book-review – Tim O'Hare

Steal Like An Artist, Show Your Work!, Keep Going – Austin Kleon #reading

I’m not sure how I first came across the work of Austin Kleon, but since I did, I have come to love his approach to creating and, in particular, his books. I’ve read Steal Like An Artist (2012) three times – in 2014, 2015 and 2025, Show Your Work! (2014) twice – in 2014 and 2025, and Keep Going (2019) twice – in 2019 and 2025. I also treated myself to a hardback edition of a special 10th Anniversary edition of Steal Like An Artist. He has now added a fourth book to his oeuvre, Don’t Call it Art (June 2026), which I’ve not read yet but surely will do soon.

It’s hard not to like Austin Kleon’s books as every aspect of them is quirky and charming… the neat, unusual, almost 15cm square size, the brightly-coloured covers, the way that regular printed text is interspersed with Kleon’s somewhat random handwriting (as per the covers) and clever, cartoon-like illustrations, and their satisfyingly uniform internal structure of ten short sections. Reading any one of these titles is a fun experience within which are embedded many nuggets of wisdom, stimulation and encouragement. An Austin Kleon book is almost guaranteed to leave you with the feeling that you have been given permission to throw caution to the wind and get creating, with words, images, musical notes or anything else that comes to mind.

To give a flavour of the books’ contents, I’ve listed the ten section headings (chapter titles) below each book cover and in most cases, included a quote from that section, a thought that I had in relation to it or just some random observation. This isn’t meant to be a systematic review of each book – think of it more as a partial view of the results of the collision between my Austin Kleon’s books and my brain!

Steal Like An Artist. There are obvious issues that can arise with copying the work of others, although as a means of developing technique, direct copying can be very effective (it was how many of the master painters of history learned their trade). Consequently, Kleon’s exhortation to steal like an artist could be seen as entering difficult territory. But what Kleon is really driving at here is the value of exposing yourself to many different styles, sources and influences and then hoovering up ideas and little bits and pieces that you can then bring together in, or use as inspiration for, your own creative work. I particularly liked a quote from the French writer Andre Gide: “Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But, since no one was listening, everything must be said again.“
Don’t Wait Until You Know Who You Are To Get Started. My key takeaway here is a reminder that action does not follow motivation, it leads it. As Kleon puts it ‘… you have to start doing the work you want to be doing.‘
Write The Book You Want To Read. Here, the reader is given a simple instruction that is really a reminder that the best creative work is an authentic reflection on the inner workings of its creator, and not produced to meet the needs of others: ‘Do the work you want to see done.‘
Use Your Hands. Kleon is a strong advocate of the idea that the best creative work involves some kind of physical labour. To encourage this, he suggests having two separate workspaces – one for physical work and one for digital work. This is something that I have utilised in my ‘home office’, where I now have a small desk where I do all of my computer-based work, and a bench where I mostly paint and create artworks.
Side Projects and Hobbies Are Important. Unlike many writers on topics related to productivity, Kleon argues that it is good to have a lot of projects going at the same time. A key benefit of this approach, he notes, is that it enables you to bounce between them, something that he describes as ‘productive procrastination’. I love this idea in principle, and it’s certainly the way that I have always wanted to operate, but I’m not at all convinced that it works. My own experience is that if I allow myself to think that I can have many ongoing projects at the same time, I end up being unable to decide which project to work on and end up making progress in none of them. I guess that perhaps it’s a matter of scale – too many (or maybe just two) major projects and action paralysis becomes likely, but having lots of interesting and stimulating minor activities that you can dip into as the mood takes you could certainly be a path to a lot of fun creating.
The Secret: Do Good Work and Share It With People. In the past I would have struggled with the latter part of this one, and I suspect this is the case for a lot of people. The problem lies with the word ‘good’ of course… As soon as you allow self-judgement to enter the fray there is every chance that you will judge what you have created as not being good enough – certainly not good enough to share with people. I think I would slightly adapt Kleon’s heading here, simplifying it to ‘Create and Share‘.
Geography Is No Longer Our Master. Kleon’s idea here is that you don’t have to physically locate yourself somewhere inspirational. You can, instead, bring inspiration into your own space by surrounding yourself with books and objects that you love. This is certainly something that I do, as my work/creating space at home is full of books, artworks, and other special items… crammed full in fact!
Be Nice (The World Is A Small Town). Within this section, Kleon stresses that it is important not to seek validation from external sources. Hmmm… this is definitely something that I struggle with, and to some extent, I can’t always see the point in doing anything if it isn’t noticed and given some kind of positive response by an audience. But, I recognise the merit of the idea – it’s much healthier to pursue an activity for the enjoyment that the process brings than using the response gained to the outcome of that activity as a measure of success.
Be Boring (It’s The Only Way To Get Work Done). Just do it.
Creativity Is Subtraction. The idea here is that creativity is much easier to develop when you place constraints on yourself. This is a point that I fully agree with. I think it’s far easier to start creating when you are faced with constraints – a small piece of paper, access to limited tools, a short period of time – than when you have everything available to you, and the results of the time spent creating under constraint are generally much more interesting too.

You Don’t Have To Be A Genius. The main takeaway message of Show Your Work! is that it’s good to allow others in to see your creative process. Kleon again visits the idea that action leads motivation, and notes that it is only by taking action that you can know what it is you have within you to create. As he puts it: ‘The only way to find your voice is to use it.‘
Think Process, Not Produce. Here we find Kleon giving another push to the idea of putting enjoyment of process above attainment of output. This is something I always have to remind myself (a point made very persuasively by Keiran Setiya in his excellent book Midlife).
Share Something Small Every Day. I try to spend a little time every morning painting – time I refer to as my ‘art practice’. I’m not always successful, but I probably manage it for 5 out of 7 days most weeks. Whenever I can, I finish up my art practice session by posting the results of my efforts on my social media accounts, so I’d say that sharing something small every day is absolutely how I do things!
Open Up Your Cabinet of Curiosities.
Tell Good Stories.
Teach What You Know.
Don’t Turn Into Human Spam.
Learn To Take a Punch. In this section I particularly liked this passage: ‘Keep your balance. You have to remember that you work is something you do, not who you are.’ I think this connects with the idea that it is important not to judge yourself on the basis of some perception of the quality of your work.
Sell Out.
Stick Around. The theme of continuous creative production is one that permeates much of Kleon’s writing. The challenge isn’t to produce one super-duper piece of creative work, it’s to be a person who creates on an ongoing basis. Kleon obviously likes this idea, so much so that he captures it in the title of his next book …

Every Day is Groundhog Day. There is an obvious overlap here with Paul Hannam’s book The Wisdom of Groundhog Day which I like a lot. I also like the quote from Anne Dillard in this section: “A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days” although my own experience is that I often tend to do whatever is not on my schedule rather than what my past self told my future self it wanted it to tackle.
Build a Bliss Station. This is a revisit of Geography is No Longer Our Master from Steal Like An Artist… and why wouldn’t it be a good idea to make your working spaces places that you love to hang out?!
Forget The Noun, Do The Verb. There’s a common piece of productivity advice to ‘verbify’ the tasks on your to do list. In this context, it’s a case of striving to be a person who creates rather than a creator, a person who is writing regularly rather than a writer, a person who enjoys painting rather than being a painter. Again, it’s all about process rather than output.
Make Gifts. One of the nice things I’ve found since I started painting about two and a half years ago, is how much pleasure it gives when I gift someone a piece of my art. It’s not a one-way gift either – they seem delighted to have received the gift, but as the gift-giver it is also very satisfying to observe that delight.
The Ordinary + Extra Attention = The Extraordinary. Kleon tells us that ‘You do not need to have an extraordinary life to make extraordinary work. Everything you need to make extraordinary art can be found in your everyday life.‘. My reading of this again takes me towards the territory of avoiding judgement and remembering that you don’t have to get all of the ducks into line before your start. It’s also a case of keeping your eyes and ears open so that you notice all of the wonderful things that surround you.
Slay The Art Monsters.
You Are Allowed To Change Your Mind. Good.
When In Doubt, Tidy Up. It’s true, sorting out my workspace, or my headspace, is pretty much a sure-fire way of jump-starting myself into some kind of action.
Demons Hate Fresh Air. How could I not like a section that quotes Henry David Thoreau? “Methinks that the moment my legs begin to move, my thoughts begin to flow.” Kleon suggests that going outside and moving around is an antidote to being in a funk of inaction… ‘But you get outside and you start walking and you come to your sense. Yeah, there are a few maniacs and some ugliness, but there are also people, smiling, birds chirping, clouds flying overhead… all the stuff. There’s possibility. Walking is a way to find possibility in your life when there doesn’t seem to be any left.‘ When I read this passage I am immediately put in mind of my poem Home.
Plant Your Garden. Kleon gives us a good place to end here, with the following passage: ‘Whenever life gets overwhelming… think about your days. Try your best to fill them in ways that get you a little closer to where you want to be. Go easy on yourself and take your time. Worry less about getting things done. Worry more about things worth doing.‘ I think it would be quite hard to find a better manifesto for how to live one’s life.

Four Thousand Weeks | Meditations for Mortals – Oliver Burkeman #reading

I’d better come straight out with it… I’m a huge fan of Oliver Burkeman’s writings, dating back to the days when he was a regular contributor to The Guardian newspaper with a column delving into productivity-related topics. I read his first book, The Antidote (subtitle: ‘happiness for people who can’t stand positive thinking’), back in 2015, and a few years ago I was lucky enough to attend a couple of fascinating online workshops that he led coinciding with the launch Four Thousand Weeks (FTW), the first of his two more-recent books that are my focus here. FTW was a book that really thrust Burkeman into the limelight, and I don’t think it is going too far to describe him as one of the most respected and influential voices in present-day discourse about the complex relationship with all seem to have with time.

Burkeman often describes himself as a ‘recovering productivity addict’, i.e. someone who in a previous phase of life had a voracious appetite for all of the latest productivity hacks and time management systems. This is a moniker that I could certainly apply to myself (especially as it is ‘recovering’ not ‘recovered’!), and so it’s no surprise that whenever I read anything written by Burkeman, or hear him speaking in an interview, I have an overwhelming feeling that he is peering directly inside my skull and is able to see and comprehend the inner workings of my brain!

Four Thousand Weeks was published in 2021, and I first read it pretty much as soon as I could get my hands on a copy, within a few weeks of the publication date. I found it so interesting and thought-provoking, that my initial reading was followed up just a few months later with another run-through the material, as I listened to Burkeman himself narrate the audiobook version. The basic premise of the book is that a typical human lifespan amounts to ~4000 weeks, and that recognising, and indeed embracing, this finite nature of life (it’s finitude), and thus appreciating that you simply cannot do all of the things you might feel that you should, or want to, do, is the secret to leading a sustainable, meaningful life (or at least a slightly less-frustrating and stressful one).

Burkeman’s most recent book, Meditations for Mortals (MFM), arrived on the scene in September 2024. Again, I read it almost immediately, having pre-ordered it as soon as it was possible to do so. MFM has a neat structure of 28 short chapters arranged into four sections, and is designed to be read one chapter per day over a period of four weeks. In this way, it forms a kind of manual that guides the reader through an exploration of many of the ideas introduced in FTW. After my first reading of MFM, I remember thinking that it would almost certainly be a good idea for me to re-read it on a fairly regular basis, perhaps annually, like a top-up dose of medicine for the mind.

I returned to FTW, and read it for a third time, in June 2025 when it was chosen as the monthly read for The TimeCrafting Trust Book Club that I participate in. That re-reading spurred me to listen to the audiobook version of MFM the following month. My feeling is that whilst FTW works pretty well as an audiobook, MFM is better consumed in physical form. In fact, I’m coming to the conclusion that most works of non-fiction don’t really work that well as audiobooks if you have any real hope of holding onto any nuggets of information or wisdom from them.

In the last year or so I’ve been making a particular effort to write notes and clip passages from the non-fiction books that I read. Sadly, I’m not really very good at doing this. Whilst I am well aware that book notes are of most value when they are a synthesis or personal summary of the material that is covered, I find that kind of note-making very difficult, and so my notes tend to be verbatim copies of phrases and passages that resonate with me in some way. I’d love to be able to write something more considered as I read, but I feel that to do so would take far too much time (that I think I don’t have), and require a lot of patience (that I am pretty sure I don’t have). [Here I find myself putting on my academic tutor voice to remind myself that ‘too much’ is a value judgement statement, and that the value that I get out of the time I choose to put into note-making is clearly directly influenced by my choice of how much time to put into the activity: small time in = probable low value, large time in = potential high value.]

Anyway, it probably won’t be a surprise for me to report that the notes that emerged from my most recent readings of FTW and MFM are extensive… This leaves me with a difficult decision to make in relation to how I go about writing the rest of this blog post. In fact, the need to make that decision is one reason why my blog post writing activity stalled in recent months, and it’s also why I am only now making significant progress writing this post having started it several days ago. What I probably ought to do is to review all of my notes, and synthesise them into a coherent whole that I can summarise in three or four nice, neat paragraphs. But, dear reader (if you exist!), I fear that to approach things that way will just result in yet more delay. [Again, I hear the academic tutor voice in my head telling me sternly that the job of a writer is to make things easy for the reader…]. Consequently, I’m not going to do that… Instead, there are, below, (mostly) a series of short passages taken directly from the text of one or other of the books, with a brief comment or response from me, a little bit like a conversation of sorts…

Four Thousand Weeks

OB: ‘it’s painful to confront how limited your time is, because it means that tough choices are inevitable and that you won’t have time for all you once dreamed you might do‘ (p30)
TOH: Well yes, that’s exactly the problem – there are so many things I want to achieve and so little time to achieve them..

OB: ‘Or we procrastinate, which is another means of maintaining the feeling of omnipotent control over life – because you needn’t risk the upsetting experience of failing at an intimidating project, obviously, if you never start it.‘ (p30)
TOH: I certainly don’t need much persuading that my chronic procrastination is a result of the fear that what I produce might not be enough to prove that I am as special as my upbringing steered me to believe that I am supposed to be.

OB: ‘You have to choose a few things, sacrifice everything else, and deal with the inevitable sense of loss that results.‘ (p55)
TOH: I know, I know, but it’s just so hard for me to let go of things. (although I guess I let go of them anyway, because I procrastinate so much that they never get done…)

OB: ‘Perhaps the most appealing way to resist the truth about your finite time is to initiate a large number of projects at once; that way, you get to feel as though you’re keeping plenty of irons in the fire and making progress on all fronts. Instead, what usually ends up happening is that you make progress on no fronts – because each time a project starts to feel difficult, or frightening, or boring, you can bounce off to a different one instead.‘ (p75)
TOH: Exactly. That is absolutely what I do and have always done. I get so far with something, it gets a bit tricky, and so I move on to something else, with the result that I am constantly frustrated with myself for not finishing things. I think that because I was pretty good at most things at school, it was easy for me to make these switches, and so I never fully developed the skill of pushing through when things got difficult.

OB: ‘whenever we succumb to distraction, we’re attempting to flee a painful encounter with our finitude‘ (p105)
TOH: I’ve seen this referred to as ‘comfortable-familiar-easy-life-syndrome’. And then you die of course.

OB: ‘The most effective way to sap distraction of its power is just to stop expecting things to be otherwise – to accept that this unpleasantness is simply what it feels like for finite humans to commit ourselves to the kinds of demanding and valuable tasks that force us to confront our limited control over how our lives unfold.‘
TOH: Didn’t someone (Susan Jeffers) write a book once about this? ‘Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway’…

OB: ‘Other people hold off entirely from starting on important projects or embarking on intimate relationships in the first place because they can’t bear the anxiety of having committed themselves to something that might or might not work out happily in practice.‘ (p215)
TOH: Indeed, and especially when, like me, your sense of self-worth is almost entirely focused on demonstrating ‘specialness’.

OB: ‘Because now is all you ever get‘ (p219)
TOH: Okay, okay, you don’t have to rub it in.

OB: ‘taking on too many projects at once [is a way] of trying to maintain the illusion that you’re in charge of things‘ (p220)
TOH: Some years ago, a colleague suggested to me that my difficulties stemmed from a need to be in control. At the time, I couldn’t square this idea in my head at all – I’ve never thought of myself as a control-freak – but over the last few years I have come to realise that yes, I’m very much constantly striving to feel some semblance of control over things/my life.

OB: ‘Let your impossible standards crash to the ground‘ (p222)
TOH: Far better to finish something and get it ‘out there’ than never finish is at all (or never even start it for that matter).

OB: ‘If you can face the truth about time in this way – if you can step more fully into the condition of being a limited human – you will reach the greatest heights of productivity, accomplishment, service and fulfilment that were ever in the cards for you to begin with. And the life you will see incrementally taking shape, in the rear-view mirror, will be one that meets the only definitive measure of what it means to have used your weeks well: not how many people you helped, or how much you got done; but what working within the limits of your moment in history and you finite time and talents, you actually got round to doing – and made life more luminous for the rest of us by doing – whatever magnificent task or weird little thing it was that you came here for.‘ (p228)
TOH: ‘what… you actually got round to doing’ [sigh]

OB: ‘The average human lifespan is absurdly, terrifyingly, insultingly short. But that isn’t a reason for unremitting despair, or for living in an anxiety-fuelled panic about making the most of your limited time. It’s a cause for relief. You get to give up on something that was always impossible – the quest to become the optimised, infinitely capable, emotionally invincible, fully independent person you’re officially supposed to be. Then you get to roll up your sleeves and start work on what’s gloriously possible instead.‘ (p234)
TOH: Okay, you’ve convinced me. I’ll make a really good plan of action and have a careful think about when the best time to get started on it will be… 😉

Meditations for Mortals

OB: ‘‘insecure overachievers’… our accomplishments, impressive as they may sometimes be, are driven ultimately by feelings of inadequacy‘ (p21)
TOH: it’s strive, strive, strive to be special

OB: ‘perhaps you’ve tethered your self-esteem to the most crazy-making standard of all “realising your potential” – which means you’ll never get to rest, because how can you ever be sure there’s not a little more potential left to realise?‘ (p21)
TOH: Well someone will tell me won’t they? Won’t they?

OB: ‘What is worry, at its core, but the activity of a mind attempting to picture every single bridge that might possibly have to be crossed in future, then trying to figure out how to cross it.‘ (p39)
TOH: Have you read my poem? What If? So What?

OB: ‘What the novelist E.L. Doctorow said about novel-writing applies to everything else, too: it’s “like driving a car at night. You never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way”.‘ (p48)
TOH: But that means being brave enough to embrace uncertainty… Perhaps I need to read my poem What If? So What? again!

OB: refers to an analogy from the book Time Surfing by Paul Loomans, a Dutch Zen monk, in which tasks or areas of life that you are avoid are referred to as ‘gnawing rats’ and the suggestion is that rather than fearing them or feeling like you should fight them it is better to befriend then. He uses the example of sorting out your shed – the advice is simply to go and stand in the shed and just observe and take stock. Solutions will start to present themselves and some small actions may be taken. (p58)
TOH: I refer to these kinds of things as ‘bad smell tasks’ – the ones that seem to hang around on your to-do list for ever.

OB: describes the value of aiming to complete an activity ‘Dailyish’ rather than setting an unattainable ideal of completing it every single day
TOH: This is very much something that I have tried to embrace, since being introduced to the idea.

OB: ‘Beyond the mountains, there are always more mountains, at least until you reach the final mountain before your time on earth comes to an end. In the meantime, few things are more exhilarating than mountaineering.‘ (p78
TOH: It’s all about the journey and not the destination as they say, or the difference between atelic and telic activities (or adopting an atelic versus a telic mindset to how you complete activities), as Keiran Setiya sets out wonderfully well in his book Midlife.

OB: ‘… if you see all of this [everyday life] as leading up to some future point when real life will begin, or when you can finally start enjoying yourself, of feeling good about yourself – then you’ll end up treating your actual life as something to ‘get through’ until one day it’ll be over, without the meaningful part ever having arrived.‘ (p122)
TOH: I can distinctly remember that when I was younger, I often wished that I was, say, ten years further on in life, which in my head was a time when I had ‘arrived’ and everything was as it should be. Life doesn’t work like that of course.

OB: ‘To treat life as a pilgrimage to a future and better existence is to disown its present value’ (W. Somerset Maugham)‘ (p127)
TOH: Beautifully put, but also devastatingly damning! Perhaps it’s time to make a start on something… 😉

A Whole Life – Robert Seethaler #reading

I read Robert Seethaler’s novel A Whole Life last summer, after it was recommended to me by a student that I teach (a recommendation that shows a remarkable level of insight from someone who doesn’t really know me or much about my life at all). Published in 2015, and shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2016, A Whole Life is, on the face of it, a simple story, recounting the life of Andreas Egger – a life that plays out almost entirely in a single valley in the Austrian Alps. It’s one of those stories within which nothing much happens and yet, in a strange way, everything happens; and everything that does happen has a significance and depth that gets right the heart of what it is to live.

Andreas Egger is born between the two world wars and arriving in the valley as a young boy is taken in by a farming family. Somewhat surprisingly, given his rather gruff and lone manner, he falls in love and marries, but the promise of a happy life shattered by when an avalanche strikes his home. He leaves to fight in the Second World War, is taken prisoner and eventually returns home only to find that a rush of development has spread its tentacles into the remote terrain of his world. He does what he needs to do, and works as an engineer building and maintaining the cable cars that have come to the area as skiing begins to grow into the modern tourism industry it is today.

Egger’s life has moments of brightness, or perhaps it is better to say that it promises moments of brightness, but the overall tone of the book is somewhat bleak and foreboding from the outset. Egger makes it through to the ripe old age of almost eighty, but throughout his life it is clear that he is always an outsider, never really integrated into the close community, never fully adjusting to the ever-changing world around him, and never being able to fully experience the loving relationships that at one point seemed to lie ahead for him.

I really enjoyed reading A Whole Life. Seethaler’s writing is precise and unfussy and through his words, it felt like an honour that Egger was sharing his existence, his whole life, with me. There were a couple of passages that stood out for me, to the extent that I grabbed hold of them as I read. The first (page 112 in my edition) captures something of Egger’s quiet, contemplative quality:

Egger didn’t usually speak on his walk. ‘When someone opens their mouth they close their ears,’ Thomas Mattl had always said, and Egger was of the same opinion.

and the second nicely illustrates the kind of philosophy that Egger absorbed by keeping his mouth shut and his ears open, in this case from a fellow inmate in a Russian prison camp:

If you’re on the way to Hell, he’d say, you have to laugh with the devils: it costs nothing, and makes the whole thing more bearable.

I don’t think it would be a bad thing to embrace some of Egger’s calm, just-get-on-with-it, approach to life. And whether I’m on the way to Hell, Heaven, or (more likely) somewhere in between, it surely does make sense to laugh with whoever you are travelling alongside.

Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome #reading

I listened to the audiobook of Swallows and Amazons, Arthur Ransome’s classic novel for children during the period from late March through to early June this year. It was a fairly long process, almost 9 hours of listening, accomplished mostly on my walks to and from work. There were two reasons for my choice of listening, the first linking to my desire to read explore more novels for children as I tried to find stories that were in any way comparable to my own attempt at a children’s adventure story (something that I have written about in my post on Cornelia Funke’s book The Thief Lord), and the second being that Swallows and Amazons was a suitable ‘R’ pick as I worked my way, for the second time, through an alphabet of author surnames in James Mustich’s wonderful book ‘1000 Books To Read Before You Die’.

Swallows and Amazons is, of course, a very well known title, and for many people it is a much-loved one. But despite its name being very familiar to me, I had never previously read a single word of it. I had a vague idea of what it was about – a bunch of kids having adventures on a boat – but for some reason I thought it was set in the Norfolk Broads rather than the Lake District.

The story revolves around the adventures of four siblings, conveniently, to give a nice balance, two boys and two girls – John, Susan, Titty and Roger – as they spend a summer holiday camping on an island in the middle of a lake and sailing their boat, Swallow, around and about each day. Published in 1930, the children unsurprisingly fall into neatly gender-stereotyped and age-constrained roles, John is very much the responsible old-head, and, naturally, captain of the Swallow. Susan, next oldest, and mate of the Swallow fulfills the ‘mother’ role, taking great care and pride in keeping their camp tidy, preparing meals and keeping the younger children in order. Titty, the younger sister, is the Able Seaman and, it turns out, a little bit of a rebel (the privilege of youth!). Finally, Roger, the baby of the family and ship’s boy, is very much treated as the youngest – being taught how to swim, sometimes being allowed to stay up late or accompany the others as a special treat, and frequently falling asleep.

The main action in the story involves the Swallows interactions with two local children, Nancy and Peggy Blackett, captain and mate of their own boat Amazon, and very much portrayed as rather unsophisticated and down-to-earth locals, in comparison to the rather ‘smart’ Walker children. Initially, the relationship between the Swallows and the Amazons is somewhat hostile but, as you might expect, they end up joining forces, first against the Blackett’s uncle James, who lives in a houseboat on the lake and seems to be inexplicably grumpy and awkward, and then against some rather unsavoury characters who they become embroiled with. Throughout the story it is very much John and Nancy who are held up as the masters of the craft of sailing their boats and leading the adventures, but in the end it is young Titty who turns out to be the real star.

Listening to the audiobook of the story was quite an odd experience. The attitudes and happenings of the story are very dated, and I will admit that the constant references to Titty took some getting used to. The story is absolutely chock full of nautical references to the extent that practically everything the children do is rendered in nautical-speak – for example, everyone else is a pirate or a landlubber, they are constantly jibing or backing the mainsail or trimming the freeboard, and everything they drink becomes grog. All of these things – the datedness, the setting, the obscure language – left me wondering how it could be that, more than 90 years after its publication, Swallows and Amazons is still often lauded and recommended as a story for modern children. Perhaps there is some innate craving for a return to the semi-wild that a child can connect with, even if they (probably) haven’t got a clue about one end of a boat from another, and almost certainly have no idea whatsoever what ‘pemmican’ is!

So did I enjoy Swallows and Amazons? Would I recommend it?

Well, let’s be honest, Swallows and Amazons wasn’t written to entertain an almost 60 year old man with limited interest and experience in sailing, reading it 95 years after it was set and published. It’s probably not surprising then, that I would have to say that I was left underwhelmed… But maybe if I was 12 years old with my thoughts turning to imagined adventures and challenges, and yearning to escape from the constraining influence of the adults in my world I might have felt differently. Then perhaps, I would have leapt onboard at the chance to join John, Susan, Titty, Roger, Nancy and Peggy as they hoist their flags, cast off and allowed the wind to fill their sails and send them racing across the lake in pursuit of their next adventure!

Wild Courage – Jenny Wood #reading

In the early months of this year I read and heard several references to a soon-to-be published book: Wild Courage by Jenny Wood. My interest was piqued further after I viewed a Livestream of an episode of the podcast ‘A Productive Conversation‘, in which the host, Mike Vardy, chatted with the author about her book (A Productive Conversation: Episode 611 – Jenny Wood talks about wild courage and fearless self-advocacy). I duly ordered the book and began reading it soon after it arrived on my doorstep, optimistic that it was going to be an interesting and enjoyable read.

Wood’s basic idea is that in order to progress we need to have courage – to push through fear of the unknown, fear of discontent, fear of failure and fear of judgement by others. She argues that successful people feel, but put aside, all of this fear, becoming their own strongest advocate, and having the courage to take whatever steps are necessary to advance towards their goal(s).

The distinctive feature, or twist, in Woods espousal of this feel the fear and do it anyway approach to life is that she identifies nine traits that generally hold negative connotations, and then recasts each of them as a type of courage that the reader is encouraged to develop and deploy. The nine traits, and their associate courage, are as follows:

WEIRD – the courage to stand out
SELFISH – the courage to stand up for what you want
SHAMELESS – the courage to stand being your efforts and abilities
OBSESSED – the courage to set your own standard
NOSY – the courage to dig deeper
MANIPULATIVE – the courage to influence others
BRUTAL – the courage to protect your time and energy
RECKLESS – the courage to take calculated risks
BOSSY – the courage to listen and lead

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with this approach, in fact I think it provides an interesting route into thinking about this territory…

(can you tell that there’s a but coming?)

…but what I wasn’t expecting from the book, and what disappointed and annoyed me as I read it, was the way that at every turn Wood focused on deploying all of this courage in one area only – career advancement and promotion – so much so that I was left feeling rather battered by the notion that this is the only thing that really matters in life.

At various points in the book I found my anger rising as Wood gave precisely the kind of advice that I detest. For example, in Brutal she instructs readers to ‘let the tree fall‘, i.e. to skip ‘unimportant’ tasks quietly. She suggests that ‘if they’re actually necessary, they’ll come around again, and you’ll have been busy doing unambiguously important work in the meantime.‘. To this I say ‘no, no, no‘. There is nothing more annoying than colleagues who fail to respond to simple requests for information citing the ‘if it’s important I’ll be asked again’ line of reasoning… It’s selfish, inefficient, and plain and simply rude; it says to the person who has sent the request that their time is not important and that it is yours to waste. No, just respond to the request promptly and don’t force people to keep track of your lack of response and to ask twice, or however many more times it takes to rouse you out of your own little world… [rant over]

I also found Wild Courage to be guilty of over-using the ‘personal story’ approach to illustrating the points that were being made. Perhaps some readers like this kind of thing. The odd personal story is fine, I think, but please sprinkle in a few from different scenarios, different worlds, other people etc., so that not every example is drawn from the world of working for Google.

In the end, I found myself frustrated by my reading of Wild Courage. It’s not that the approach and the ideas contained in the book aren’t valid. In the end, the courage that might stem from embracing each of the ‘negative’ traits can be expressed in a nice, succinct and positive manner that has much wider application that career advancement simply by putting the word courage to one side in each phrase. Then, the lessons that flow from those nine traits become a simple set of instructions:

stand out
stand up for what you want
stand behind you efforts and abilities
set your own standard
dig deeper
influence others
protect your time and energy
take calculated risks
listen and lead

which to my mind is a whole lot easier to absorb and a lot more useful than getting caught up having to justify the adoption of those negatively associated words, spinning the idea of courage out of them and suggesting that there is something a little wild about doing so. And what’s more, it’s a set of instructions that is clearly applicable to almost every aspect of life and not just the narrow, corporate-career-focus that Wood chooses to target.

The Productivity Diet – Mike Vardy #reading

The Productivity Diet is the latest book written by Mike Vardy. Mike, who is based in Victoria, British Columbia, on the western side of Canada, describes himself as a ‘seasoned productivity expert, writer, coach and podcaster’ (quoting from his own website biography), and it was through the latter, his podcast A Productive Conversation, that I first became aware of his work. I don’t know how I initially stumbled on this podcast but for some years I have been a sucker for consuming content related to productivity (or ‘how we operate’ as I prefer to think of it). At some point, listening to episodes of the podcast led me to signing up for Mike’s email newsletter and then, after he sent out a request for people who felt they had a tendency to get started later in the day to contact him, I ended up chatting with him via Zoom about the productivity challenges that I faced and the approaches to overcoming those challenges that I used. At the end of the call, I politely declined the opportunity to join a coaching course with him (£££!!!) but did sign up as a member of his online community The TimeCrafting Trust. That was in March 2024, and over the last 15 months I have got to know quite a few other members of the community, most of whom are based in North America, and participated in a wide range of online events including monthly Book Club meetings, podcast livestreams, workshops and seasonal planning sessions. I think it’s fair to say that whilst Mike and I have never met in person, I could properly describe him as a friend, albeit of the online variety.

But what of The Productivity Diet itself? Mike’s basic view is that we cannot ‘manage time’ and so, instead, we should focus on managing our attention, in particular taking into account how much energy we have at any moment. To paraphrase the book: Productivity isn’t about managing time. It’s about how we use it, how we relate to it, and how we move within it. Mike argues that we should eschew rigid productivity systems in favour of thinking about productivity as a continuous interaction between Intention, Attention, Reflection and Action. Mike’s approach, which he calls TimeCrafting, involves laying out some broad intentions for our areas of focus, but then navigating the reality of our daily experience with a sense of gentleness and responsiveness to our evolving needs.

The Productivity Diet was the subject of a Kickstarter Campaign that Mike started before I got to know him. I think there were a few hiccups along the way, but the book was launched successfully earlier this year. The launch included Mike making appearances on a number of other productivity-related podcasts, and when he announced that he was going to focus an episode of his own podcast on the book I thought it would be fun to offer my services as a stand-in ‘host’ so that rather than it being Mike Vardy having a productive conversation with himself, the episode had a more normal host-author format. A little to my surprise, and despite the fact that I have pretty much no experience of working in broadcast communications, Mike thought this was a good idea and we went ahead and had a lot of fun recording the episode. You can pick it up here if you’re at all interested: A Productive Conversation Episode 603.

There are three major pillars to TimeCrafting as set out in The Productivity Diet: Time Theming, Attention Paths and Reflection.

Mike is big on the first of these pillars, Time Theming, suggesting that it can be beneficial to designate different kinds of themes to act as guide-rails as you decide, in the moment, exactly what to do next. These themes are time-based, for example, daily, weekly, monthly, seasonal or what are termed ‘horizontal’ themes where you select to focus your attention on a particular type of activity at the same time each day. At an even longer timescale, it is suggested that you adopt an ‘Annual Axiom’ – essentially a very short (e.g. three word) description to guide your overall approach to the year ahead. In the world of TimeCrafting, one might decide to group administrative tasks together to tackle on, say, Thursday, or to designate Friday as a day to consider finance-based activities, Tuesday for ‘creating’ etc. One might decide that the focus for the week ahead is, say, ‘rejuvenation’ or ‘correspondence’, or that the next month is for ‘growing contacts’ etc. A key aspect of Time Theming is that the themes are not meant to be a way to rigidly enforce a particular regime of action, but serve more as beacons to guide you back to an intended path if you move away from it. In addition, it is perfectly fine to do tasks and activities that do not match the current intended theme if there is time and space to do so.

The term ‘Attention Path‘ relates to a factor that will influence what you choose to, or can, focus your attention on at any given moment. The Productivity Diet introduces the acronym TREAT as a way to separate out five different types of attention path. TREAT stands for Time-based, Resource-based, Energy-based, Activity-based and Theme-based. The idea is that when selecting tasks to work on next, one considers the options in relation to each of these attention path types, asking questions like: Can this task be accomplished in the time I now have available? Do I have the resources I need to hand? Do I have the energy for this? Does it make sense to do this alongside some other similar task? Does this fit within my intended theme? I know from my interactions with him, that Mike is a firm believer in designating tasks as being low, medium or high energy so that, for example, when you hit a point in a day where you feel fatigued and might otherwise grind to a complete halt (as we all do…) you can glance at your list of possible tasks and pick one or two low energy tasks to accomplish. In this way, time which might otherwise be lost to the void of the internet (for example) can still result in some useful outcome.

The third pillar of TimeCrafting is Reflection. This is the key to continuous evolution and improvement. By reflecting on your actions, for example by writing in a journal, you can identify adjustments that can be made, obstacles to overcome, approaches that can be reinforced or extended. Without meaningful reflection there is no evidence base to use to help inform the decisions you make about what to do when and how etc., and so everything just unfolds somehow in a rather haphazard manner.

I will admit that in my own day-to-day operations, I have not had a great deal of success in using daily, weekly or monthly themes. I think my work days are too variable and I do not have sufficient control over exactly what needs to be done when, for them to work in a very consistent manner. But I think that having the general approach in mind is still helpful, especially at the longer timescales (‘this week/month I will focus on finishing X’). I have had more success with horizontal theming, but the variability of my days (sometimes I have classes to teach, other days I have a meeting etc) means that my attempts to impose order on my day through horizontal themes is generally most successful during the earlier and later (non-work hours) parts of each day. Similarly, I do consider attention paths to some extent, but I find that once my day is underway I tend to forget my plans and just go with the flow. It doesn’t help that I am not very good at checking in with myself to consider whether I would benefit from re-directing my attention (even setting reminders to do this doesn’t work very well – I just ignore them much of the time!). It’s not that I think the ideas underlying TimeCrafting are not valid, quite the reverse really, but I just seem to revolt against any attempt to constrain or direct my attention even though I would very much like to be able to do so!

I like the general approach of TimeCrafting that is set out in The Productivity Diet. I’ve tried to implement what might be called ‘heavier’ systems – things like time-blocking/time-boxing – and whilst they seem to offer an attractive level of control, I always (and quickly) end up revolting against them as my feelings in the moment take over. TimeCrafting offers a more gentle, sensitive, approach to keeping yourself on track, or at least somewhere close to being on track. To use a travel analogy, TimeCrafting is like having a traditional map, understanding what all of the symbols mean and knowing generally where you want to end up, but allowing yourself flexibility to move around the terrain, informed by the map, in the way that feels most appropriate at the time. This seems to me to be a much better way to travel than to switch on the SatNav and following it blindly to the selected destination, even when the road you have just been instructed to turn down is clearly little more than a rough and ever-narrowing track heading to an almost inevitable dead end and a ton of frustration as you try to turn around or back-up, surrounded by a herd of angry cows. Give me the map and my intuition any day!

The Call of the Wild – Jack London #reading

A few years ago I discovered the wonderful book 1000 Books To Read Before You Die by James Mustich. Looking through it made me think about the range of books that I read, and in an attempt to make myself explore titles that I might not otherwise look at, I decided that I would work my way through the letters of the alphabet, picking a title written by an author whose surname started with each letter in turn. On my first trip through the alphabet back in 2020 my L title was The Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula Le Guin and then on a second, much slower, alphabetical loop that began in mid-2022 and has only fairly recently reached R, I chose The Spy Who Came In From The Cold by John Le Carre. However, on both of these occasions I came very, very close to selecting one of Jack London’s adventure stories… and so after picking up a combined volume of The Call of the Wild and White Fang in a charity shop, I decided I would finally give one of them a go, plumping for The Call of the Wild, partly because it was the first stories that London wrote, but primarily (I will admit) because it was the shorter of the two!

I enjoyed the story, which is written entirely from the perspective of Buck, a pampered St Bernard-Scotch Shepherd dog who is stolen from a California ranch and sold into service as a sled dog in Alaska. Buck soon has to get wise to the demands of his new environment, being beaten by his first owner and learning to fight with the other dogs to ensure his place in the pecking order. Over time Buck passes between several owners, and makes the long journey into the Klondike region of Canada and across the Yukon Trail. Buck soon establishes himself as the lead dog, having to brutally respond to challenges from rivals. Eventually, Buck is found in a poor state by an experienced traveller John Thornton who nurses him back to health, and the two form a strong bond. Thornton becomes rich after finding gold, and with little work for his dog team to do, Buck, now thoroughly attuned to life in the wild northlands, hears the howling of wolves and wanders off into the wilderness. Buck locates a wolf pack and then makes regular trips to socialise with a lone wolf from it. One day, Buck returns to camp to find that Thornton, his companions, and their dogs, have all been killed by native Americans, and so he sets off in search of his wild brother. Buck encounters a wolf pack and has to fight with them for survival, before discovering that his lone wolf friend is a member of the pack. The story ends with Buck answering the ‘call of the wild’ as he goes off to join with the pack.

It was interesting to read a story in which the human characters are secondary and all of the events are seen through a dog’s eyes. Buck’s journey from domesticated animal to a fearsome creature capable of matching a pack of wild wolves is fascinating to follow, and along the way there are lots of poignant moments as Buck and his human owners come to know and love each other. There are also some sickening scenes in which some of the humans show a complete lack of respect for their animal companions, and for the environment through which they are travelling.

The overarching theme of the book, at least from my perspective, centres on the harshness of the environment and the need to show it, and those traveling through it (human or canine), the utmost respect. Buck instinctively learns first to survive, and then to thrive in the wild, but most of his human owners, underestimating the power of the natural world, do not fare so well.

Call of the Wild was an enjoyable, fairly light read, and it certainly didn’t put me off indulging in another dose of canine adventure, in the form of White Fang, at some point in the future.

Deep – James Nestor #reading

I read James Nestor’s book Deep back in February/March, but I am a bit behind with my efforts to write blog entries and so I am only just getting round to writing something about it now. You could say that I have been submerged to such an extent that I have not been able to see even a glimmer of light to guide me in the right direction to get back on track…

Deep was not a book that I had ever noticed and thought I wanted to read, but one morning, at the back-end of last year, one of the students I teach in my first-year introductory oceanography module (there are almost 300 of them, although they are rarely [never?] all to be seen in the same place) came to see me during the break in one of my lectures and passed their copy of the book to me suggesting that I might like to read it. I think that my students generally assume that I am fascinated by the subjects that I teach and will love finding out more about any topic relating to them. This is actually not the case – it was a fairly random and somewhat inexplicable sequence of events that ended with me studying for an MSc and then a PhD relating to oceanography, and from there it was just a case of me continuing to follow what seemed to be the simplest path (i.e. the one that involved me making the minimum number of decisions) into my career as a Marine Science lecturer. Inexplicable it may have been (to me at least), but it’s a path that stuck, such that here I am, some 33 years later, still following it (maybe some would call it a rut!). So, in fact, I am not that interested in the undersea world, marine life and topics such as diving, I just somehow create the impression that I am fascinated by the oceans when I am teaching students about the various processes that occur within and on them.

Nevertheless, I thanked the student for passing the book to me and set it aside to read at some point. I had previously read his later book ‘Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art’, I knew that Nestor wrote well and would almost certainly have some interesting points to make, so it wasn’t really a difficult decision.

Deep is mostly about the pursuits of the very strange (to me at least) group of humans who strive to head as far as possible downwards into the ocean depths. It is nearly structured as a series of chapters titled by a depth in feet (e.g. -650, -2500, -35,850) and containing stories of human exploration towards that depth. Initially, at shallower depths, Nestor describes the pursuits of free divers, including the absolutely insane group of people that risk death competing to dive deeper and longer than their rivals. Some of the events that Nestor recounts, in which competitors emerge from the water with blood streaming from their faces, or in a semi or fully unconscious state were pretty horrific and I find it surprising that i) the ‘sport’ is allowed to continue, ii) anyone wants to participate in it and iii) Nestor still went ahead and learned to free dive so that he could join in with various activities.

In the latter part of the book, much of the content focuses on scientists and researchers who combine diving with attempts to better understand the behaviour of marine life such as various types of sharks and whales. All of this content was quite interesting, even for someone who is not at all obsessed with sharks and whales like me! It was particularly interesting to get a glimpse of the kinds of private organisations and collections of individuals that operate in this area of scientific exploration and research – often rather cavalier and unorthodox in their approach, because, I suspect, anyone trying to do the kind of ‘animal-encounters-at-close-quarters’ research that the book describes in a traditional, more highly regulated, academic setting would probably find that their efforts were thwarted by the requirements of such niggly things as risk assessments and ethical considerations.

In the end, I enjoyed reading Deep, and found it interesting to get a glimpse of the world of underwater activity it describes. However, it did nothing to make me wish that I was able to descend below the waves myself, quite the reverse in fact. I’ve always been quite happy existing on the solid substance of the land surface, and it’s pretty obvious to me that nothing is going to change that now!

The Ink Black Heart – Robert Galbraith #reading

Oh J.K. Rowling (a.k.a. Robert Galbraith)… Why oh why do you seem to be obsessed with writing ever longer lengthier novels?

The Ink Black Heart is the sixth novel in the Cormoran Strike series, written by J.K. Rowling under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith. The plot follows Strike and his former assistant, now professional partner, Robin Ellacott, as they try to get to the bottom of a complex and grisly crime – the murder of the co-creator of a highly successful online cartoon series (The Ink Black Heart of the book’s title) in the very graveyard in which the cartoon is set. The story plot is typically convoluted, throwing in lots of characters, many of whom are suspects at some point, with all of the action happening alongside the ongoing will-they-won’t-they saga of Strike and Robin’s frustrated relationship.

Compounding this complexity, the plot is made even more complicated to follow by the fact that large chunks of the dialogue between some of the characters takes place via online messaging threads. This throws up two issues for the reader. First, because the characters involved in the online messaging conversations hide their identity behind anonymous usernames it is some way into the book before you know who is talking to who (obviously, this is deliberate). Secondly, it is an (impossible?) challenge to work out how to read up to three parallel conversations between different pairs or groups of, sometimes overlapping, individuals. I can understand why the Rowling/Galbraith chose to write these sections in this way – the chat threads take place within an online game that is based on The Ink Black Heart cartoon – but I felt it made reading the book unnecessarily hard, and at times rather frustrating, work.

I should come clean… In general, I’m not a fan of long books. I like to feel that I am making reasonably rapid progress through a novel and that I won’t get stuck on the same book for more than a few weeks. So with The Ink Black Heart extending to around 1200 pages it took me a while to summon up the courage to make a start on it. However, it wasn’t simply the length of The Ink Black Heart that set me off on the wrong foot, because I’ve also had a long-standing gripe about the way that Rowling’s books seem to get longer and longer with each new one that comes out. This happened with the Harry Potter series, in which the first three titles were quite short, easily-tackled, but still satisfying stories, as the later volumes became progressively more ‘doorstop-like’ each time one appeared. I still enjoyed all of these books, but when I read them I really felt that Rowling’s writing could perhaps do with a good dose of editing… [hark at me, calling out one of the most successful, if not the most successful, writers of modern times.]

Rowling’s tendency for bloated writing is something that I think is particularly apparent in the Strike novels. I do enjoy reading them, but I can’t help but wonder whether it is really necessary to drape Strike and Robin’s relationship across quite so many pages. I think it’a all a bit tedious, and find myself almost screaming at the pair of them to just get on with it. [For balance here, I should say that both my wife and my elder daughter completely disagree with me on this point!] There is also a lot of description of minute details of events that have no bearing on the plot, which is fine if you like that sort of thing (i.e. not being allowed to get to the heart of the matter as quickly as you would like), but stretches my patience close to breaking point. I suspect that The Ink Black Heart could probably be half its present length and still be a great read (and obviously a better read in my opinion).

Perhaps, in the future, Rowling/Galbraith could write two separate books that can be read in parallel – one housing all of the crime/sleuthing-related action and then for those that can be bothered to read it, a second volume that takes a microscopic look at the trials and torments of the relationship between Strike and Robin. At the end of each chapter of the first volume the text could read something like this:

Reader:
If you want to get straight on with the exciting action to discover just how the shocking realization that Strike and Robin have just made takes them one step closer to uncovering the identity of the killer that lives in their midst, then turn the page and read on.
But if, instead, you’d like to lose the thread of the story and forget exactly who said what to whom as you read another account of Robin’s misapprehension of Strike’s words to her in their last conversation and Strike’s desperate attempts to convince himself that getting closer to Robin can’t possibly be the obvious conclusion of them spending almost every waking hour together, then switch over to the companion volume where things might eventually get ever-so-slightly slushy.

Sizzling sleuthing or risky romance? You decide…

Language of the Spirit – Jan Swafford #reading

I started reading Jan Swafford’s Language of the Spirit – An Introduction to Classical Music back in June 2023 and finally completed just a fortnight ago. It would be tempting to conclude from this that it was a book that I struggled through but, in fact, nothing could be further from the truth.

I grew up in a household that was full of classical music, from the long, purpose-made shelf unit in the living room that was stuffed full of vinyl records, to the assortment of musical instruments that my father acquired and dabbled with (flute, trumpet, clarinet, mandolin, violin). Apparently, when my brother and sister and I were very young, we would be accompanied on our way to bed by our personal favourite pieces of music, presumably each one being some piece that we had reacted to positively at some point. I don’t recall what my sister’s piece was, but I do know that my (older) brother’s piece was a movement from Schubert’s ‘Trout’ Quintet and mine was the rather stirring ‘March Slav’ by Tchaikovsky (so it is probably no coincidence that Tchaikovsky later became one of my absolute favourites).

I had piano lessons from the age of about six and then at around nine years old I began to learn the ‘cello (because apparently I had shown an interest in learning it, although I can’t say that I remember that and I suspect it was more because it was an instrument that my father wished he had been able to learn). I was never that great at the piano, and stopped after passing my Grade 6 exam, but playing the ‘cello certainly became a big part of my life all the way through my teens and well into my 20s. Over the years, I played in various ensembles and orchestras, in particular leading the ‘cello section in the Somerset Youth Orchestra, the Somerset County Orchestra, Oxford Sinfonietta and Bangor University Orchestra and being on the first desk of the ‘cello section for the annual summer gatherings of the Somerset Chamber Ensemble/Orchestra. It’s fair to say that I was a pretty good ‘cellist – although better known, I think, for my expressive playing than for a robust technique (or any kind of technique at all really – practice and I have never really been comfortable bedfellows in any area of activity…).

I always enjoyed orchestral music the most, especially music composed from around 1850 through to perhaps 1930 – the romantic and late-romantic periods – music full of emotion, passion and angst. My mother used to call the kind of music I liked best ‘troubled music’, which I guess is fair: Brahms, Tchaikovsky (and assorted other Russian composers of that time), Wagner, Sibelius, Richard Strauss, Mahler – that kind of thing. Unlike a lot of musicians, I never went much for some of the classical greats like Bach and Mozart, especially the latter, whose music (am I allowed to write this?) I tend to find rather boring.

In Language of the Spirit, Jan Swafford, a US-composer and music academic, provides a wonderful journey through the classical music canon, from early single-line chants, through all of the great names, and right up to the present day and the post-modernists. The book is mostly written on a one-composer-per-chapter basis, with most chapters being perhaps six to eight pages in length. In each case, Swafford outlines what makes each composer’s work distinctive, and provides a little detail of about their life, their influences and their major works, which brings me to the reason why it has taken me the best part of two years to finish the book…

Just for fun, I decided at the outset that I would listen to every piece of music that Swafford had picked out as being important or a good example of some aspect of a composer’s works. This meant that for each chapter I created a playlist with something like 8-15 pieces requiring multiple (many in some cases) hours of listening – Spotify was my friend! In the end, I managed to listen to every single piece that was highlighted or recommended (including several full operas) except for one piece by Stockhausen that I couldn’t find (but based on the Stockhausen works that I did listen to I can’t say I am too upset about that).

I listened to lots of music that I already knew well, lots of music that I thought that I knew well, and even more music that I didn’t know at all, some of it major works by major composers. I had a few surprises, particularly enjoying the music of Schumann (who I have never paid that much attention to in the past) and Grieg (who I always thought was a bit lightweight), and despite not really enjoying most of the noise that was described as atonal and/or post-modern, there was something about the work of Philip Glass that I enjoyed more than I feel I should have done.

Having now finished reading the book, and having listened to the last piece (John Adams’ Shaker Loops), I was spurred on to re-arrange the furniture in the small bedroom that I use as a kind of home office/personal den so that I could fit in some nice wooden CD shelves that we have struggled to find a good home for recently, and I unboxed all of the CDs (not just classical) that have sat out of sight since we packed them up last summer before having our kitchen re-modeled.

If you don’t know much about classical music but want to know more then I thoroughly recommend Swafford’s book. It is written for a general reader and gives a lot of interesting background and insight into a huge range of music. Alternatively, if you are like me, and know (or think you know) a lot about classical music already, then Language of the Spirit is a great stimulus to rediscovering old favourites and discovering new ones (and also discovering ‘music’ that you will never want to hear again for that matter – but each to their own of course!). Reading Language of the Spirit didn’t convert me into a Mozart-lover – I’m still very much in the ‘troubled music’ camp – but it did broaden my knowledge and has given me a number of composers to explore further. I also discovered that rather than being the somewhat over-sentimental ‘slush-fest’, that I recalled it being from when I played it with the Somerset Youth Orchestra over 40 years ago, Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto is indeed a rather special piece of music.