Interesting Reading

'Your Genes Unzipped' By Tim Spector

Synopsis: Have you ever wondered to what degree your personality, experiences and illnesses are predetermined by your genes? The significance of upbringing, lifestyle and the environment is often emphasised by psychologists, but genes are just as - and often more - influential on our lives.

In Your Genes Unzipped, Professor Tim Spector explores ninety real-life scenarios illustrating subjects ranging from allergies, autism and sexual behaviour, to baldness, back pain and insomnia. He tackles questions such as:

Are we all genetically programmed to fall for a particular partner, or is love only down to chance and culture?
Are childhood problems such as bullying or under-achievement a result of inadequate parenting or should we be blaming evolution and our genes?
Why do only some people get addicted to cigarettes or alcohol and how do a few lifelong smokers manage to live to a ripe old age?

Alongside research into your family history, this fascinating and clearly written book will help you to understand how your genes, transmitted to you through thousands of generations, now respond to the modern environment. Your Genes Unzipped will aid you to avoid potential future health problems and benefit from the amazing breakthroughs in genetics that are occurring daily.

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'Mine's a Double - The Twins Book' by Sue Mortimer

Synopsis: 'Mine's a Double', says Swansea mother-of-twins Sue Mortimer, talking about the title of her new book. 'I never realised how interested people are in twins until I had my own', she adds, 'but when I became pregnant I found there were almost no books about life with twins -- just medical or parenting guides. So when my little boys started school I decided to write one.'

So she started to interview people, and to write down their experiences of life with twins for her book. 'But it's not all babies', she says. 'I have also talked to eighty-year-old twins, one of Britain's oldest set of triplets, Britain's first twin MPs, identical Polish twins studying the same subject at the same Oxford college, and many more.'

The book works through from conception -- 'easy for some, a long IVF hassle for others' -- to adult life. 'There are many happy experiences, and a few tragedies', says Sue, 'but the stories are all true, as told to me by the people themselves.'

To purchase this book, please email thetwinsbook@aol.co.uk.

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'Double Trouble: Twins and How to Survive Them' by Emma Mahony

Synopsis:This indispensable guide to multiple pregnancy, birth and beyond, comes from an expert on the subject - Emma Mahony is a twin herself as well as being the mother of twins. Humorous cartoons from the Times' front-page cartoonist make this a lighthearted, informative guide to everything expectant mothers of twins need to know. Twins are amazing - but multiple pregnancy and birth, not to mention coping with twins once they are born, carries a set of special fears, risks and issues.

Many parents-to-be find themselves overwhelmed. This guide is informative yet informal - in a similar vein to 'Best Friends Guide To Pregnancy'. The author is uniquely experienced in this subject, being a twin and also a mother of baby twins. Contains advice from pregnancy and childcare experts as well as case studies. Illustrated inside with humorous cartoons from Jonathan Pugh, father of two and front-page cartoonist at The Times. An exploration of practical issues such as eating for three, managing breastfeeding, and the trend towards Caesareans for NHS twin births. / Any special concerns? The unnecessary label of 'high risk' in pregnancy. / Testimonies from mums who have tried different approaches. / Interviews with medical and midwife experts. / A step-by-step guide to the different stages of pregnancy and birth, including how to involve the father and explain twins to other siblings. / Tips on managing once the twins have arrived.

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'Little Miss Twins' by Roger Hargreaves

Synopsis: Little Miss Twins do everything in pairs, and say things twice twice. They live in Twoland. The Little Miss Twins were inspired by Roger Hargreaves twin daughters.

'Trouble with the Tucker Twins' by Rose Impey

Synopsis: When Mick refuses to get up for school his Mum wonders what the problem is. The problem is the Tucker twins! They just won't leave Mick alone. They eat his sweets, they pinch his things, they even make him keep a slug in his glove for a day. But Mick discovers that bullies might be soft inside.

'Her Fearful Symmetry' by Audrey Niffenegger

Julia and Valentina Poole are normal American teenagers - normal, at least, for identical 'mirror' twins who have no interest in college or jobs or possibly anything outside their cozy suburban home. But everything changes when they receive notice that an aunt whom they didn't know existed has died and left them her flat in an apartment block overlooking Highgate Cemetery in London. They feel that at last their own lives can begin...

but have no idea that they've been summoned into a tangle of fraying lives, from the obsessive-compulsive crossword setter who lives above them to their aunt's mysterious and elusive lover who lives below them, and even to their aunt herself, who never got over her estrangement from the twins' mother - and who can't even seem to quite leave her flat. With Highgate Cemetery itself a character and echoes of Henry James and Charles Dickens, "Her Fearful Symmetry" is a delicious and deadly twenty-first-century ghost story about Niffenegger's familiar themes of love, loss and identity. It is certain to cement her standing as one of the most singular and remarkable novelists of our time.

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'Twins' by Marcy Dermansky

Synopsis: On the eve of their thirteenth birthday, identical twins Chloe and Sue agree to get matching tattoos to prove their bond is stronger than DNA. So begins Twins, Marcy Dermansky's comic and disturbingly honest debut novel, the extraordinary story of two blond, beautiful, and tormented twin sisters trying to survive adolescence — and each other.

Told in alternating voices, Twins introduces two new unforgettable heroines on the verge. The obsessively defiant Sue, four minutes younger, resents and idolizes her seemingly perfect twin, Chloe. All Chloe wants, however, is to please her sister and — only if Sue will allow it — find a friend of her own. Neglected by their wealthy parents and cynical older brother, burdened by a loving dog they can't properly care for, and bewildered by a complex social universe they somehow don't fit into, Chloe and Sue are left to fend for themselves.

Over the course of five years, Chloe and Sue overcome breakups, unhappy Hawaiian vacations, unicycle lessons, eating disorders, pill abuse, and their first painful explorations of love and sex. They desperately seek comfort in unusual places, choosing often inappropriate friends and lovers, including the daring Lisa Markman, an aspiring fashion model; her famous father, a professional basketball player; James, a good-natured slacker; and a young Indian writer named Smita. Navigating this hilarious and heartbreaking world, the girls must overcome apathy and despair to return to each other.

Funny, affecting, and told with raw understanding, Twinsbrings us into the wounded hearts of audacious teenagers, where the line between hatred and love is blurred and where everyone — including the family pet — is vulnerable to devotion. Marcy Dermansky's heart-stopping debut displays comedy and redemption in the face of suburban despair.

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'The Silent Twins' by Marjorie Wallace

Synopsis: This is the astonishing tale of June and Jennifer Gibbons, identical twins whose silent, antisocial exterior hid a rich, vast, creative life. From early childhood through their twenties, they spoke only to each other in a secret langauge, building an elaborate fantasy life. Then, from their self-imposed isolation, they were catapulted into the hormonal havoc of adolescence, plunging into a wild spree that led to their incarceration in a hospital for the criminally insane. A profoundly powerful and moving story.

'Twin Stories: Their Mysterious and Unique Bond' by Susan Kohl

Synopsis: The fascination with twins is as old as time. This interest runs the gamut from celebrities and politicians to family members and historical figures. Twins share a strong and powerful bond that neither time nor distance seems to shake. With this book, twins, or anyone who knows twins, will gain a greater understanding of the special relationship two people have when they have shared the same womb.

'Twins and the Double' by John Lash

Synopsis:Facing the other in the guise of twin or double, one might sense a threat to the idea of personal identity, yet people are teased and delighted by the odd prospect of becoming "otherwise". Twins arouse a sense of awe in many societies around the world. Jacob and Esau, Horus and Set, Jekyll and Hyde - all these and many more are recurrent pairs who lure us into the world found through the looking glass. The author sets out to bring together genetics, psychology, mythology and art in order to clarify the lore and reveal the enigma of the dyadic principle, common to modern and archaic intuition alike. John Lash established the Institute for Creative Mythology at Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 1981

'I Know This Much is True' by Wally Lamb

Synopsis:Huge American bestselling novel that tells of identical twins: a paranoid schizophrenic and his brother whose life is dominated by his resentment of and love for his damaged twin Dominick Birdsey's whole existence is coloured by the knowledge that his twin brother can never be fully responsible for his frightening behaviour, while he himself has beaten the biochemical odds to remain sane. But at what cost? This powerful, heartwrenching drama draws on the deepest human emotions: the need to know oneself, responsibility to family, the influence of hidden history. The result is a highly acclaimed novel of survival, written with great sensitivity.

'Profession of Violence: Rise and Fall of the Kray Twins' by John Pearson

Synopsis:Reggie and Ronald Kray ruled London's gangland during the 1960s with a ruthlessness and viciousness that shocks even now. This book has been expanded to include further material on such matters as Lord Boothby's close relationship with the killer twins.

'Indivisible by Two: Lives of Extraodinary Twins' By Nancy L. Segal

Synopsis: A leading expert on twins delves into the stories behind her research to reveal the profound joys and real-life traumas of twelve remarkable sets of twins, triplets, and quadruplets.

Indivisible by Two introduces us to an assortment of memorable characters, from the "Fireman Twins"--brothers who, though reared separately, are astonishingly similar in personality and behavioral traits--to the twin sisters who overcame one twin's infertility by having the other serve as her surrogate mother. We meet one of the few identical brother-sister pairs in the world after one of two sisters was surgically transformed into a man, and identical triplet brothers, only one of whom is gay while the others are straight. We see uniquely blended families--identical twin brothers marrying identical twin sisters, and Chinese twins adopted by different Canadian families yet raised as sisters.

Being a twin can also render the experience of historical tragedy uniquely painful. We meet Stepha and Annetta, survivors of Josef Mengele's heinous experiments in Auschwitz, and untangle the troubled lifelong tie between Jack and Oskar, born in the 1930s to a Jewish father and a German Gentile mother, one raised as a Jew in Trinidad and the other as a Catholic and a member of the Hitler Youth in Nazi Germany.

Segal unravels these stories and others with an eye for the challenges that life as a twin (or triplet or quadruplet) can pose to parents, friends, and spouses, as well as the twins themselves. These moving stories remind us how incompletely any theory explains real life--twin or not.

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'Two or The Book of Twins & Doubles' By Penelope Farmer

Synopsis: 'Let me declare an interest right away. My pursuit of twins, far from being dispassionate is deeply autobiographical. The idea for this anthology arose from a piece I wrote which insisted on centring itself round the death of my twin sister...'

Thus begins Penelope Farmer's extraordinary autobiographical anthology of twins and doubles. Bravely and beautifully using her own story to introduce and define each section, this marvellous, eccentrically varied choice of extracts takes us through the labyrinth of myths, fears and longings from birth and parenthood (proud and horrified), through the love and hate that simultaneously binds and divides two souls, to the crisis (or relief) of separation and death. She looks at the freakish fascination that only twins and doubles can provoke and illuminate through fiction and nonfiction the non-twin's eternal envy and fear of the 'born couple', and the myths of twins as sacred or taboo. This leads to an exploration of reflections, shadows and alter egos, ending with the recurring splits and doubles in many writers' works and lives.

Her exhaustive collection of over two hundred and fifty authors' works, draws from myth to contemporary fiction, from folklore to psychology, from scientists' to twins' accounts of themselves. Taking this literary form to new heights - 'Walter Benjamin suggested writing a novel out of quotations. Well, as a novelist I will say this is my novel on twins' - Penelope Farmer draws us into the very essence of twins and doubles.

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'Twins' Photographs by David Fields, Essays by Ruth and Rachel Sandweiss

Synopsis: Here is a fascinating portrait of the unique, profound, and complex relationship between twins. In original essays and photographs 27 sets of twins share the special joys and struggles they have faced growing up together or apart, the depth of understanding and unparalleled bond between them, and touching insights on the meaning of family and the importance of all sibling relationships.

Aldo and Mario Andretti speak of growing up together in Italy, moving to America, and sharing a dream of becoming racing champions. Dr. Raymond Brandt discusses the death of his twin brother and the healing process that led him to found Twinless Twin, a support group for other survivors of lost twin sibling. Rasheda Ali-Walsh and Jamillah Ali, the twin daughters of Muhammad Ali, talk about balancing twinship with romantic relationships. Jennine Bobardt shares her story of being a surrogate for her twin sister's triplets. Other twins within these pages share equally stirring and amusing stories, from being separated at birth and raised apart - only to meet later in life and discover uncanny similarities in personalities and tastes - to twin sisters who married twin brothers and now share a home together.

Twins is a revealing, poignant exploration of a unique relationship and a celebration of family, companionship, and love.

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'THE LONE TWIN: Understanding Twin Bereavement and Loss' by Joan Woodward

Synopsis: Twins hold fascination for many people. We are intrigued by the twin's closeness. But what happens when twins are separated, especially by death? Using John Bowlby's Attachment Theory as her conceptual base and illustrated by the words of lone twins themselves, the author takes the reader through the closeness of being a twin, including its negative aspects and their need to be different from each other. Topics include death and bereavement, parental attitudes to the surviving twin, the surviving twin's guilt and bereavement in childhood and in adulthood and the psychological effects in later life for children who lost their twin at birth.