December Reads

Finishing off the year with three books to feel into and think about for a long time.

How does our brain direct our experience and vice versa?

What is love and how can we generate much more of it in this polarising, challenging world?

The joy of a long, deep conversation that brings connection and learning. How to have more time and space for this kind of connection in my own life…

The Brain: 10 things you should know by British Cognitive Neuroscientist, Professor Sophie Scott was a fascinating and easy read. As she says she hoped to “offer a glimpse of the beauty and complexity of the brain”. She surely did. If you want a quick update on what science has learnt about the brain, this is your book. Succinct, applicable to how we live and captivating. Maybe that’s just me as a behavioural scientist.

Bell hooks was a feminist and revered writer and teacher. This is the first time I have read her work. I am glad to have read all about love as we go into the holidays because I have some space to really mull over what she has said. From the early pages when she writes that “cynicism is the great mask of the disappointed and betrayed heart” through to this near the end: “The understanding that love redeems appears to be a resilient aspect of the heart’s knowledge”.

Hooks writes that care and affirmation are the foundations of love. This idea solidifies my intention to keep using the word love regularly in healthcare settings and when I sign off. I hope and we work for a healthcare that is built on CARE and in coaching we are strength focused. These behaviours of care and affirmation are central to belonging, autonomy and human psychology.

Faith, Hope and Carnage by Nick Cave and Seán O’Hagan is a hint that the holidays are here when more memoir and story appear in my reading list. Having said that, this book is autobiographical but not a full memoir of Cave’s life. I picked up this book as an exploration of grief and growth, not knowing much of Cave’s music but genuinely loving his song Into My Arms from the first time I heard it on the radio.

It is a fascinating read. Nick and Seán are in conversation, in real time during the pandemic. The book is structured as an ongoing conversation over many months. I am recommending it highly for insight into the creative process and how we as humans choose our focus. Cave speaks candidly about his experiences and how they have changed in different phases of his life. It is a meditation on grief, religion, music, family, love and the not knowing, curiosity and creativity. I will think about it for a long time and probably reread it. For now I want to talk about it and listen to more of his recent music.