What I'm reading ...

I have started The Chimp Paradox by Steve Peters. It was time for some non-fiction and this came recommended. I am reading it at the same time as other members of my family. Here's the blurb:

The Chimp Paradox is an incredibly powerful mind management model that can help you become a happy, confident, healthier and more successful person. Prof Steve Peters explains the struggle that takes place within your mind and then shows how to apply this understanding to every area of your life so you can:
- Recognise how your mind is working
- Understand and manage your emotions and thoughts
- Manage yourself and become the person you would like to be
The Chimp Mind Management Model is based on scientific facts and principles, which have been simplified into a workable model for easy use. It will help you to develop yourself and give you the skills, for example, to remove anxiety, have confidence and choose your emotions. The book will do this by giving you an understanding of the way in which your mind works and how you can manage it. It will also help you to identify what is holding you back or preventing you from having a happier and more successful life.
Each chapter explains different aspects of how you function and highlights key facts for you to understand. There are also exercises for you to work with. By undertaking these exercises you will see immediate improvements in your daily living and, over time, you will develop emotional skills and practical habits that will help you to become the person that you want to be, and live the life that you want to live.

The Year of the Flood - by Margaret Atwood

This is quite a long, somewhat complex book, with a great many characters and it is told from the viewpoint, though in the third person, of two of them. This all fits together very coherently and I was never lost or particularly confused. The book hooked me in quite quickly and I was soon turning the pages wanting to know where it was going. The dystopian world seems bleak, but not without hope. I was intrigued by the hint of it being in the fairly near future - I'm guessing 2050 or thereabouts - as technology has moved on, but is not unrecognizable.

Someone told me that it is part 2 of a trilogy. I think it is more accurate to say that there is a set of 3 books, all set in the same "universe" and featuring some of the same characters. I am highly motivated to read the other too before long.

Overall, I greatly admired the quality of writing; for me, the author living up to her reputation. I will transcribe a short passage in illustration:

According to Adam One, the Fall of Man was multidimensional. The ancestral primates fell out of the trees; then they fell from vegetarianism to meat-eating. Then they fell from instinct to reason, and thus into technology; from simple signals into complex grammar, and thus into humanity; from firelessness into fire, and thence into weaponry; and from seasonal mating into an incessant sexual twitching. Then they fell from a joyous life in the moment into the anxious contemplation of the vanished past and the distant future.

What I'm reading ...

I have started The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood. This is my next book club book. I have read some of the author's work before, but not for many years. It is quite a big book, but an initial glance suggests that it will not be a struggle. Here's the blurb:

The sun brightens in the east, reddening the blue-grey haze that marks the distant ocean. The vultures roosting on the hydro poles fan out their wings to dry them. the air smells faintly of burning. The waterless flood – a manmade plague – has ended the world.
But two young women have survived: Ren, a young dancer trapped where she worked, in an upmarket sex club (the cleanest dirty girls in town); and Toby, who watches and waits from her rooftop garden. Is anyone else out there?

Outliers: The Story of Success - by Malcolm Gladwell

An excellent book which is full of interesting information and ideas.  I learned lots of things and found much food for thought. Ultimately it boils down to considering a person's background - the environment in which they were raised and where their family came from. These factors give so many clues to their likely success in life.