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The Art of Noticing: Rediscover What Really Matters to You by Rob WalkerThe curse put on reviewers is that we get to read through a book which is really better dipped into, or read gradually and thoughts allowed to be provoked. And so it was with The Art of Noticing. It's a simple premise: the pace of modern life and rapidity of technological advances means that we are constantly overwhelmed and distracted. Rob Walker wants us to be able to steal our attention back. He gives us his thoughts on various areas of our lives and then provides 131 exercises to help us recover our attention. Full Review |
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Hard Pushed: A Midwife's Story by Leah Hazard
Over the past few years we've had a rash (sorry - no pun intended) of books by medical practitioners. Doctors have been at the forefront, but Hard Pushed is the first book I've seen by a midwife. It's an unusual profession in that it's one of the few callings within the medical system where most of the patients are healthy and the only one where one person comes into the system and (for the most part) more than one goes out. It's an amazing thing to be able to do - to escort new life into the world - and an enormous responsibility. Leah Hazard came to it after a career in television and Hard Pushed is the story of her career as a midwife - and the title tells more than one story. Full Review |
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Time and How to Spend It: The 7 Rules for Richer, Happier Days by James WallmanMost things you can replace, but one of the things which you simply can't replace is time. Even though we know this, we fail to use what we have wisely. We have more leisure time, but that's not how it feels: a high value is put on how we spend our working hours, but there's a low value on leisure. Unfortunately we now know how to work and not how to live: we need to learn how to spend our leisure time wisely and James Wallman has taken on the onerous task of teaching us how to do this. Full Review |
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Home Workout for Beginners: 6 Week Fitness Program with Fat Burning Workouts for Long Term Weight Loss by James AtkinsonJames Atkinson has all the qualifications which you need in a workout instructor and he looks the part. He's been actively involved in the health and fitness arena for more than twenty years and he spent nine years as a member of 9 Parachute Regiment, Royal Engineers. He has another qualification which means a lot to me: he's been on the other side. There was a time when he was overweight and not particularly strong. As a child he was slow to develop. This means that he understands what it's like and he knows how his clients feel: it's much more helpful than the twenty-something who was born super-fit and with an attitude problem. Full Review |
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Live Forever Manual: Science, ethics and companies behind the new anti-aging treatments by Adrian CullFor many years now I've (half) joked that I intended to live forever and that so far, it was working out OK. Time has passed though and although I'm a great deal fitter and healthier than most people of my age there were a few nagging health problems which were tipping my life out of balance. It was time to look for a new approach and as so often happens, the reviewing gods brought me the book I needed. Live Forever Manual: Science, ethics and companies behind the new anti-aging treatments seemed like the answer to my problems - only you get so much more than just 101 tips. Full Review |
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Painting Snails by Stephen John HartleyIt's very difficult to classify Painting Snails: originally I thought that as it's loosely based around a year on an allotment it would be a lifestyle book, but you're not going to get advice on what to plant when and where for the best results. The answer would be something along the lines of 'try it and see'. Then I considered popular science as Stephen Hartley failed his A levels, did an engineering apprenticeship, became a busker, finally got into medical school and is now an A&E consultant (part time). I found out that there's an awful lot more to what goes on in a Major Trauma Centre than you'll ever glean from Casualty, but that isn't really what the book's about. There's a lot about rock & roll, which seems to be the real passion of Hartley's life, but it didn't actually fit into the entertainment genre either. Did we have a category for 'doing the impossible the hard way'? Yep - that's the one. It's autobiography. Full Review |
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Good Mood Food: Unlock the Power of Diet to Think and Feel Well by Charlotte Watts and Natalie SavonaI thought I was getting a cookbook: I liked the idea of a series of recipes which would make me feel happy. For once this isn't a case of 'if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is' - it's a case of getting something which could change your life for the better - for good - rather than a quick fix. Full Review |
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Atomic Habits by James ClearI've said this before but there are some books that you seek out, some books that you stumble across and some books that drop into your life because you really MUST read them, like, right now! Atomic Habits is in the last category. Full Review |
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Keep Your Health and Fitness For Life: Don't Let Age Be A Barrier by Stuart RobertsMy birth certificate might suggest a higher figure, but I know that I'm only 42. I learned a long time ago that I could retain that feeling by keeping my life in balance. This meant eating sensibly, getting quality sleep and having regular exercise which I enjoyed. There was an added bonus too: I was juggling four chronic conditions and living this way meant that I could keep three of them in the background. Then a silly mis-step meant that the hip problem flared up. The only way I could get more than an hour or two asleep was to take pain relief and the duodenal ulcer started to complain. Because I was masking symptoms I didn't dare to exercise - and the black dog of depression prowled along behind me. Full Review |
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Beyond Thought by Chris DhladhlaHave you ever felt trapped by your own thoughts? That your mind is so busy processing what's going on in the world around you that you just can't catch a moment and simply be? Or that the outside world just won't stop pressing in upon an inner life that you'd like to be more peaceful? Full Review |
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Rockstar Retirement Programme: How to retire like a rockstar by Dominic WatsonEven with a birthday fast approaching, I'm still a bit young to be reading about retirement. My next life change in the pipeline will be a big one, and it does involve leaving the 9 to 5 behind for a yacht and the silky blue waters of the Caribbean, but only for a year, and then I will be back, tanned and refreshed but barely 40 and with many working years still to come. Also, I like work. My job is interesting, I get to travel, what we do matters and it's not badly rewarded. So no, I'm not planning to retire just yet. But as the premise of this book is about planning (and if not now, then when?) I was still intrigued. Full Review |
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Spiritual Atheist by Nick Seneca Jankel
Spiritual Atheist is a new 'bible' for the spiritual not the religious, according to the tagline. This is a taboo smashing book which solves the problem of modernity and explains how to be a 'spiritual technologist' who can live and love freely in 'spiritual fullness' without relying on a belief in god. Touching on everything from 'brain science' to AI, Jankel offers a 'path to meaning', allowing us to move beyond consumerism towards an ethical life. Full Review |
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Trials and Tribulations of a Travelling Prostitute by Andrew Mackay
Just chance you think that you're picking up a book about what can go wrong in life for an itinerant sex worker I'd better explain exactly what it was that author Andrew Mackay did for thirty three years. A travelling prostitute is a worker who is employed by one company but his services are sold out to other countries, usually at a substantial profit to the employing company and a lot of inconvenience to the employee. Mackay was an engineer who knew all that there was to be know about turbines and generators, or if he didn't could soon be up to speed to the extent of being able to teach other people. Occasionally his skills were used in the UK, but frequently he was abroad. Just every now and again he would be in those parts of the world which has the rest of us green with envy, but then there were those areas which feature heavily in the news and not in a good way. Full Review |
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Parenting through the Eyes of a Child: Memoirs of My Childhood by Tabitha Ochekpe OmeizaTabitha Ochekpe Omeiza was brought up in Nigeria and came to Britain to study for her A levels when she was 18. Her parents used their savings to give her this opportunity and called it an investment in her future. Now a qualified pharmacist, married and with a child of her own, Tabitha looks back at her childhood and reflects on the way her mother and father raised her. And she gives their parenting top marks. Full Review |
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Stream Punks by Robert Kyncl and Maany PeyvanI watch quite a lot of YouTube. I play music videos when I want to listen to a particular song I don't already have in my collection. I use it to find out how to do things, with the instruction videos they seem to have for pretty much anything. At the gym, I'll stick it on on my phone, prop it up on the cross trainer and watch some behind the scenes interviews with the cast of my favourite shows. And sometimes I'll treat it as if it is Netflix, to watch series with new episodes releasing every few days, exclusively on YouTube. Having a new smart TV adds an extra, easy way to watch without having to plug in my laptop or squint at a small phone screen. So yes, I like YouTube and I use YouTube. But I didn't know a whole lot about the site it until I read this book.Full Review |
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Tea Gardens (Britain's Heritage Series) by Twigs WayTea Gardens really began in London in the late 18th century: a trip to Kings Cross or St Pancras was effectively a trip to the country in those days. Men had their coffee houses, but they were not places where women could or would be seen. Tea was introduced to England in the 17th century but it was not until 1784 that the high duty was reduced from 119% to 12½% and tea became the drink of choice for the nation. Until then the working classes had been fuelled largely by cheap gin. Only, where would this beverage be drunk? One answer was the pleasure gardens where the fashionable went to see and be seen: by the mid 1600s tea was also being served in places such as Ranelagh Gardens. Full Review |
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Mr Tambourine Man by NicholsonBack in 1965 we heard Mr Tambourine Man by the Byrds on the radio very regularly. Nicholson was thirteen and saw the 45rpm recording of the song in the window of the local music store and would have loved to be able to buy it but didn't have the money. Thirteen-year olds didn't in those days unless it was a birthday or Christmas and you couldn't get a part-time job until you were fifteen. There would be a few of those badly-paid jobs before he finished his A levels and went to New York for three months. It's this trip which Nicholson feels turned him from being a boy into a man and allowed him to see the bigger picture. |
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Personal Stereo by Rebecca Tuhus-DubrowThese tiny 'Object Lessons', a range of books which are more like a long-form essay, explore often seemingly mundane items. Personal Stereo packs a lot of information into a small space. Split into three distinct sections: Novelty, Norm, and Nostalgia, 'Novelty' traces the origin of the Sony Walkman, from its conception by two Japanese business men to it becoming a recognised entity on the streets of America. 'Norm' follows on from the universal success of the personal stereo, relating this to the technology which it set the groundwork for, such as the ubiquitous proliferation of MP3s, the iPod, and Smartphones, leading to the eventual downfall in the popularity of the Walkman. Finally, in 'Nostalgia', Tuhus-Dubrow examines our need to hark back to a simpler time, when the personal stereo seemed the height of freedom. Full Review |
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A Bientot... by Roger Moore
The news of the death of Sir Roger Moore in May 2017 came as a great shock: he was one of those people you knew would go on for ever. There was just one small glimmer of light in the sadness - the news that a matter of days before his death he'd delivered the finished manuscript of his book, À bientôt…, to his publishers. Just a few months later a copy landed on my desk and I didn't even bother to look as though I could resist reading it straight away. Full Review |
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21 Doors to Happiness: Life Through Travel Experiences and Meditation by Chit DubeyI know that I'm not alone in having been brought up to achieve, to look down on those who had different (lesser, it would have been said) aims, but there comes a point in life when you wonder about the point of it all. Do you need to keep on achieving, and if so, why? Many years ago I had a light-bulb moment when I realised that achieving more, having more money, more material possessions didn't make me happy - and surely the point of it all was to be happy? Superficially that sounds very simple: live a life doing only what you want to do and pleasing yourself, but that doesn't bring happiness either. Chit Dubey believes that happiness is inside you and you just need to delve a little deeper to find it. Full Review |
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My Psychosis Story: A Story of Fear and Hope Through Adversity by Emmanuel OwusuMy Psychosis Story recounts Emmanuel Owusu's journey into and eventually out of psychosis. In late 2014, during a visit home for Christmas, he found himself exhausted, anxious and unable to sleep. Symptoms persisted and soon he was suffering from noise sensitivity and intense headaches. Various visits to A&E failed to diagnose a physical cause. Things deteriorated further and possible diagnoses of anxiety and post traumatic concussion were suggested. And still things got worse. Eventually, Owusu's condition deteriorated so far that he was suffering from delusions and hallucinations. An ambulance was called and he was detained - sectioned - under the Mental Health Act in 2015. Full Review |
