Oct 293 min read

The Pedantic Zebra Book Club

A new book club on the themes of illness, disability & medicine

audio version in Substack app

STARTING IN DECEMBER, THE PEDANTIC ZEBRA BOOK CLUB.

Halloween is approaching, and we missed ‘hot girl summer’ so we are opting for ‘goth girl autumn’ instead with a cosy book club. This will be a quarterly club with one book over three months.

Zebra background on the sides. A pink square in the middel with the text: You are invited to the Pedantic Zebra Club. The book club (audio or text) where we learn alongside each other about illness, disability, systemic injustice and medical history. Listen along every friday 8 pm. Long Covid Advocacy.

The idea for this book club came from the furore over Miranda’s latest book, ‘I Haven’t Been Entirely Honest With You.’ To digress, thank you for everyone's support for our letter to Miranda. We had a virtual clean slate of positive feedback and over 6.5K reads. And no, we haven’t heard back from Miranda, her agent or publisher. Yet, it is job done, as the points were made and people have a resource to hand to folk if the book ends up in their Christmas stocking.

It is not always easy to understand and educate ourselves on the issues that we are often plunged into in the “kingdom of the sick”. People with chronic illness and disability are vulnerable, yet through community, we can learn alongside each other and strengthen ourselves as a unit. That is why we thought a themed book club on the matters of illness, disability and medical history (and the ghosts of medical present and future) would be of benefit.

Having events in the calendar is a challenge for many of us with Long Covid and ME because of PEM limitations. So, we pondered that a Friday listen/read-along session at 8 pm (UK time) would be our equivalent of book date night. Feel free to stay for as long or as short as you wish. For accessibility, we will post weekly snippets of key points on social media - just search for the #pedanticzebra hashtag.

Our First Book - Mind the Science, Jonathan Stea

Our first book (Dec-Feb) will be psychologist and assistant professor Dr Jonathan Stea’s new release, ‘Mind the Science’. (The book is available on preorder for release Dec 3rd, and the audiobook and Kindle is ready now.) In this era of the burgeoning corporate wellness industry, misinformation and pseudoscience, a book that delves into these issues is key for the community. As we saw with Miranda’s publication, people are particularly vulnerable to all sorts of grifters.

Mind the Science Book cover by Jonathan Stea. Substile Saving your mental health from the wellness industry. Picture is a dark blue with a essential oil burner.

We so often see poor yet effective rebuttals or push-back when people make swishy swashy claims. Catching the root calling-cards of pseudoscience can only help us all. We can have emotional, mental, and spiritual lives without having to accept every whim of wellness and misinformation.

Goodreads

To discuss the books, we have set up a Goodreads group. It’s usually a pretty chill place as people who use it read a lot of books. We are moderator’d up but not expecting any trouble as it’s not algothrimed for doom. You don’t have to join the group to take part! Anyone is welcome to participate as they can and wish. (Yes, we think that audio book are real books!)

But why zebras? Some of you might be aware of the saying in medicine: “When you hear hoofbeats behind you, don’t expect to see a zebra.” This means that those in healthcare are trained to look for horses, but not zebras. Yet, many of us, due to medical stigma, lack of research and training, are zebras and overlooked because we do not match standardised, accepted practice.