Books and Me

by Mihaly Csikzentmihaly (2002) This is a book of two halves: the first a classic description of a how to live well in more or less any situation; the second, a rather protracted description of how to apply the lessons of the first half to every other possible scenario.  During this second half, I felt rather like a dinner guest trapped by a loquacious guest who, whilst they may be extremely clever, has had one too many and simply didn't know when to stop.  Ironically, I simply couldn't get into the flow of reading this second half however hard I tried, but that shouldn't stop one taking heed of the very important messages of the first half. Rating 6/10 Related links:  https://positivepsychology.com/mihaly-csikszentmihalyi-father-of-flow/

by Sarah Knight (2015) Oh my, this was truly dreadful - a muddled message, poorly communicated and then endlessly repeated to absolutely no particular gain.  The only half-useful message in the entire book could be summed up as "If you are caring about something that it is not worth caring about, stop it" though it did mean I stopped caring about the contents of this book very quickly, though in truth, I still vaguely resent the 99p I spent on it.  On which point, Sarah doesn't help with this conflict between reason and emotion because she doesn't bother to explain how one should actually stop giving a f**k. I think she implies that this congruence just happens when you reason that you shouldn't care, which as I have just demonstrated with my outstanding annoyance for my 99p, just doesn't necessarily happen.  That's not the only problem - the impracticality of quite a chunk of the rest of the content is truly impressive, eg: the mantra "prio...

by James Wong (2019) In this follow up to his excellent "How to Eat Better" , James eases one into the idea that 10-a-day is not only desirable, given that the reduction in mortality from eating a lot of fruit and vegetables is dose dependent, but also that it is very manageable.  His strategy basically involves throwing fruit or veg at absolutely everything, from pizza bases to pumpkin dressing.  If you've been a vegetarian for a bit, you've probably been doing  quite a lot of this already.  However, James may push you that little extra bit further, and whilst some of his dishes are meat laden, these would be easily adapted by vegetarians. He also introduced me to some ingredients with which I wasn't familiar and which I will try out, orange blossom water, tinned mango puree and vanilla bean paste, for example. I was slightly concerned about how many calories this enterprise would involve.  10-a-day when added to pizzas and custard might be fine for a 6 f...

by Jamil Zaki (2019) This is a clarion call for maximisation of the very best of human qualities, and given the increasing alienation, unhappiness and general antipathy that ail us, along with the global problems we face, this call doesn't come a moment too soon. It is an essential read - important for everyone - parents, policy makers and leaders of all sorts. Rating 10/10. 

By James Clear (2018) The author really does live up to his name with this superbly clear book .  The secret is in the structure.  He creates an unforgettable scaffold upon which to hang the ideas, so that they are not only beautifully signalled, obvious and graspable, but are also memorable and actionable. I can see why he garners so many 5 star ratings on Amazon.   Get this book!  Rating 10/10

by Katie Hurley (2019) With news that 9/10 teens are worried about their mental health, and that a third state that they feel helpless, sad and or fearful frequently and this problem far outstripping any help that is offered by others, these sorts of work books would seem to have a big and important function. This one does the job efficiently enough. There isn't anything you won't already have read before in other places, but it puts all the strategies in one neat place succinctly and clearly, and even if you don't have any mood disorder, often seems to offer very sensible strategies for life. Whether a teen would actually engage with it in the first place, let alone actually benefit from it, is another matter altogether. Rating 6/10

by Simon Sinek  (2011) Oh blimey, thank heaven that's over.   It was dire!  The repetition was so all engulfing that it felt as if I'd fallen into a roiling sea of nearly identical sentences which burbled around, sapping me of my last ounce of energy and breath. To tell the truth, after the millionth time of being told that Apple (whom I dislike) are amazing because they have a great big WHY (in capitals), I started skipping and dipping to see if new sections of the book had by chance got any new sentences that I hadn't seen before.  The really annoying thing was that just occasionally a new idea would be introduced, which did mean that I felt I couldn't just fling the whole thing in the nearest canal, fire, cesspit. (Sorry, imagining what to do with the thing has been the only entertainment I've had in a while.) Whether these new ideas were worth having is a moot point, however.  The central theme - that it is productive to have an ins...

By Jason Fox (2018) This  is a gripping, convincing read for which the actual writer, Matt Allen, should take a lot of  credit, not least because until I got to the acknowledgements right at the end, I had managed to persuade myself that Jason's voice was largely authentically his.   OK, so you could see that the book was beautifully structured and that this sort of level of writing skill isn't something people normally acquire when they've spent their entire adult life busting through doors and shooting the threats that lie behind it, so I guess I should have just got on and accepted this fact - but in some regards, it still sounded like the Jason you hear on  Who Dares Wins,  so I just wanted to believe.  But really, duh, in retrospect what was I thinking! One regular feature of PTSD, to which Jason bravely admits, is that it closes down Broca's area - the part of the brain that is responsible for speech.  It is quite possibl...

by Jennie Marie Battistin (2019) One of the biggest problems with selling mindfulness to teens, in my experience, is that it just sounds hokey.  Why should they bother with it? It doesn't sound as if it would work and there are better things to be doing with one's time.  Plus, don't try to whitewash problems.  If there is an issue, solve it directly.  Don't try to make the poor victim just accept that this is how things are whilst deluding themselves that everything is hunky dory.   And the awful thing is, they may have a point.  I mean, there are quite a few recent studies out there which suggest that mindfulness is not all it's been cracked up to be.  And yes, perhaps mindfulness is occasionally used coercively as a cover for appallingly stressful situations. I remember an example of this in the NHS a while back: nurses who were working on desperately understaffed wards being taught mindfulness in nursing school in order to manage their a...