Best books of 2022: Health and wellbeing
Age Proof: The New Science of Living a Longer and Healthier Life
by Rose Anne Kenny, Lagom £20
Shortlisted for the 2022 Royal Society Science Book Prize, this is at the respectable end of the self-help genre. Rose Anne Kenny, professor of medical gerontology at Trinity College Dublin, offers readable advice on staying happier and healthier into old age: get a good night’s sleep, have a social life and eat well, fasting occasionally. Oh, and keep having sex.
The Expectation Effect: How Your Mindset Can Transform Your Life
by David Robson, Canongate Books £10.99
While mountain biking recently, I took a wrong turning on to what looked like an easier path. It was the harder track all along — I suspect that I finished it intact only because I expected it to be easier. David Robson, a science journalist, explains how expectation changes our experience of the world — and how we can cultivate that mindset to our advantage.
The Man Who Tasted Words: Inside the Strange and Startling World of Our Senses
by Guy Leschziner, Simon & Schuster £16.99
Our interpretation of the world around us — in other words, our version of reality — is constructed from the input of our five senses. When this neural wiring goes awry, so does the nature of human experience. Guy Leschziner, a neurologist at King’s College London, offers an unsettling guide to the mayhem caused by sensory dysfunction.
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And Finally: Matters of Life and Death
by Henry Marsh, Jonathan Cape £16.99
Henry Marsh, an eminent neurosurgeon and author, contemplates life as he grapples with a diagnosis of advanced cancer. This reluctant doctor-turned-patient reflects — not always proudly — on how he treated his own patients, as well as on what ultimately matters. A haunting memoir from someone who has spent a career at the fragile border between life and death, now confronting the prospect of his own crossing.
Books of the Year 2022
All this week, FT writers and critics share their favourites. Some highlights are:
Monday: Business by Andrew Hill
Tuesday: Environment by Pilita Clark
Wednesday: Economics by Martin Wolf
Thursday: Fiction by Laura Battle
Friday: Politics by Gideon Rachman
Saturday: Critics’ choice
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