If Walls Could Talk: An Intimate History of the Home by Lucy Worsley

Lucy Worsley is one of my favourite BBC presenters, and since I love material culture, this book was very interesting for me to get a good background on the history of things and cultural practices throughout history. However, I found it too easy and sort of condescending. I guess it's extremely hard to strike the right balance between being 'popular history' and being too scholarly, and Lucy Worsley certainly comes close, but I found some parts awkward and annoying in terms of writing style. But it was extremely informative, and Lucy Worsley does a great job of both tracing continuities and fluctuations, as well as providing a cornucopia of wonderful facts and memorable details. What I found myself wondering throughout this book is how the human race has survived thus far; what with two centuries of almost no washing, bizarre cures more likely to poison than help, and lack of heat, I know I would have died about two seconds after being born. I'm always very interested in material conditions and how they shaped people and culture, and while this book doesn't offer much theorising about that, I really enjoyed all the facts and the way it was presented.