Datod - Profiadau Unigolion O Ddementia

There are books that drift politely onto the shelf, and then there is Datod – Profiadau Unigolion o Ddementia by Beti George, a title that arrives with quiet seriousness and the unmistakable sense that it is dealing with something real, difficult and deeply human.

Published in 2021 by Y Lolfa, this is not one of those books that exists merely to decorate a coffee table or suggest, in a vague and performative way, that its owner has broad sympathies and tasteful reading habits. No, this is a book with substance. It concerns dementia, memory, identity and lived experience — which is to say, the very fabric of ordinary life when it begins to fray in ways that are frightening, intimate and often impossible to reduce to neat slogans. Crappy Old Books is always pleased to handle books that are actually about something.

The title itself is wonderfully strong. Datod carries a sense of unravelling, loosening, coming apart — and that makes it both poetic and unsettling. Add the subtitle, Profiadau Unigolion o Ddementia (“experiences of individuals with dementia”), and you have a book that sounds neither sentimental nor evasive. It suggests honesty. It suggests listening. It suggests a refusal to turn a difficult subject into something falsely tidy for the convenience of people who would rather keep discomfort at a safe distance.

Beti George, of course, is a well-known Welsh broadcaster and writer, which gives the whole thing added weight. This is not a random pamphlet of opinions tossed into the world in a moment of vague goodwill. It is the work of someone used to people, voices, stories and the serious business of drawing out truth from lived experience. That matters with a subject like this. Dementia is so often discussed around people rather than with them; a book centred on individual experience already feels like an act of respect.

And yet, in the best Crappy Old Books tradition, there is an irony here too — not directed at the subject, which is serious, but at the absurd modern world in which a genuinely humane book can feel almost radical simply because it asks us to stop, pay attention, and consider other people properly. In an age of speed, distraction, algorithmic nonsense and aggressively cheerful self-help, here is a book prepared to sit with complexity, frailty and memory loss without reaching for cheap uplift or tidy platitudes. That alone makes it rather distinguished.

As sold by Crappy Old Books, this copy is in good condition, which suits it perfectly. A good-condition modern paperback on a serious subject has a useful dignity about it. It has likely been read with care, perhaps by someone for whom the subject was not abstract, and it remains ready to be passed on rather than forgotten. That is a fitting fate for a book based on voices and experiences that deserve to keep being heard.

There is also something especially valuable about this being a Welsh-language publication. Books like this do cultural work as well as literary work. They do not simply convey information; they help make sure that difficult conversations can happen in the language people live in, feel in and remember in. That is no small thing. A book about dementia rooted in Welsh voices and Welsh expression has a particular emotional and social importance beyond the page itself.

The result is likely not “an easy read” in the usual lazy marketing sense, and good for it. Some books are not meant to be easy. They are meant to be meaningful. They are meant to deepen understanding, unsettle assumptions, and perhaps offer recognition to readers who have seen dementia up close in family life, friendship, care work or their own communities. Books that do that are more useful than another five hundred pages about productivity habits or Scandinavian murder.

For collectors and browsers, it is a compelling and worthwhile modern Welsh title: thoughtful, socially important and grounded in lived experience. For readers, it offers the chance to engage with dementia not as a statistic or a vague fear, but as something experienced by actual people, with all the individuality that phrase implies. For the shelf, it brings not only substance but a kind of moral seriousness — the sense that books can still matter for reasons beyond amusement or display.

And yes, there is a certain irony in finding such a humane and necessary book at Crappy Old Books, among the usual parade of old thrillers, obscure manuals, forgotten memoirs and heroic dust jackets. But that is part of the beauty of second-hand bookselling: serious works end up beside oddities, and a shelf becomes a little map of human preoccupations. Engines, empires, recipes, saints, songs, racing cars, and then suddenly dementia, memory, and the difficulty of remaining oneself when the mind begins to loosen its grip. It is all life, in the end.

So here we have a good-condition 2021 Y Lolfa paperback by Beti George: intelligent, humane, grounded and far more substantial than the average modern “issue” book. It does not shout. It does not perform. It simply offers experience, witness and understanding in a world that too often prefers euphemism and avoidance.

Datod – Profiadau Unigolion o Ddementia is the kind of book Crappy Old Books is quietly proud to stock: compassionate without being syrupy, serious without being pompous, and important without needing to advertise the fact in neon. If you value Welsh writing, lived experience, social history, or simply books that treat difficult subjects with honesty and care, this is a deeply worthwhile thing to bring home.

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