Thanks to my earlier re-posting of my Western Mail Articles, I was identified by the lovely people at The Times Higher Education (THE) magazine as someone who a) had a professional interest in ion channels and b) was interested in public communication of science, to review a book on ion channels written for a lay audience.

The book was Frances Ashcroft’s The Spark of Life: Electricity in the Human Body, and you can read my review on the THE website here.  In short it’s a bloody awesome book and I had such a great time reading a lay history of a subject I have spent the past 10 years studying professionally.  Looking back, a month after writing the review, I do feel a little bad for saying anything negative at all. I think I was a bit worried about appearing sycophantic so dug very deep to find even a minor criticism of her book. Still, hopefully the review comes across as positive and that if you had a vague interest in understanding what I do as a biophysicist hopefully you’ll want to read the book.

Finally, a tip for doing a book review – take some notes as you’re reading, or stick some post-its on key pages.  I got so engrossed in the book I did neither and ended up having to buy a kindle version when I wrote the review so I could search for things I’d previously read.