Tag: nonfiction (Page 1 of 2)

Title: The ADHD Field Guide For Adults

Authors: Cate Osborn & Erik Gude with Rennie Dyball

Publisher: Monoray/Hachette, 2026; RRP: $34.99

Review by: Frank Thompson, Ballarat Writers Inc. book review group

Cate Osborn and Erik Gude are writers and educators. They are products of the internet age. Osborn is an author, speaker, Tik Toker, actor, pod cast host, sex educator, and mental health and disability advocate. She is based in Atlanta, Georgia. Gude is known for co-hosting the podcast “Catie and Erik’s Infinite Quest” and for his engaging content on platforms such as TikTok.

Rennie Dyball is a USA Today bestselling author and ghostwriter and editor.

Despite the best attempts of Gude, Osborn and Dyball to bring order to this project, there is clearly a lot of chaos. Though there is a method to the madness. Right at the beginning they explain how to read the book. It is not a book that needs to be read from start to finish; it can be, but also it can be dipped into, flipped through and bits chosen at random. Key information is presented in bite-sized pieces making it easy to grasp. Over the years I have discussed ADHD at length with various people, including psychologists, and I think this book captures the spirit of ADHD and I agree with the importance of building coping mechanisms. 

A lot of time is spent reinforcing the idea that because you don’t appear to fit the normal behaviour patterns of society it is alright, you are okay.  I find this kind of language almost self-defeating, as it highlights difference. But for some people these statements will be reassuring. The book is trying to cover a very broad spectrum of readers. The authors hint at the challenge this presented for them.  There are sections covering ADHD and co-morbidities. I found these enlightening.

Listen to an interview with Osborn and Gude

@ Hacking Your ADHD

A key takeaway from the book is the need to work out how to cope and function in society to participate in all the usual things. Things like relationships, work/career, education, even sex. You do not have be an outsider. It is not about trying harder. Rather, you need to find what works for you.  And sometimes medication helps, as does tolerance from others. It should be about the outcome, not how it is achieved.

Gude and Osborn have not tried to produce a book on the psychology of ADHD, though they inevitably had to provide some background in places and they do draw on formal expertise where necessary. The book is about the experience of living with ADHD in its many variations. It is based on their own lives and on comments from others.

This is an informative book for anyone dealing with ADHD or with people diagnosed as having ADHD. However, on the downside, there are large slabs of the book which I think are culturally and jurisdictional dependant. For example, the advice on dealing with the health system is irrelevant to anyone outside of America.

Overall, I found it an interesting and useful read.

Review copy provided by the publisher.

Title: Behind the Screens: How the internet works and how to make it work for you

Author: Niraj Lal; illustrated by Aśka

Publisher: University of Queensland Press, 2026; RRP:  $19.99

Reviewed by Rhonda Cotsell, Ballarat Writers Inc. Book Review Group

This excellent little book provides basic information about everything screen based – phone and computer – aimed primarily for children in the 8-14 age group. It also serves as a support guide for  teachers and for adult family members or carers at home looking for a guide in a format that is easy to navigate or to read with, or give to, children under their care.

I am particularly impressed not only with its scope and layout but also how it navigates a path between content that shares what there is to enjoy and gain from the internet and also what to be wary of. There is also generous space given to the non-internet time, and what each provides to enrich a child’s life and also what it lacks, and how they work together.

I found it easy to read as both an adult interested in the subject and as a parent already aware of the ups and downs of our relationship with our children regarding this subject.

Now, would I buy this for my grandson? Yes, despite the fact I can see his eyes rolling in disbelief and a despairing ‘Naaaaaann!’ at my presumption, given our shared familiarity with the significant deficits in my knowledge of all things IT, followed by the lofty observation that anyway he can find out all that on the internet (I find blackmail can work at this point; teachers, you’re on your own).

And as a nit picky reviewer thinking about how does it fulfil the promise of its title: Is it up-to-date? How thorough is its coverage? How easy is it to read given its reader/s and does the language bridge the gap between adult and child? How does it ‘sound’ read or spoken and does it inform or does it proselytise or attempt to inculcate? Is it grammatically correct, and especially, who wrote it and can they be trusted?

He can. The author’s background is one rich in science and involvement with children generally. Lal’s qualifications are impressive. He is an ANU Visiting Fellow and host of the ABC kids’ podcast Imagine This. He has a PhD in physics and has appeared on Play School and Catalyst. His awards include a 2021 Celestino Eureka Prize for Promoting Understanding of Science and a 2022 Royal Societies of Australia and New Zealand Piasecki Prize for Outstanding Writing on Social Change. He is also Dad to three children.

Listen to an interview with Dr Niral Lal about internet literacy

@ ABC Radio National

A minor quibble is the lack of an index, and a Contents list of chapter headings that, while catchy, provided little guidance to the information covered in each section – something an index would have solved. However,  the book is only 116 pages and the layout is extremely well designed, making it easy to pick up at a glance what each section contains from paragraph to section level.

The size of the book and layout is for me a significant success re accessibility of information and physical usability. Good for small hands and large, and portable. A lot has been accomplished by skilful use of varying fonts, text boxes, generous spacing for the eye to jump from one piece of information to another. Key words are bolded within concise paragraphs so skimming is effortless. This makes it easy to both locate a particular subject or choose whether to read that section or not. The colour scheme is a pleasant and consistent use of varying shades of blue – no use of the bright and grabby to disconcert. The illustrations are cartoon like. These and short, concise blocks of text break up the larger paragraphs, emphasising important points and allowing the reader to read quickly, picking up important information as an alternative to the slower word-by-word, sentence-by-sentence, but also repeating main points. This is especially good given the different levels of knowledge each reader will have, and level of concentration.

The illustrator Aśka is an award-winning graphic novelist and an ex-quantum physicist passionate about visual literacy and teaching people how to ‘write with pictures’.

Given its aim, it is simultaneously easy to read and engaging. There is an inbuilt and comfortable logical flow from one section to the next. For example,  Chapter 7 Being Healthy with Tech covers bullying and the importance of non-screen time, delves into whole-family involvement and, in a section on screen health, being aware of mood changes. Chapter 8 What To Believe uses the term spidey sense, a lovely word which adults might miss but childrenwill enjoy, to refer to that innocuous suspicion all of us feel looking at certain sites. It then talks about recognising legitimate information, which leads naturally into different opinions and algorithms, its incidental AI equivalent, looking at the pluses and minuses, describes user behaviour and tracking, then defines in simple terms the science used before going into fake news and how to identify it, who benefits from it, and the faking of proof. It also provides hints about trusting yourself – your spidey sense. All of which covers a lot of potentially boring ground for children.

Everything about it physically and in design allows for a variety of usage scenarios – classroom, small-group work, at home one-on-one with parent/carer and child, and solo reading and rereading. Also, though definitely not its aim, I – an older and less confident adult – read it from cover to cover, finding it helpful for understanding some terms, colloquialisms and context, and for checking I am on track with my own screen time.

Overall, an excellent work doing what all good books at the most basic level do best, which is to make its reader emerge knowing more than they did before.

Review copy provided by the publisher

Title: Rock and Tempest: Surviving Cyclone Tracy and Its Aftermath
Author: Patricia Collins
Publisher: Hachette Australia, 2024; RRP $34.99

I chose this book because, like many, the news of Cyclone Tracy hitting Darwin early Christmas Day 1974 left an indelible memory, but I knew little of what followed. Rock and Tempest has been written by someone who was there. So, I looked forward to finding out more.

Despite its title, Rock and Tempest: Surviving Cyclone Tracy and Its Aftermath is mostly about the role played by the Royal Australian Navy (RAN), as experienced by Patricia Collins, who was there as a member of RAN’s non-combatant Women’s Royal Australian Naval Service (WRANS).

In some areas the reportage is like a diary, personal and revealing, but interspersed with recollection couched in the severe and exact language of the military. The shifts between are sometimes abrupt and the military language, dry and reliant, assumed insider knowledge that I occasionally found frustrating. Despite this, Rock and Tempest held me riveted to the end.

We meet the author huddling in a wardrobe, the safest place she could find as all hell breaks loose over and around her. The roaring wind force is so great that rain is horizontal, but when the fire alarms sound she obediently climbs out of the wardrobe to follow the correct procedure of reporting it to the duty quartermaster gunner. Despite the unlikeliness of fire being the main danger. Sprawling and crashing down a corridor, she makes the call, but when returning to the wardrobe, she is knocked off her feet and skids backwards down the hall – grabbing at the louvres that line the walls – propelled by the violent strength of the water cascading in.

At first these sudden shifts from unpleasant experiences to strictly following procedure were disorientating. But it worked, giving a human face to the RAN’s rigorous adherence to process, but also including instances elsewhere reflecting the freer, practical spirit of the human species that created them. Like not handing in unbroken bottles of various alcoholic substances around destroyed homes, instead putting them to use, substituting for the lack of debriefing, in the get-togethers with friends and family after long emotionally and physically exhausting days. The author’s inclusion of details like these act to humanise the factual, report-like information the author provides of her naval colleagues’ activities. Some rules need to be refocussed.

Naval acronyms are used liberally unfortunately, with no glossary to assist readers. There is also much detailed description of daily duties, equipment specifications, rules and procedures sometimes seeming only loosely relevant to Darwin and the cyclone, though very relevant to those whose work revolved around them.

Patricia Collins interviewed at the ABC about Cyclone Tracy

In the days that follow the storm, events are leavened by other small, chatty details about the RAN’s domestic, personal and social lives. Though unashamedly self-congratulatory at times, it reads as well-earned pride. People emerge as hardworking, and committed to rescue and protect but still as fleshed-out individuals rather than faceless figures whose only identity is the military force to which they belong.

Disappointingly there is less information about how Darwinian civilians experienced Cyclone Tracy and its aftermath. On reflection, however, that is inevitable. What the author experiences is shaped by her role as a Wran, which would affect how her hours and days were filled after the cyclone had passed, and also what she would recall.

Despite this, civilians are not entirely absent. She writes,

There is no doubt that that local police and medical personnel did a phenomenal job in desperately tragic and chaotic conditions … despite their own losses, they fronted up for duty day after day. Their work was shattering.

Read more about the RAN”s involvement in the events of Cyclone Tracy

Scattered throughout Rock and Tempest are other snapshot-like references to what Darwin civilians endured. Her words and what she notices are stark and dramatic, creating unforgettable images despite their brevity.

Details like an uncertain death total because bodies were dropped off at medical points without details being taken and only those identified being counted, the large number of ‘transients’ camped on Mindil Beach directly in the path of the cyclone’s approach, blood hosed down in a hospital room and running down stairs, divers finding sunken pleasure cruisers by following the sharks, people unable to find shelter cut to pieces by flying sheets of tin.

This against a shared background of RAN and townspeople alike suffering endless searing heat and the overwhelming stench of Christmas Day seafood rotting in freezers and refrigerators. And the deaths of their own.

The author also speaks of the lack of recognition for what both RAN and WRANS personnel suffered, and the suffering that continued afterwards in their lives.

One man, sent to rally the troops, told the author later:

…he had found the staff in a bad way, pointing to one man sitting in a dark corner, whimpering gently. The best efforts … were futile in easing the man’s broken spirit.

and later,

Many people who went through the cyclone reached the limits of their physical and emotional strength sooner or later. Darwin city recovered and went on to grow and thrive. Many people did not.

There is more of this and it is worth reading to get that fuller picture of things that happened outside public view once the initial aftermath was dealt with, while higher-ups up received accolades and medals. Another story in itself. Despite the disenchantment underlying the ending, however, Patricia Collins was rightfully proud in what she and those she worked beside accomplished. She was glad she was there.

Rock and Tempest is one of those rare books that will haunt the reader long after the last page. For me it’s the Wran struggling through flooding waters to report fire alarms to a duty officer because no matter how ridiculous sometimes, an ability to adhere to rules defines that particular type of people who make the difference between success and failure when our worlds break apart.

Reviewed by: Rhonda Cotsell

Ballarat Writers Book Review Group

Review copy provided by the publisher

Title: Colonial Adventure

Authors: Ken Gelder and Rachael Weaver

Publisher: Melbourne University Press, October 2024; RRP: $29.99

The term picaresque pops up a bit in Colonial Adventure, and similarly to the travelling adventurer of that particular style of yarn, our narrators here are passing through a series of locations as they lead a guided tour through the body of works exploring the colonial experience in pre-Federation Australia. Our guides here are Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Melbourne Ken Gelder and ARC Future Fellow at the University of Tasmania Rachael Weaver.

This is not Gelder and Weaver’s first expedition into this terrain, the pair having collaborated on three other titles in a similar vein, and their experience as academic researchers and collaborators provides a smooth, logically composed journey here. They keep the text accessible and kindly throw forwards and backwards to repeated references to help keep the reader up to speed without the flicking of pages.

There is a large body of work to cover – the end notes, bibliography and index run to about 60 of the 240 pages – and the authors do well to keep the tour moving across the most interesting or illustrative of examples, pausing in places to elaborate on the significant postcard moments such as the well-known William Buckley and Eliza Fraser. This pair feature in a chapter titled ‘Castaways and Cohabitants’, which delves into the presentation of their experience as dwellers with Aboriginal peoples as well as the aftermath of their experiences.

Not surprisingly given the book’s title, the ‘adventures’ here – whether journals, reportage/memoir, or fiction – are backgrounded in the way they reflect colonial thought and often the relationship between invader/occupier and First Nations people. The authors have gone to lengths to attempt to identify the names of Country on which events take place, thus acknowledging the diversity of First Nations cultures and the impact upon them. But the authors also note that ‘(c)olonial adventure was not always overtly in the service of empire’ and ‘could also transmit information about people and places never before seen; some of that information might even disturb the ideologies that colonisation relied on’.

The nationwide tour begins with explorers, with James Cook and William Dampier to the fore, and what is a foundational but fairly dry opening discussion on where such sanctioned escapades fall within the genre, before opening up to more exotic narratives of early encounters with New Holland. This is followed by four more chapters that trace the changing attitude to the land and its exploitation/occupation: ‘Transportation and Convict Adventures’, the previously mentioned ‘Castaway’, Bushrangers etc’, and ‘The Speculation of Colonisation’, which focuses on the planned settlement and opening up of the land as an economic endeavour. The latter takes in Lemurian fictions (based on lost or undiscovered civilisations), where First Nations peoples are again undermined by the ideal of a European or otherwise technologically advanced society occupying the inland of the country, with or without the fabled inland sea.

The idea of adventure is an element of discussion, wherein the picaresque style of story comes into play as a step in the evolution of the colonial experience: from explorers mapping the coastline to fictional and non-fictional roguish visitors enjoying outlandish adventures to brag about on their return home, to those here for the long haul, exploiting the natural resources in the hunt for wealth. The adventures extend to women and Aboriginal resistance fighters, too, and one of the interesting elements of these stories is how some bushrangers (both Black and white) occupied ‘liminal’ spaces in which they both opposed and supported the ruling power.

As mentioned, it’s a guide book, a starting place for researchers and the casually interested, a window seat offering an overview of the relationships between the new arrivals and the land and its people, revealing the mindset that justified terra nullius, murder and dispossession, and leaving the lingering sensation that these attitudes are not yet merely moments of history but still active currents at economic and socio-political levels.

Reviewed by: Jason Nahrung

Ballarat Writers Inc. Book Review Group

Review copy provided by the publisher