Thank-you, thank-you very much! Ladies and gentlemen, in accepting my prize for reading the nerdiest book of the year, I would only like to say that it has been an absolute pleasure to engage with a book of this intelligence and complete oddness.
I walked into Foyles one Friday night, and spent at least an hour browsing the fiction. The number of books I picked up and turned over beggars belief. And for all their colourful covers and enticing blurb hooks, I wasn't interested to open a single one of them. This was confronting. Where was my book? It was Friday night and I had a date with a bath and a glass of wine, damn it, and if Book didn't show up, there was going to be trouble.
I went over to the information desk and asked where to find Simon Winchester's titles, and was swiftly directed to the 'nerd' section. My only other encounter with him was The Surgeon of Crowthorne, and I completely loved it. I'm not sure what exactly drew me back to Mr Winchester on this day particularly, but I had a vague sense that I wanted a book that might, just maybe, make me a little bit smarter by the end than I was when I started.
And boy did he deliver. For someone who briefly studied geography, the historical and political content of this book is fascinating (the rocks I could take or leave, if I'm honest). William Smith lived an impossible, tragic life, but without his work, the world would be an incredibly different place. Well, the world wouldn't actually be any different, we'd just know a hell of a lot less about it.
Yes, this book is about rocks and fossils and the relationship between them, which on the surface (pun intended) is not something you want to tuck down and read about on a Friday evening, but if you dig a little deeper (this pun also intended), this book is so, so much more. The whole notion of creating, against the wishes of the church, and on your own in the rain with a hammer, an entirely new kind of science; to go out, day after day, for your whole life, trying to understand a little bit better how the world works, despite being met with such appalling indecency from so many of your fellow men: it's truly astonishing what this brave man achieved.
The tenderness with which Winchester describes Smith's struggles, and the enthusiasm with which he champions his achievements, is enthralling. The delicately drawn chapter heads are incredible, and there's just the right balance of rocks and people in this superbly well crafted biography. The way Winchester does this, takes his little writing torch and shines it on unheralded figures of our not so distant past, is laudable and I look forward our next meeting.
Till then, I'm thinking of picking up a Paullina Simons or Paul Coelho. Or something.
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