I picked up this book in Chania. I was happy with this pick because it was in Greek and English and I was just getting into poetry so this married up a new passion with an old passion of wanting to improve my Greek. I took ages to read this book, reading almost a poem…

Stolen Focus explores the modern factors that impact our attention spans. With a very human touch, Johann Hari presents a book that weaves in his own experiences, interviews with experts, and the most seductive modern research on the topic. Stolen Focus is anchored by Hari’s own battles with improving his attention by tracking the author’s…

Burnout to Brilliant is a light and fluffy pop-science book I enjoyed reading. Here, Dr Marny Lishman attacks the topic of Burnout in two parts, firstly describing what burnout is and secondly explaining what to do about it. It’s punchy, digestible and likely what people experiencing burnout actually need. There are a lot of short…

A Cook’s Tour chronicles Anthony Bourdain’s global adventures during the filming of his first television show. Each chapter focuses on a different leg of the journey taking us from Portugal to Vietnam and describing the food and people Bourdain encounters along the way. It’s the style of writing that shines, as usual, with Bourdain’s work.…

Lucky Jim tracks the professional and romantic struggles of Jim Dixon, an academic, as he navigates the stuffy English social scene in the mid-1900s. Jim is stuck in a world of subtle social queues and of a social anxiety that afflicts everyone just below the surface. All this of course is present even before Jim’s…

The Buddha of Suburbia tells the coming of age story of Karim, a second generation Indian migrant in 1970s England. However, oddly, the main character Karim never seems to need growing up but rather he presents as a fully formed observer making sense of the world rather than himself. Like many second generation migrants, Karim…

I’ve always enjoyed David Mitchell’s work and comedic tone. I’ve watched him on Peep Show, That Mitchell and Webb Look and of course on Would I Lie to You. Over the course of about 15 years and across these very different works, one thing has struck me about him which I can’t say about too…