Interview with Marieke Bigg, author of This Won't Hurt: How Medicine Fails Women
Marieke Bigg, author of This Won't Hurt: How Medicine Fails Women recommends a wealth of books! Before jumping into the interview, please check out Marieke's book:
Description from Bookshop.org:
The idea that medicine is gender-neutral is a myth. This isn't inflammatory rhetoric; it's simply true. From the way pain is felt, to how heart attacks are diagnosed, to the very role society plays in the health of the body, the medical landscape in place today is one that was designed for, and by, men.
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This Won't Hurt: How Medicine Fails Women
This book is about all the ways medicine is not gender-neutral, from research to treatment to diagnosis. Throughout history, flawed mindsets have paved the way for sub-par treatment, and the prevailing attitudes that still exist today have had terrible repercussions for women and their bodies.
Blending fascinating examples with historical and cultural context, and reflecting on her own personal experience with healthcare, Dr Marieke Bigg explores how women's bodies have been ignored, misunderstood and misdiagnosed, whilst keeping an eye to a better future. This is a sharp and honest must-read, and an empowering tool for anyone committed to making this world safer to navigate for all.
Buy On:
Easons €18.62
Bookshop.org UK £20.92
Bookshop.org US $30.68
Waterstones £19.99
Wordery $21.52
Q. Do you have a favourite smart thinking book (and why that book)?
I’m always struck by how the smart thinking section of any bookshop is dominated by titles written by men. That obviously needs to change. I think a lot of the writing by women that I love wouldn’t fall strictly in this category, because it is more narrative and overtly subjective, but I think that makes the wisdom contained in them all the more meaningful. Three Women, by Lisa Taddeo; Deborah Levy’s memoirs are guides to life, most recently Real Estate has helped me a lot when thinking about my own; Rebecca Solnit’s A Field Guide to Getting Lost; Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking. And for a few token male titles (just to flip the script) that have resonated: In Praise of Shadows by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, and Gabor Maté’s The Myth of Normal.
Description from Bookshop.org:
All Lina wanted was to be desired. How did she end up in a marriage with two children and a husband who wouldn’t touch her?
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From one of the great thinkers and writers of our time, comes the unmissable final instalment in Deborah Levy's critically acclaimed 'Living Autobiography'.
(All links earn commission from purchases. Prices accurate at time of writing) Description from Bookshop.org:
In this investigation into loss, losing and being lost, Rebecca Solnit explores the challenges of living with uncertainty. A Field Guide to Getting Lost takes in subjects as eclectic as memory and mapmaking, Hitchcock movies and Renaissance painting.
(All links earn commission from purchases. Prices accurate at time of writing) Description from Bookshop.org:
Several days before Christmas 2003, John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion saw their only daughter, Quintana, fall ill. At first they thought it was flu, then pneumonia, then complete sceptic shock. She was put into an induced coma and placed on life support. Days later – the night before New Year’s Eve –the Dunnes were just sitting down to dinner after visiting the hospital when John suffered a massive and fatal coronary. In a second, this close, symbiotic partnership of 40 years was over. Four weeks later, their daughter pulled through. Two months after that, arriving at LA airport, she collapsed and underwent six hours of brain surgery at UCLA Medical Centre to relieve a massive hematoma.
(All links earn commission from purchases. Prices accurate at time of writing) Description from Bookshop.org:
This is an enchanting essay on aesthetics by one of the greatest Japanese novelists. Tanizaki's eye ranges over architecture, jade, food, toilets, and combines an acute sense of the use of space in buildings, as well as perfect descriptions of lacquerware under candlelight and women in the darkness of the house of pleasure. The result is a classic description of the collision between the shadows of traditional Japanese interiors and the dazzling light of the modern age.
(All links earn commission from purchases. Prices accurate at time of writing) Description from Bookshop.org:
We tend to believe that normality equals health. Yet what is the norm in the Western world?
Mental illness is on an unstoppable rise. Some 45% of Europeans suffer high blood pressure, and nearly 70% of Americans take at least one prescription drug. Illness and trauma are defining how we live.
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Three Women
All Maggie wanted was to be understood. How did she end up in a relationship with her teacher and then in court, a hated pariah in her small town?
All Sloane wanted was to be admired. How did she end up a sexual object of men, including her husband, who liked to watch her have sex with other men and women?
Buy On:
Easons €11.20
Bookshop.org UK £9.49
Bookshop.org US $16.47
Waterstones £9.99
Wordery $11.40
Real Estate
Following the critical acclaim of Things I Don't Want to Know and The Cost of Living, this final volume of Deborah Levy's 'Living Autobiography' is an exhilarating, thought-provoking and boldly intimate meditation on home and the spectres that haunt it.
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Bookshop.org UK £9.49
Bookshop.org US $15.81
Waterstones £9.99
Wordery $11.99
A Field Guide to Getting Lost
Beautifully written, this book combines memoir, history and philosophy, shedding glittering new light on the way we live now.
Buy On:
Bookshop.org UK £9.49
Bookshop.org US $16.74
Waterstones £9.99
Wordery $10.68
The Year of Magical Thinking
This powerful book is Didion’s ‘attempt to make sense of the weeks and then months that cut loose any fixed idea I ever had about death, about illness … about marriage and children and memory … about the shallowness of sanity, about life itself’. The result is an exploration of an intensely personal yet universal experience: a portrait of a marriage, and a life, in good times and bad.
Buy On:
Easons €9.49
Bookshop.org UK £9.49
Bookshop.org US $15.81
Waterstones £9.99
Wordery $10.68
In Praise of Shadows
Buy On:
Bookshop.org UK £7.57
Bookshop.org US $9.25
Waterstones £10.99
Wordery $11.99
The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture
In his new masterpiece, renowned physician, addiction expert and author Gabor Maté dissects the underlying causes of this malaise - physical and emotional, and connects the dots between our personal suffering and the pressures of modern-day living. Over four decades of clinical experience, Dr Maté has found that the common definition of 'normal' is false: virtually all disease is actually a natural reflection of life in an abnormal culture, as we grow further and further apart from our true selves. But he also shows us the pathway to reconnection and healing.
Filled with stories of people in the grip of illness or in the triumphant wake of recovery, this life-affirming book shows how true health is possible - if we are willing to embrace authenticity above social expectations. The Myth of Normal is Gabor Maté's most ambitious, compassionate and urgent book yet.
Buy On:
Easons €17.99
Bookshop.org UK £10.44
Bookshop.org US $27.90
Waterstones £10.99
Wordery $25.32
Q. What's the most recent smart thinking book you've read (and how would you rate it)?
Pragya Agarwal’s Hysterical.
Description from Bookshop.org:
Emotions can be difficult things to define, yet we all recognise them when we feel them or see them in others. How we interpret those emotions and act on them has been heavily gendered, as far back as Ancient Greek and Roman times and - despite the improvements in societal equality - continues to be today.
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Hysterical: Exploding the Myth of Gendered Emotions
We've all heard the sayings that girls should be 'sugar and spice and all things nice', while 'boys don't cry'. In Hysterical, Pragya Agarwal dives deep into the history and science that has determined the gendering of emotions to ask whether there is any truth in the notion of innate differences between the male and female experience of emotions. She examines the impact this has on men and women - especially the role it has played in the subjugation of women throughout history - and how a future where emotions are ungendered might look.
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Bookshop.org UK £16.14
Waterstones £16.99
Wordery $18.48
Q. Do you have a favourite childhood book?
Matilda, Roald Dahl. That little girl has been a kindred spirit throughout my life!
Description from Bookshop.org:
Five-year old Matilda longs for her parents to be good and loving and understanding, but they are none of these things. They are perfectly horrid to her. Matilda invents a game of punishing them each time they treat her badly and she soon discovers she has supernatural powers. A Welsh translation of the award-winning Dahl title Matilda by Elin Meek.
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Matilda
Buy On:
Easons €6.99
Bookshop.org UK £6.99
Bookshop.org US $8.36
Waterstones £6.99
Wordery $14.99
Q. Do you prefer reading on paper, Kindle or listening to an audiobook?
Paper.
Q. Do you have a favourite bookshop (and why that shop)?
Foyles, Charing Cross. It’s this magical labyrinth of books with coffee at the end. Can’t imagine anything better!
Many thanks to Marieke for recommending a wealth of books! Please don't forget to check out This Won't Hurt: How Medicine Fails Women.
Daryl
Image Copyrights: Hodder & Stoughton (This Won't Hurt), Bloomsbury Publishing PLC (Three Women), Penguin Books Ltd (Real Estate), Canongate Books (A Field Guide To Getting Lost), HarperCollins Publishers (The Year Of Magical Thinking), Vintage Publishing (In Praise Of Shadows), Ebury Publishing (The Myth Of The Normal), Canongate Books (Hysterical), Penguin Random House Children's UK (Matilda).
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