Ex libris
The Reading Room.
The books on my desk, my bedside table and, occasionally, the floor: the history of beauty and medicine, the science of what we put on our skin, and something to read after dark.
Shelf one
The history of beauty & medicine
Venus Envy: A History of Cosmetic Surgery
Elizabeth Haiken · 1997
How cosmetic surgery went from wartime reconstruction to the consulting room, and why we wanted it so badly. If you read one book about my field, make it this one.
Mummies, Cannibals and Vampires
Richard Sugg · 2011
The book behind my corpse-medicine piece. Grisly, scholarly and impossible to put down.
The Radium Girls
Kate Moore · 2016
A glowing beauty craze, and the women who paid for it with their lives.
The Butchering Art
Lindsey Fitzharris · 2017
Joseph Lister and the birth of antisepsis: surgery before it was safe, and the man who changed that.
Shelf two
Skin, science & beauty
The Science of Beauty
Dr Michelle Wong · 2024
What is really in your skincare, and what it actually does. Clear, evidence-led and myth-busting: the book I would give anyone confused by their bathroom shelf.
Shelf three
For pleasure, after dark
Frankenstein
Mary Shelley · 1818
The original cautionary tale about ambition and the human body, and still the best.
Old Country
Matt Query & Harrison Query · 2022
A dream move to a remote ranch and a warning from the neighbours. A slow-burning nightmare; do not read it alone in a farmhouse.
Stolen Tongues
Felix Blackwell · 2017
A remote mountain cabin and a voice in the night that should not be there. Genuinely unsettling: read it with the lights on.
The shelf changes as I read. Updated monthly.
Cover images courtesy of Open Library.