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Book Review: "Breath" by James Nestor

3/5 - An achievement of science, journalism and the new self-help book

By Annie KapurPublished 4 years ago 3 min read
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This is a book about, you guessed it, breathing and how to breathe. The science of breathing is an interesting story because it is only when you actually think about your breathing that you begin to breathe manually. James Nestor admittedly has his own sinus problems when it comes to breathing but there are things that are better about his explanations of these experiences than other aspects. First of all, he has massive chunks of anecdotes and autobiographical information followed by explanations on top of scientific explanations on top of just a one-sentence seeming ‘example’ from some time in history. The book, though easy to read, is badly organised and has though it grabs your attention at the beginning with the brilliantly written prologue, it falters to keep your attention throughout the blocks and blocks of scientific stuff and various pieces of information about various sects and histories. So, I want to have a look at the main pros and cons of this book and how they come into play throughout the text.

First of all, the language isn’t something esoteric. It is written in a way that anyone who is reading it at any level can understand provided you have a good grasp of the English Language. I respect the fact that Nestor was able to simplify the ideas enough for casual reading and not write like a pretentious scientist or journalist. There’s something refreshing about reading something that you know everyone can enjoy and I think that Nestor trying to hit the biggest audience possible was a massive success.

The book is littered with personal anecdotes and some of them are very interesting, especially the ones in which the author goes to see the doctor and the doctor states that the author ‘looks like shit’. Comical, relatable and often very human, these short stories within the book are an interesting take on the scientific analysis that happens alongside them in the text. However, sometimes, these stories and narratives, these anecdotes and autobiographical pieces, can seem a little overbearing and I would’ve preferred that the book be split into two sections - one about the author’s own experiences and one about the scientific analysis he was doing. Be that as it may, mostly the anecdotes make a good addition and break from the criticisms and various pieces of explanatory stuff on the art and science of breathing.

One thing I really enjoyed was the relation to historical opinion on breathing - including things like the Chinese, the Indians and other ancient eras who studied arts and sciences relating to breathing and controlling the human pulmonary system. However, sometimes I felt like an example of one or two sentences from these historical eras was not efficient enough after what was pages and pages of explanatory information on the ‘what’. Putting it into practice - I would’ve liked to see more of a narrative explanation for the examples - ones that were seen more in the autobiographical sections of the book.

The one story that fascinated me was the woman with a curved spine who managed to straighten her spine by breathing. This story was not only interesting, but it was well written and it managed to explain the breathing maxims that the author had told the reader beforehand by putting it into a massive amount of practice. The success of this story made me think that later on, there would be more stories like this throughout the book and there were. But there was not enough to keep my attention until the end. I think with the cutting-down of randomised autobiographical stories and the act of writing more about a wider range of people would make me believe in the text more than I actually did.

Finally, there is a lot of telling and not a lot of showing. Again, relative to the lack of real-life example arguments from our own modern day. I think that the downfall of this book mainly has something to do with the overwhelming amounts of explanations at any one given time. It would be preferred that these mass explanations of science be done through example and then explained in short, rather than explained first and then backtracked upon to show an example. By then, the reader is already sick of reading the same situation over and over again.

In conclusion, this book is definitely life-changing and does do exactly what it states - it teaches us about breathing, but I hope that the author will consider more real life stories from our own day on his next journey of self discovery rather than masses and masses of scientific, historical and often randomised autobiographical information.

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About the Creator

Annie Kapur

190K+ Reads on Vocal.

English Lecturer

🎓Literature & Writing (B.A)

🎓Film & Writing (M.A)

🎓Secondary English Education (PgDipEd)

📍Birmingham, UK

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