The Water Book

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Water exhibits some very peculiar properties, which are nicely summarized in the book. There are a few effects such as Mpemba Effect, which is difficult to explain why. This effect is the property of hot water that freezes faster than cold water when both are placed in the same freezer at sub-zero temperatures. The molecular weight of water is very low, as it is a compound of one oxygen and two hydrogen atoms. This is lighter than even air, which is mostly a mixture of nitrogen and oxygen molecules, in both of which the molecule consists of two atoms. Now, the strange part! Even though water is thus lighter than air, it is a liquid at room temperature whereas the heavier air is a gas! Hydrogen Sulfide (H2S), which is nearly twice the molecular weight of water, is also a gas! Similar is the case with ammonia. This was a paradox to the scientific world until the concept of hydrogen bonding was developed. Water is a polar liquid, with the two hydrogen atoms connected to the lone oxygen atom at an angle of 104 degrees with each other. These hydrogen atoms possess positive charge which induces attraction with nearby oxygen atoms that are negatively charged. This affinity is not as strong as the conventional covalent or ionic bonds, but sufficient enough to change its physical properties. This weak interaction with fellow molecules causes water to remain a liquid at normal temperatures. As we know, water is essential to life in the liquid form. If not for this quirk of water, life would not have existed on earth – at least, not in the way we are so familiar with. However, not all the water on earth is available for life. As per scientific estimates, only 1% of the terrestrial water is accessible to the flora and fauna as a liquid. The book delves into the role of water in human societies. Man’s ability to form urban civilizations is crucially dependent on his capacity to exploit and control the sources of water. All civilizations and major towns took root on the shores of a large water body such as a river, lake or sea. The ancient Greek geographer Pausanius remarked that no city can call itself by that name if it can’t hoist an ornamental fountain in the centre of the city as a potent indicator of man’s control over water. This precious liquid was available in plenty for most of human history. However, with rapid urbanization and scarcity of supplies, water has assumed the role of a commodity that is no longer cheap. It is almost certain that most of the people living now would witness an eventuality in their lives in which water will be difficult to come by. This imperative calls for conservation of water. The book introduces the concept of water footprint for the material we consume in our daily lives. Originally formulated by Arjen Hoekstra, this idea links human consumption to the amount of water extracted from earth to produce that material. For example, the beef burger you eat was produced at the cost of about 1000 liters of water. The section on biosphere presents a gloomy picture of excessive water use without practical alleviation measures immediately at hand. 70% of the extracted water is utilized for agriculture and 20% for industry. With no path-breaking technology round the corner, consumption is sure to surge higher as the developing world gets industrialized fast. This prophecy of doom, however, is helpful only to create an image of pessimism. U.S. power plants are said to use 500 billion cubic meters of water for cooling alone in a year. Most of the power plants recycle cooling water for its processes and only a small amount of fresh water is required to be introduced into the closed system as makeup water. A lot of UN’s predictions about water scarcity in the coming decades are included, which are pessimistic as usual. Jha has included all issues of concern in the world in this discussion on water. Global warming and water conservation are only two among them. Here again, the observations proposed in favour of global warming may cause a smile on climate-skeptics’ faces. Traces of warming are undoubtedly seen in the Arctic and West Antarctic Peninsula, whereas ice cover has increased on other locations and the atmosphere in fact cooled a bit over the decades. In the epilogue to The Water Book, Alok Jha writes of water: It has been our wellspring of stories and culture, the source of creation and death; it has shaped our language and politics and been at the core of how we built civilization. On any given morning you might shower, make coffee, flush your toilet and think nothing of the role that water plays at each moment.

She goes on to wonder if some of the apostles may have lured girls away or taken women without their permission. She gets angrier and angrier as she looks at the pictures.It delights again and again because, as in all the best science writing, the tale is stranger and more curious than one could ever imagine." Stephen Curry, the Guardian. Vanessa seems to find some comfort in the small island where people mostly keep to themselves. We begin to find out more about Vanessa’s past and what she is escaping from. So many great global challenges are more solvable than we think—if the people who are facing those challenges, who have great capacity to solve them, are empowered. That’s how we’ve been able to change 43 million lives with safe water and sanitation. Water has been the undoing of me. It has been the undoing of my family. We swim in the womb. We are composed of it. We drink it. We are drawn to it throughout our lives, more than mountains, deserts, or canyons. But it is terrible. It kills.”

Wilson-Lee’s point is that we all need to be a bit more De Góis and a bit less De Camões. Employing prose as luscious as it is meticulous, Wilson-Lee shows us the world through De Góis’s eyes, a wonderful tapestry that includes Ethiopians and Sami, Hieronymus Bosch (he owned three of the master’s fever-dream paintings) and elephants that can write in dust with their trunks. In 1531 De Góis was hugely affected by an audience he had with Martin Luther in Wittenberg when the great man’s wife served him hazelnuts and apples. There was a point to the meal’s simplicity that went beyond grandiose self-denial. Luther believed that the obsession with international capitalism, which brought spices and other exotic delicacies pouring into Europe, was pointless and wasteful. Shopping locally and growing your own (Mrs Luther had a very nice kitchen garden) was the righteous way to go. You gradually learn what has happened. Living alone on the island gives her time to think and consider if her actions and non-actions made her complicit in what we now know was a crime. And you'll be from Dublin, I suppose," she continues, employing a tense that I'm not sure exists in the language. Open Water is a powerful portrayal of the way that systemic violence can make a person forget softness and vulnerability. It exposes the failure of language to encapsulate feeling and illuminates the love and the anger that rage around the edges of everything' - Jessica Andrews, award-winning author of SaltwaterWater has also shaped the world we live in. Whether it is by gently carving the Grand Canyon over millennia, or in shaping how civilisations were built; we have settled our cities along rivers and coasts. Scientific studies show how we feel calmer and more relaxed when next to water. We holiday by the seas and lakes. Yet one day soon wars may be fought over access to water. Alok Jha is one of the brightest young science writers around...He belongs to a select band of science communicators, and knows his science at a deep level and can put it across." Peter Forbes, The Independent. Giulio Boccaletti makes a strikingly original and persuasive case that the history of human civilization can be understood as a never-ending struggle over water. Boccaletti’s command of a vast range of material, across time and space, is astonishing.” —Nicholas Lemann, Joseph Pulitzer II and Edith Pulitzer Moore Professor of Journalism, Columbia University. I don't want to go into too much more detail however this book just moved me in a way very few authors can. I genuinely don't know how Boyne could have achieved that within such a short book.

The protagonist of Jessica Andrews’s debut novel is a young woman trying to carve out a place in the world. Lucy moves from Sunderland to university in London, struggles to fit in and survive financially, and then, after graduation, retreats to her late grandfather’s cottage in Ireland. It’s a standard coming-of-age narrative, but also features something very rare in literary fiction: a working-class heroine, written by a young working-class author. She has interesting theological and philosophical discussions with the young Nigerian priest; she observes the interactions between the townspeople. Two of those she meets, she feels she could trust with the recent events in her life that brought her here. The exact circumstances, both of her husband’s incarceration, and her daughter’s death, are gradually revealed.

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Despite the grave subject matter, Boyne manages to include some, often dark, humour. Ultimately, Willow concludes: “we are none of us innocent and none of us guilty, and we all have to live with what we’ve done for the rest of our lives and that the only way through this terrible thing, if we are to survive it at all, is to be kind to each other and to love one another.” He is breathless for the life he is entering into and I hope that he will not know pain or betrayal or disappointment, but of course he will, because he's alive and that's the price we pay" In Terenure, I was a member of a book club, but that was mostly because I could find no way out of it. I wish Alok Jha had been my science teacher at school he has an amazing ability to explain complicated sciencey stuff and making sense, I could have grown up to be a scientist. Against this expansive vision Wilson-Lee sets the work of Luís de Camões, Portugal’s greatest poet. Of particular interest here is The Lusiads, his epic account of Vasco da Gama and the Portuguese heroes who sailed around the Cape of Good Hope opening a new route to India. The title itself clangs with nationalist pomp, being derived from the ancient Roman name for Portugal, Lusitania. In addition, De Camões transforms Da Gama and his crew into Jason and the Argonauts, semi-divine heroes questing east in search of miraculous treasures. Despite his impeccable humanist credentials, the Iberian Shakespeare’s narrative is one of triumphalist place-naming, land-staking and colonial bluster. The British Victorians, naturally, loved him.

I've struggled with Mr Boyne's work before now simply because he always seems to write a book that brings up difficult issues. It always felt like he had to have a cause. You know she's led a fairly privileged life but that something awful has happened that attracted a lot of press attention. You also learn that she's no longer with her husband, her older daughter is dead and her younger daughter doesn't really talk to her.

Upon the island; will she find the peace or understanding she desires; will she be recognised following a high profile case; will the past continually haunt her? This is a beautifully constructed novel. Each word and sentence is pitch perfect to create the remoteness of the island, the intrusiveness of a small community and the turmoil that is challenging Vanessa. The lives of other island inhabitants are tentatively explored but build the questions of how can we redefine who we are and what is our place within families and communities- remain or escape. A very few times in the course of a reader's life a book appears that shatters one's assumptions about how and why things came to pass. A History of Water is one such book. A mind-blowing achievement’