Beau

This is an interesting read - especially for those looking to gain a better understanding of cognitive operations. I found the chapters on sleep, stress, long-term memory, and gender (and how each one effects the brain) especially interesting. The book has a really nice flow to it - and delves deep enough to ‘unpack' some of the more complex theories of neurologists and social scientists - without turning into an academic journal.

Carr's previous book, The Shallows, challenged and subsequently shaped some of my fundamental views on the very concept of technology - led alone the Internet and it's cognitive affects on human beings. In The Glass Cage I found myself critiquing and thinking deeply about my digital world once more. Automation is a seemingly invisible beast in 2015 - ubiquitous and unnoticed. However Carr, as he does best, breaks down a multitude of seemingly obvious misconceptions about machines replacing the human work force and the ideas around humans extracting value out of simply working (and what happens to us when we're reduced to observers) to present us with a challenge: “Technology has always challenged people to think about what's important in their lives, to ask themselves...what human being means...we can allow ourselves to be carried along by the technological current, wherever it may be taking us, or we can push against it. To resist invention isn't to reject invention. It's to humble invention, to bring progress down down to earth” Once again, I find myself looking at our current world and wondering whether or not we still have dominion over our machines, our social networks - even over our digitally-induced relationships. If you find yourself in a similar situation, then this book is for you.

This is as close to 5 stars I've come in a long while. I started this back in 2013 and decided to pick it up again a few months back; why I ever stopped...is beyond me.

This is a very interesting read. Caine carefully navigates her way along the commonly known ‘introversion' and ‘extroversion' spectrum - exploring all the wonderful and unique variances and intricacies along the way. She provides a rich backing of psychological research and real word examples to help her thesis (the latter bringing a very real and down to earth aesthetic and thus avoiding any shred of pseudo-intellectualism) which I personally loved.

I particularly found her research on the personality development of children to teen to be fascinating and illuminating for all sorts of reasons. Beyond this, her small chapter on ‘self-monitoring' helped me understand how the quiet can conjure confidence, and how the loud can empathise without becoming a completely different person at heart.

There's so much more to say but for now I'll just give you a nudge and recommend you check this book out. For the curious soul, I guarantee you'll find some answers.

This was quite an interesting read. Dealing with a subject matter so fraught with mystery and ambiguity is no small feat. The audacity to delve so deep into it is what bumped this up to that 4th star for me.

Bowring starts with a trip through antiquity; touching on the early Greek and Roman perceptions of this mellow state of mind via the four ‘humours'. From here is a patient stroll through national, creative, psychological, and philosophical inquiry where the notion of melancholy is brought into the light for analysis.

Beyond its ability to traverse through so much of human history, the book is a beautiful meditation on things such as the time of melancholy (long Autumn evenings, ‘the season of mists and mellow fruitlessness'), nostalgia, and the melancholic overtones evident through music, architecture, and theatre. All of these things have been of interest to me for some time now, so seeing them reflected upon in such an articulate manner was a real joy.

For me the most refreshing thing about this book is it's yearning for a time where something as, ironically, ‘enabling' as melancholy (as an enabler for clarity of thought, creativity, and eventual peace of mind) wasn't immediately cast aside as the genesis of a more serious season of depression; but rather permitted by society.

I love thinking about people, culture, technology, and the psychology in between all of those things. For that reason Selfie proved to be a fascinating read which explored a bit more than I initially expected. Storr really zooms out and starts by painting the spectrum of how culture's perception of ‘the self' has evolved over the history of humanity; from the Ancient Greek desire for ‘the perfectible self' to early Christianity to ‘the compression' and eventually onto the modern day Silicon-dreamers of California who consider the self something significantly different from what our ancestors did. I learned a great deal about social perfectionism (and the tragedy of those who weren't been able to escape it's claw), our ‘tribal self', and the timeline of where we went from so-called ‘humble' and self-sacrificial people to demigods. The self-esteem movement of the 80's and 90's was also discussed at length, with some fascinating supporting research around the modern day results of such initiatives.

This is a solid 3.5. It was a 4 to begin with but I found some of the chapters quite disorganised. Tangents are good but there were a tad too many in some cases which didn't go well with trying to follow a train of thought.

This was a fantastic little read. The world of philosophy is a dauntingly enormous and complex place to dwell, let alone enter. This book gives you a great historical breakdown of philosophical thought - highlighting significant seasons of the study, and figureheads of different thought worlds along the way. If you're looking to read some philosophy, but don't know where to start or who to read, considering picking up Levene's book. Thoroughly enjoyable.

This was a truly insightful book. Gifted to me from a dear friend in the field, psychology has long been an interest of mine from a simple outsider-looking-in perspective. I'm fascinated by how people think, and the almost-paradox of a socially caring profession that can decode the complexity of the human down into different frameworks of behavioural predispositions while, at the same time, balance the randomness and absurdity of what a mind can think and influence.

A massive misconception of mine, though, has been my understanding of the therapist. Are these mythical figures able to turn into stable, unflappable super humans in the face of crisis and disturbing moments? Are they able to control their own biases? How do they do that!? What is the end result of ‘good' therapy? Is complete transformation always the aim? Or is basic change in personhood suffice?

Love's Executioner speaks into these questions with fearless transparency. I was struck by the honesty and vulnerability of Irvin Yalom. Throughout the pages he decompresses and brings the reader into those internal, private moments either in therapy itself, or between sessions, where his mind wanders and responds to the reality unfolding in front of him. His free associations are at times almost uncomfortably private - but I feel this is precisely what he's trying to achieve; a unaltered, real-time unravelling of a human working with a fellow human. For all its seriousness, I found his desire to portray his ‘human' side often entertaining and funny - a beautiful companion piece to some of the more outlandish therapy stories.

I feel privileged to have read this book, as if I was the recipient of a Willy Wonker-style gold ticket to a room and scenario the public isn't meant to dwell in. It taught me a lot about the field, about the mind, and about the depth of thought.

Stunning. A real moment for Spot as he looks beyond the here and now and considers his fathers quickly approaching birthday. May this posture of providing baked sweets for one's parents be instilled in my little girls mind forever. I have high expectations come this May. Banger.