Category: READING

Last week I was struck with the thought that whilst I am pretty good at doing the stuff I have to do for other people or by specific deadlines, I am pretty rubbish at making progress on things that I simply want to get done for the sake of it or that I have a more-or-less open-ended time structure for. Sometimes a work task will start off on a pretty much open-ended timeline and I make some progress but then a deadline appears, usually instigated by someone else, and I rapidly make progress to ensure that I deliver it on time. I wrote down a few words on this in my notebook around the idea that I tend to need ‘external accountability’ to push forwards on tasks, did a quick internet search for that pair of words and immediately stumbled on the framework of The Four Tendencies as outlined by US author Gretchen Rubin. I have come across this framework before not least when I read Rubin’s book ‘Better Than Before’ last year as it is covered briefly in that volume (I didn’t particularly like ‘Better Than Before’ and felt it was all a bit frothy and under-researched). It turned out that Rubin had now published another book called ‘The Four Tendencies’ expanding on the framework and, because it aligned with my thoughts at the moment, I thought it was probably one that I should give a try. At the time, I happened to be sitting in a cafe in a bookshop and a quick Google search revealed that there was one copy of the book on the shelves – from that point, the purchase was pretty much inevitable.

A week on I have finished reading ‘The Four Tendencies’. Overall, I think the general concept of the framework is interesting and somewhat thought-provoking. Basically the framework is a classic 2 x 2 matrix with four quadrants defined by whether an individual tends to meet or not meet external and internal expectations. The result is four ‘tendencies’ – the Upholder who meets external and internal expectations, the Obliger who meets external expectations but struggles with internal ones, the Questioner who readily meets internal expectations but fights against external ones and the Rebel who fights against both external and internal expectations. There is a short online quiz that can be used to determine your personal tendency which is supposed to be unchangeable. Even before taking the quiz I was pretty sure I was an Obliger and this is how it turned out. However, I was pretty much convinced that my wife would be an Upholder but she turned out to be the opposite – a Rebel. Both of my daughters came through as Questioners which was not too surprising. The book WAS interesting in terms of helping me to think about the underlying concept of the framework and, in particular, in considering how thinking about the tendencies of work colleagues would influence the way that they respond to instructions, requests for information etc. However, the more of the book I read, the more frustrated with it I became. Most of what Rubin writes is based on her own ‘research’ which essentially entails talking to people and receiving comments from them on her blog and podcast and the book is written utilising lots of example quotes to support the ideas being discussed. But with this approach there is an almost inevitable feeling that there is a lot of cherry picking going on and that examples are chosen to make a desired point when perfectly sensible counter-examples can readily be imagined. Also, the deeper into things I got the more I felt that some of the writing was contradictory and muddled. For example, Rebels are portrayed as more-or-less actively seeking to, and enjoying, pushing back at expectations but I think there must be many ‘rebels’ who don’t actively want to not meet expectations – they just find that they struggle to. In fairness, Rubin does highlight that other factors such as personality traits, mindsets etc sit across the tendencies framework but, to me, this felt like saying that everything in the book could be wrong or could be hugely influenced by other factors not considered.

As an Obliger (supposedly), the secret to meeting internal expectations better is apparently to seek external accountability. This kind of rings true for me, but I am pretty sure that this is only a small part of the solution.

After I read the book I took the quiz again and came out as a Questioner. To be honest I think you could probably get whatever tendency you wanted to get with very small tweaks in the responses given. After all, the quiz is not a properly constructed research tool that has been validated in any way (one of the questions isn’t even worded in a way that makes full sense).

In summary, I like the basic idea of the four tendencies and it is an interesting aspect of personal operation to think about for a while. It just doesn’t have enough meat to it to stretched out to a full book.

Today I finished reading Carlo Rovelli’s slim volume ‘Seven Brief Lessons On Physics’. As I described in my entry ‘Reading and Walking’ last Tuesday I bought this book as a stop-gap so that I had something scientific to read in order to keep one of my daily streaks going. I had just finished Tim Flannery’s ‘Atmosphere of Hope’ and was still waiting for the March edition of Scientific American to arrive (which it has now) and so I needed something fast and after a quick diversion into Waterstone’s bookshop ‘Seven Brief Lessons…’ seem to fit the bill.

I found Seven Brief Lessons… to be a delightful read. It is VERY light on detailed scientific content but beautifully written to enhance awareness of the some of the key ideas of 20th century – general relativity, quantum mechanics, the structure of the universe, how the concept of time is linked to heat flow. Rovelli is a great writer – the words flow off the page into your head like good quality chocolate melting slowly on your tongue. As my analogy suggests, the language is frequently delicious and every time the text threatens to become overwhelmingly complex (which it must do because some of the concepts being described are overwhelming and complex) Rovelli pulls back from the brink and guides the reader onto firmer ground. Since Rovelli is Italian, credit must also go to the two translators, Simon Carnell and Erica Segre.

You will gather that I was rather beguiled by Rovelli’s writing, so I am absolutely delighted to know that he has another book ‘Reality Is Not What It Seems’ in which he outlines some of the key developments in physics from the ancient Greek philosophers through to the present day. I already have a big pile of books at home waiting to be read so it may take me a while to get to this second bite of Rovelli but it is certainly going to be added to the pile and devoured at some point.

Last night I finished reading Andrea Camilleri’s Inspector Montalbano novel ‘August Heat’. Unsurprisingly, the title alludes to the fact that the story takes place during an extremely hot August in Montalbano’s Sicily and it amused me that I was reading it at a time when we are experiencing some pretty cold weather here. The book gave me a nightly escape to warm up! As you might expect, Montalbano spends much of the book suffering in the heat, regularly changing his clothes and going for night-time swims to cool himself down and a key element of the plot is the implication that the heat rather befuddles his mind such that he behaves somewhat irrationally and allows himself to be tempted into a questionable dalliance with the twin sister of the story’s victim (a young girl whose body is found hidden in a trunk in an illegally built basement of a coastal villa).

I always enjoy Montalbano novels but I particularly liked this one as it was not too obvious how the plot would unfold but also not too convoluted. About two-thirds of the way through I thought I had been clever and identified what the main plot twist would be, but it turned out that I wasn’t right and everything unfolded in a more straightforward, but still satisfying, manner. The book ends leaving Montalbano in a rather confused state in relation to his long-term and long-distance girlfriend/partner Livia (who I have never really warmed to) and it will be interesting to see how this aspect of his life develops in the next book in the series.

I have just finished reading ‘Atmosphere of Hope’ by Tim Flannery, a 2015 follow-up to his well-known book about climate change ‘The Weather Makers’. Flannery is an acknowledged global expert on climate change and, in particular, how nations and individuals are, or are not, responding to and trying to mitigate it.

Atmosphere of Hope is an interesting, albeit slightly odd, book. It is written in short chapters of 6-7 pages (which I like – I hate books with long chapters) that, at times, seem to be a bit thrown together. It is a little like he decided to rattle off a book but couldn’t quite be bothered to craft a really good one. However, he writes well and knows his stuff so despite this weakness, the book still works and is highly informative.

There is a lot of bad news in Atmosphere of Hope. Flannery spells out how, despite some progress, we are simply not doing enough to ensure that we have a better than 50% chance of 2 degrees Celsius warming. But, as the title of the book suggests, he also offers some hope, in particular highlighting advances in third-way technologies – ones designed to actively remove carbon from the atmosphere – and the huge potential for renewable energy sources (primarily solar and wind) coupled with electric vehicles to form a major part of a climate change mitigation solution. Overall, I was left reasonably optimistic – the advances in technology are massive and the rate at which use of renewables is advancing whilst economies are still growing offers considerable hope. I was most interested, and surprised, to read about how electric vehicles could act as the battery storage mechanism to even out the unsteady supply of energy associated with most renewable sources. I had never really thought about this idea before and how excess energy generated at times of high supply could be stored in millions of small vehicle batteries which could then feed energy back into the grid at other times.

One issue with the book, which is not the fault of the book itself but rather with the time that I read it, is that it was written before the Paris climate conference in 2017 and, perhaps even more importantly, in the pre-Trump era. It would be interesting to read Flannery’s thoughts taking into account these developments – I ought to have a look online sometime to see what I can find. Or I could just wait a few years for his next book!

Last night, finally, after rather too long a time, I finished reading the 16th (I think) novel in Ian Rankin’s Rebus series: The Naming of the Dead. Unsurprisingly, the book was classic Rankin/Rebus – Edinburgh crime, social commentary, Rebus breaking rules – but in some ways this story was a little different from others in the series in that in the final analysis the secrets to the crimes were more stumbled upon than solved through clever detective work. I enjoyed the book – like anything by another of my much-read authors Bernard Cornwell, Rankin’s Rebus novels are in the ‘never fail to deliver category’, but for some reason, or reasons, I rather struggled to get through it, taking over a month, a decidedly sluggish rate of progress through a book for me.

I think that to some extent I have slipped out of the habit of reading in the evening before I sleep. For example, today I have already lost 25 minutes of my pre-sleep reading time to doing the washing up and now to writing this blog entry. The real killer is making the mistake of ‘just watching’ the 10pm News headlines on the TV, something that can easily extend to watching the whole news programme, and the local news and weather and then the national weather that follows it – that can blow 40 minutes in one go (and results in exposure to a huge amount of incredibly depressing information). So, as much as possible, I try to avoid the news. And from now on I am going to really try to get reading as soon after 10pm as I can. To help with this, and as a counterpoint to the wet, windy and cold weather we are experiencing at the moment, my next book is taking me to Sicily for another slice of Inspector Montalbano. In Montalbano’s world of crime the sun is always shining, the weather is always warm and, most importantly, there is a vast amount of sumptuous Sicilian food to read about. It’s going to be delicious.

Years and years ago I read Philip Pullman’s trilogy ‘His Dark Materials’ and thought it was wonderful. I particularly liked the concept of daemons, the plain-dwelling animals that use tree nuts as wheels and the description of death which comes, I think, in the third book. I have always wanted to re-read the books but with so many other works to get through it seems like a missed opportunity to use reading time for a repeat reading rather than of something new. I have also listened to audiobook versions of at least some of the books (I can’t remember whether I got all the way through) but lost those versions. So, recently, I decided to try the audiobooks again and bought the first volume, Northern Lights, via the Audible platform.

It has taken me a while, listening as I walk to and from work most days, but today I completed Northern Lights. I have to say that whilst I think the story is tremendous, I think I would prefer to have read the book myself. I liked the general narration by Philip Pullman himself but I found some of the character voices, particularly those of the children and Lyra, to be rather annoying. However, I know that listening to these books is probably the only way that I can get through them in a reasonable timespan so this minor annoyance is just something I will have to put up with. I can’t decide whether to crack straight on with the second book, The Subtle Knife, or to give myself a break. It probably makes sense to go straight on with the series to get continuity in the story. I can sort of remember what happens next but I found many elements of Northern Lights that I had forgotten about so hopefully things will continue in that vein. One thing I felt from this listening was that I was surprised how much the finer points of the story are explained as it goes along. My recollection of reading the books was that a lot of things remain a bit puzzling, but that didn’t seem to be the case although my recollection may relate more to the final parts of the final book which I remember being all a bit complex and difficult to fully grasp. It will be interesting to see if that remains the case.

By far the best, most inspirational, book I had as a kid was ‘Lucky Les’ by E.W. Hildick:

The hero of this book is Les, the youngest member of a family of anthropomorphised cats who, being black, is naturally the luckiest of all his brothers and sisters. In fact, Les is so lucky that he is probably the luckiest cat alive. He always gets the cream on the top of the milk and ALWAYS got the black one in a packet of fruit pastilles (a part of the story that has always lived with me). He was that lucky.

The book is beautifully illustrated with pen drawings like these on the title page:

But the main reason that Lucky Les is such a great book is that it is cleverly arranged to provide multiple possible stories. At the end of most chapters the reader can decide what will happen next to Les (one of two choices each time pointing to specific later chapters) such that he can go to one of two schools (Dr Scratch’s Academy or Miss Tabb’s [Dr Scratch is essentially a pirate masquerading as a headteacher whereas Miss Tabb is so soft and caring as to be completely ineffectual at running a school – and guess what, if you put the two of them together you get the perfect school]) and then follow one of two primary career paths (going to sea or becoming a farmer) each of which then leads to various other branches (as a farmer he can grow apples or hops, a choice which ultimately leads him in two different directions). As such, Lucky Les perhaps represents the first piece of career guidance literature that I ever read (and at that time I certainly wanted to be a farmer so it is ironic that I ended up not going to sea but studying it!). There are five possible endings to the book but a couple of parallel branches along the way so in total I think there are about nine permutations – which seems to me like a great way of keeping a young reader interested in a book for an extended period.

I really loved reading Lucky Les as a child (in the early/mid 1970s I guess) and am so pleased that I still have my original hardback copy. I must read one or two of the permutations again soon.

I have often thought that it is surprising that there are not more branching books of this kind and wondered whether I might one day have a go at writing one. Perhaps there is scope for a follow up, something along the lines of ‘What Lucky Les Did Next’ or, if I allow myself to be really cynical for a moment: ‘Unlucky Les: What Happened When The Luckiest Cat In The World Grew Up’.