR / GENERAL NON-FICTION WOM word of mouth Endurance: A year in space, a lifetime of discovery Scott Kelly What do Ernest Shackleton, Captain James Cook and astronaut Scott Kelly have in common? Kelly, who set the US record in 2015 for the most days in space, including a year in the International Space Station (ISS), says they are all explorers. Early in this memoir, Kelly wr ites that when Cook explored the Pacific, scientists aboard collected plants and revolutionised the field of botany, making the expedition scientific as well as exploratory. Kelly hopes his time in space will be remembered the same way. An enor mous amount of scientific work is carr ied out by the international crew of the ISS, as well as complicated maintenance of the systems that keep the astronauts alive. They drink their own recycled ur ine, they breathe air in which the carbon dioxide must be kept at safe levels, and they do spacewalks to carry out complicated essential work on the ISS’s exterior. Kelly doesn’t flinch from revealing how difficult life can be: so-called showers are nothing more than a rub over with wipes, there is no way of washing clothes, and they need to exercise intensively to maintain muscle and bone structure. The construction of the football field-sized ISS was a marvel of international co-operation by 15 different countries over 18 years, so the year spent there by Kelly and a Russian counter part may just be a prelude to sending men to Mars. He’s sure it can be done. ★★★★★ Doubleday $35.00 Reviewed by Jennifer Somerville
Links
Archive
November 2017
February 2018
Navigation
Previous Page
Next Page
