Joe Tasker (1981)

A classic of mountaineering, although not to the same extent as Savage Arena, Tasker’s other (later) book.

This is the story of an ill-fated expedition to climb Everest by an unusual route, in winter. The challenge was too great and the team had to turn back, plagued by illness and atrocious weather. But that in no way diminishes their achievement, and they laid the ground work for later winter expeditions to the Himalayas having exposed exactly how cruel the wind in particular made climbing in that season.

Tasker is quite an acute observer of his partners, especially of their strengths as climbers and team-mates. He himself comes through less strongly, and this is a far less personally revealing account than is “Savage Arena”. It’s probably best read as an inspiring tale of what can be achieved even when short of ultimate success.

4/5. Finished Monday 7 June, 2021.

(Originally published on Goodreads.)

Madeleine Bunting

Part policy exploration, part history, part memoir, and part anthropological study, this is a detailed and deeply worrying take on the state of modern British healthcare – the most loved and trusted part of the British State that has been under constant attack for decades. Why is that? – why would politicians seeking the approval of voters nevertheless fail to support and recognise the one thing that all voters admire? And do so with such fake affectations of care?

The notion of “care” itself, both as a noun and as a verb. comes under scrutiny. It’s a word that’s replaced a rich vocabulary of terms, bring aspects of medical and social services that were all previously regarded as separate under a single rubric. And perhaps that’s the root of the problem. By destroying the subtlety in search of management and measurement, it becomes easier to neglect the essence of what’s being provided and turn social care (and mental health care in particular) into “Cinderella services” adrift from public attention.

3/5. Finished Saturday 5 June, 2021.

(Originally published on Goodreads.)

Nan Shepherd (1977)

Here then may be a life of the senses so pure, so untouched by any
mode of apprehension but their own, that the body may be said to
think. Each sense heightened to its most exquisite awareness is in
itself total experience. This is the innocence we have lost, living in
one sense at a time to live all the way through. … The many details
– a stroke here, a stroke there – come for a moment into perfect
focus, and one can read at last the word that has been from the
beginning.

Jeanette Winterson, in her afterword to this edition, describes the book as a “geo-poetic exploration of the Cairngorms”. That’s a good description, though incomplete: this is a meditation on mountains and mountain-centred living in all its forms, often quite breathtaking in its imagery and always rather meditative and spiritual in its perception of the wholeness of the environment.

The style of writing itself is fascinating, almost Victorian but without the heaviness. The grammar is flawless, which in itself is quite dated and dating, and every now and again there are some passages that jump off the page with their insight and lucidity. It’s a book I want to take into the mountains to read in the situation of its conception.

5/5. Finished Saturday 5 June, 2021.

(Originally published on Goodreads.)

“Epidemic modelling: Some notes, maths, and code”, my book about using network science to model epidemics, is now featured in the gallery of the Executable Books project.

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After what feels like a very long time in review, our paper on the dynamics of co-infection on clustered networks has been accepted for publication.

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