Books and Me

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 Martin Meadows (2015) There is nothing startlingly new here.  If you've read around a bit in the self-help category, you will recognise most of the ideas in here, but it is nonetheless helpful to have them all bunched neatly and succinctly into one place and almost all of what he says makes very good sense.  A useful precis. Rating 6/10

by Bessel Van Der Kolk (2015) Where to start?  This book is monumental, being vast in scope, beautifully argued and hugely significant all at once.  It is also deeply humane and potentially healing.  It would have been very easy for Bessel to have turned out an angry diatribe but instead he quietly makes his case, and you only gradually begin to clock, whilst reading between the lines, that his argument represents a huge challenge to current psychiatric, schooling and social services. His argument is that the epidemic of unhappiness which is currently so often attributed to snowflakery/lack of resilience is actually, often as not, a response to deeply traumatic events which for whatever reason, we do not really want to acknowledge or confront. So instead of blaming the victim or imposing deeply cruel methods of treatment (he gently explains why CBT so often fails),  Bessel gets about delineating the effects of trauma upon the mind, brain and body, an...

By Tabatha Chansard (2019) There is nothing new here, but the book is nonetheless an efficient, well-written summary of evidenced-based approaches for tackling teen anxiety, along with exercises designed to encourage the reader to implement the theory.  I'm sure these approaches work, but the teen has to believe it possible and to engage with the suggestions fully.  This might be difficult.  You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink. Rating 6/10

by Matt Haig (2015) This is a brave, honest, utterly engaging, at times searingly painful and finally uplifting account of one man's struggle with anxiety and depression.  He manages to make the experience very real at times, which is often a hard thing to convey to those who are broadly happy.  Despite some uncomfortable reading, it is worth the effort to engage with it as there are useful lessons to be learned even for those who have never had a tinge of the black dog, since Matt not only comes up with some very sensible suggestions as to how to get well again but also describes the unexpected value of the experience.  My only quibble: he doesn't prescribe a Stoic philosophy, veering instead towards Buddhist doctrine, yoga and a more classic version of mindfulness than The Little Book of Stoicism prescribed, but this is easily rectifiable as there is nothing that cannot easily be tweaked to bring it in line with the healing nature of stoicism.  Read the...

  By Daniel Goleman and Richard Davidson (2017) Superbly told, weaving science into a historical narrative of discovery, this has the effect of being profoundly convincing, the Cochrane Report of meditation, and is also profoundly hopeful.  It does offer ways ahead. Only caveat, I read it before "How Emotions are Made" (the book I read immediately afterwards), and now wish I had read them the other way around.  I will have to read this one again to make sure it still makes sense.  I suspect it does - for example, the emotions it discusses, such as compassion, peace, etc work as cultural artefacts or as triggers in this book, but would just like to be certain that there are no epistemic conflicts! On first reading therefore: 10/10