Feed My Brain - please!

[JessaJam]

Tried putting this in other subjects, got a couple of replies and suggesting of trying here...so here we go!!

My brain has been on an unintentional diet since leaving uni and started work, and now I have had a baby it is feeling significantly malnourished.

I used to be quite good with words - knew ones with multiple syllables and everything! Could pluck appropriate phrase out of the air etc. Now I struggle and seem to have lost my mental dictionary (have been left with the significantly abridged version!).

No time/money/inclination to do a home learning/evening course BUT enjoy reading and do get a chance to do it SO can you recommend any books to give my poor starving brain a good boost??

suggestion - obviously

What kind of thing are you looking for - fiction/non-fiction? Puzzles and challenges or just something to read? What kind of subjects interest you?

fiction or non-fiction..something interesting/informative to make me think and try to get my brain working again!
Have never been too good at puzzles and stuff even when grey cells were more active.

For fiction I like Rose Tremain - good plots and intelligent writing. Restoration is good but I like all her novels.

For non-fiction, what about someone like Bill Bryson? Notes from a Small Island is good, but I also like his books about the English language - Mother Tongue and Troublesome Words.

I also liked The English - A Portrait of a People by Jeremy Paxman, and Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynn Truss.

Have read Bill Bryson's travel type books...had forgotten about the language one, which did look interesting ( see, brain atrophy!)

bumping for after-school MNers!

Stating the obvious, you're after intellectually-stimulating stuff ... so I'd say not fiction. What are you interested in?

For all-round inspiringness, I would (yet again, always doing this) recommend Primo Levi's Periodic Table - lovely precise prose, clever way of drawing universal (but not waffly) principles out of specificities, historically worthwhile context - ie you feel that what's he's writing about thoroughly merits being read about. Light touch but the very opposite of shallow.

But there are other things, depending on what you personally feel is worth being written/reading about - environment? politics? economics? psychology? education? art?

Or you could get a subscription to a brain-fodder periodical like the London Review of Books, which has always been my lifeline to a bit of pondering when whole books were just not possible ...

Some fiction is intellectually stimulating though. Julian Barnes is another one of my favourites from that respect - intelligent fiction.

The other Bill Bryson book you might like is A Short History of Everything.

Give David Mitchell a go.

Start with Ghostwritten and work your way through. It's sublime

Thanks all
I'm starting a list of books to look for now!!

I suppose my interests are along lines of environment, psychology (not crappy self help stuff though),social theory stuff and (oh crap can't think of the word - see, hungry brain!!!)how cultures have developed/evolved, quite interested in historical stuff. But will give anything a go (although I do struggle with heavy numbers stuff...)

Non-fiction - any particular areas? Freakonomics has very short pieces and is easy to read - applying economics to every day life. The Economist ia a good source of info regarding current news - makes up for a week of not reading any of the front bits of the newspaper.

More pop science - Oliver Sachs is very good on weird and wonderful things to do with the brain. Tim Flannery very good on eco-topics. Jared Diamond a bit long winded but worthwhile. Alan Lightman might also be worth looking up - fiction and science combined. Dava Sobel wrote a really lovely book called Longitude on clocks - you can follow it up with a trip to Greenwich! Gleick(?) wrote a very good biography of Newton.

Just cross-posted! Definitely give Flannery and Diamond a go - I am currently reading Collapse. Flannery has a new book out on climate change, but the one I read earlier was called the Future Eaters.

Definitely Oliver Sachs if you haven't read him before. Steve Pinker can also be a bit longwinded and has terrible jokes, but some of his books are very interesting.

Ooh and there is a great book on Motherhood and primates which I can't remember author or title of but is excellent. Will look up when I get home.

Hurrah! My brain is starting to salivate!!!

Jessa - the LRB bookshop does newslettery things of the-best-of: eg inspiring travel writing; or history; or innovative science; or Bloomsbury; or whatever the theme is. Fantastic browsing shortcut to identifying what you might want to read.

The shop's website is here .

OK, the book I was thinking of was Mother Nature by Sarah Hrdy: here . Tim Flannery's new book is called the Weathermakers: here .

The New York Review of Books covers a vast range and DH thinks their reviews substitute for actually reading the books...NYRB

Glancing at the NYRB site reminded me of a very good travel writer, Jonathan Raban - e.g Coasting. Also William Dalrymple for travel writing e.g City of Djinns (his latest more historical books harder to get into IMO).

blue cheese helps keep your brain and southern regions active

Granta is good too for short stories/articles etc.

Thanks everyone! I now have nice long menu! Must shop soon!!!