REVIEW ´ TEXASBEERGUIDE.COM Ø Jessa Gamble
**** for content, *** for style The Siesta And The Midnight Sun This book was good but I felt that the chapters were a bit long. It would have been better if the chapters were shorter. Otherwise the book was good. The Siesta And The Midnight Sun Super interesting non-fiction book all about circadian rhythms. The Siesta And The Midnight Sun
** Received as a First Reads Giveaway.
Interesting collection of facts and anecdotes but suffered for not being terribly focused. Nice to dip into rather than read from cover to cover.
The Siesta And The Midnight Sun Very readable popular science that examines the latest research into circadian rhythms and sleep behaviours. There's a nice mix of history and diversity of studies and cultures explored. If you like your science leavened with diversions of memoir and popular culture, this is a great read. Yellowknife author Jessa Gamble has an admirable touch, managing to write in a style that makes the book feel like you're hanging out listening to the adventures of a well traveled, and intelligent friend. The Siesta And The Midnight Sun Was hoping this book would present a good argument for me to finally get to bed at a decent hour. It didn't, but it was interesting none the less. The Siesta And The Midnight Sun I've finally come to appreciate reading non-fiction stuff in my free time but I still have a hard time trusting books that are not text books to tell me science stuff. Then again, this book was pretty light on heavy science terminology and most of it was written as a cultural comparison of sleeping habits across the world. So I liked the ethnography factor of it.
However, there were some things about the author's writing style that bothered me. Mostly just in how she kept pulling herself into the narrative. Which felt unnecessary. But it was still chalk full of interesting facts, just wish that it was had been structured a little better so it didn't feel so random and I wish that she had explored the smaller topics with more depth. The Siesta And The Midnight Sun The siesta and the midnight sun is a well written collection of ideas that has been inspired by many different facets of science.
This is not a book on how to sleep better, less or any other subcategory of self-help that some might be expecting. But it is very forthcoming with information that, in my opinion, would have only been enhanced by a bibliography to reference all the research that the author has drawn upon.
While primarily focusing on circadian rhythms, Jessa explores how things such as anthropology, evolution and seasonal changes, to name a few, affect the well balanced machines that natural selection has granted us. She also goes into detail regarding some of the causes that can upset our internal clock, the effects that result and the nature of life that our clocks (biological and mechanical) impose upon us.
The chapters flow together logically, paragraphs are interspersed with anecdotes and personal experience and then the book is rounded out with a hope to incite future exploration of this topic.
For me the highlights were in reading about seasonal affective disorder, maximising productivity and pushing our limits. Chapters 8, 11 and 12, respectively. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in taking a glimpse at just how complicated we can be with the way we experience time.
The Siesta And The Midnight Sun
When a retiring worker is given a gold watch, Jessa Gamble observes, she symbolically gets back the freedom to keep her own hours.
There were no mechanical timepieces before the industrial revolution. The day’s activities were dictated by the spinning Earth’s circuit around the Sun and by the seasons. Because people adjusted their lives to these natural rhythms, they may have experienced less stress than their modern counterparts. They almost certainly enjoyed more sleep.
In The Siesta and the Midnight Sun, award-winning science writer Jessa Gamble explores the continuing significance of the biological clocks that governed our lives before modern technology annihilated the night. She describes experiments that show both rats and people adhere to a 24-hour schedule even when deprived of daylight. When our days are disrupted by shift work, jet lag or space travel, things go wrong. The disastrous chemical leak at Bhopal, India and the calamitous launch of the Space Shuttle Challenger both were caused partly by sleepless workers. Insomnia is rampant in the Western world.
By investigating patterns of behaviour in many societies both past and current, Gamble gives us a glimpse of different ways of scheduling time. In this superbly insightful and entertaining book she examines the crises and creative adaptations that occur on the embattled border where biology, culture and technology clash. The Siesta And The Midnight Sun