What it says on the tin!
I am reading a book by Nick Owen called “The magic of metaphor”. It is a collection of stories designed to engage, inspire and transform the listener and the reader. He looks at the whole idea of story-telling and pulls out the power of the story-teller when giving a story from memory rather than reading … Read more
These five key questions were suggested to me by Ben Shoshan, who is a mind set / executive coach working for Si Group. They are meant to be used when something negative happens, to reframe the situation, and change the usual reaction: 1. What could be good about this?2. What’s not perfect, yet?3. Who can … Read more
Stefan Beyst has been in contact with me. He has a webpage which sets out some of the shortcomings of Freud’s work on Leonardo da Vinci. It is a beautiful page, with lovely illustrations, and a well-argued set of points. Stefan is one of a large number of people who have been looking at this … Read more
I regularly read the weblog of Greg Perry. Today he posted a quote from Henry David Thoreau which drew me across to his weblog where does regular posts of extracts from the journals of Thoreau. Today’s quote is great – go and have a look. This quote resonates with me, because I am just lifting … Read more
I recently finished reading a book of poems by Douglas Barbour called “Fragmenting Body etc”. Douglas is from Canada. The book is published by Salt which is a joint UK / Australia press (read an excerpt here) – the output from Salt over the last few years has been impressive. I really enjoyed reading this … Read more
Today I received the latest catalogue from Peter Riley Books, a mail order seller of poetry books, new and second-hand. He is based in Cambridge, England. I’ve been getting his catalogue for a couple of years or more now. He has an incredibly diverse choice of poetry from a wide range of presses. It’s a … Read more
“Leonardo da Vinci” by Sigmund Freud was a book which I bought at the local library in a sale. Every few months they clear books and sell them on at ridiculouly low prices. Amongst the stack of trashy novels and last year’s annual books there are usually some real treats. It took me a while … Read more
According to John Kao in his book “Jamming: the art and discipline of business creativity” Jimmy Carter used the word malaise to describe the state of Americans post-Watergate and Vietnam. In Kao’s view this use of language backfired, because vague psychological language does not get to the mind-set of Americans. Well, being British I guess … Read more
Margaret J Wheatley I’m reading “Leadership and the New Science” by Margaret Wheatley at the moment. It’s a fascinating read, taking in the breadth of new sciences from quantum physics to chaos theory. I like the way she begins and ends each chapter with a vivid image, and piece of descriptive writing. I’ve given a … Read more
Books arrived from Peter Riley this morning. They included a copy of ‘M: writings 67-72’ by John Cage. I’m really excited about getting this book. I’ve been trying to get hold of some written material by Cage for a while now (maybe 2 years!) and have had no success until now. I’m particularly keen to … Read more