I saw my friend Shaun (Sellers) last Friday as he came to the practice to lecture on ethics to our Year Implant course delegates.
I think I count Shaun as one of the guys who started to buy me books at the earliest opportunity and in fact, he bought me (completely out of the blue) ‘The Patient Paradox’ by Margaret McCartney.
That’s a game changer that book.
Over the years Shaun has bought me several books for surprises and many other people have been so kind in buying me books too but during my sabbatical period this time, I decided it was time to get rid of almost all of the books that are in the wardrobe with a closed door that never get looked at or picked up again.
I think over the past 3 years I’ve picked 1 book out of there and re-read it and therefore the dozens and dozens of books that are in that wardrobe are not available to anybody else and just stored in a void for no use.
I took them all out and took them to The Salvation Army.
The guy at The Salvation Army was utterly delighted because the books are in great condition and they’re relevant and people will buy them.
I reckon there was probably £100 worth of books in’ salvation army terms’ as part of a big drop-off I did as I was clearing out all sorts of stuff to go back to minimalization.
And so, with the greatest gratitude and I hope a degree of humility, please don’t buy me a book.
I’m currently reading ‘Tenement Kid’ the autobiography of Bobby Gillespie from Primal Scream which was bought for me by my friend Ross Anderson for my birthday.
Ross is the only person allowed to buy me books because he is my cultural and artistic mentor and because I’m so badly educated in all those matters, I can turn to him for advice and he never steers me wrong.
He is also heavily involved with a book shop.
I have given out many, many books over the years but now I think I’ll give out recommendations instead.
Almost everybody I come in contact with, in relation to books is able to buy a book if they want and so for me to give you a book that you won’t read is a disastrous waste of resources.
Many of the books that I gave back to The Salvation Army were unread because people had been kind enough to buy me them, but I’ve never found the time to read them in the list of books that I want to read before I die.
So, no gifts please, just recommendations and in return I’ll recommend back to you.
So, for the purposes of this, the book of the year by a long way is Solve for Happy by Mo Gawdat.
This is an absolute game changing book which will fuel a thousand blogs from here on in and I’ll write much more about it later.
If you get it on audible it’s read by him, if you don’t then try and get it on Hive.
Blog Post Number - 2982
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