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A couple of years ago I did an evening class in counselling skills. As an introductory course it covered the basics with fairly broad strokes and was predominantly concerned with how to listen. The issue of listening seems simple on the surface. It actually doesn’t take too much effort to sit quietly and let theContinue reading “Why reading is better than listening”

My favourite part of Christmas is the books. Have a look at this epic bundle of Christmas presents I received. I’m lucky because my wife is so brilliant at finding books for me that I like. Its extra lucky because, on the whole, we don’t share a taste in books at all. We’re both bigContinue reading “Why You Should Judge a Book by it’s Cover”

Annual retrospectives are upon us. I never feel like I can write a best-books-of-the-year post as, no matter how many books I read in a year, most of them won’t be from that year. I’m still catching up. But a quick look at my goodreads 2013 list and I see there’s a few newer booksContinue reading “Some things I read in 2013”

A few years ago I found a copy of The Facts of Winter in a second-hand bookshop and, for reasons I can’t now remember, didn’t buy it. I regretted it almost immediately. It’s a weird book, transcriptions of dreams from 1881, translated into English, with a long afterword detailing the translators attempts to understand whyContinue reading “The Facts of Winter”

I was in the Waterstone’s in Cambridge last weekend and, given that I was on my own and had no one to hurry me up, spent so long browsing I actually needed to break for a cup of tea and a trip to their bathroom. While I was in the toilet I was enjoying the CambridgeContinue reading “A cup of tea and a nice sit down”