Books are where I slow down, sharpen my thinking, and occasionally escape altogether.
I’m fairly indiscriminate in my tastes: leadership and self-development inevitably dominate the shelves, but they’re closely followed by autobiographies, some fiction (usually some form of comedy) and the odd occasion when I allow myself to judge a book by its cover and go off-piste.
This page is an archive of the books I wanted to read (and did) in 2018, alongside short reflections on what I took from it, or how I found it. Not formal reviews — just what stuck, what challenged me, and what I carried forward.
If you’re a reader too, consider this an open bookshelf rather than a recommendation list.
Completed
Shop Girl
Young Mary Newton, born into a large Irish family in a small Watford semi, was always getting into trouble. When she wasn’t choking back fits of giggles at Holy Communion or eating Chappie dog food for a bet, she was accidentally setting fire to the local school. Mary was a trouble magnet. And, unlike her brothers, somehow she always got ...
I found myself disappointed that I’d come to the end of this, which is a rarity because even with books I’ve enjoyed reading by the final few chapters it’s starting to feel a bit predictable. Onto the next challenge and all that. This book, however, concluding as it does while Mary is still progressing through the early stages of her career and continuing to recover from the loss of her Mother and Father, was a disappointment to reach the end of. Autobiographies are always a win with me, and given I’ve been enjoying Mary’s work on the telly for many years I’m not surprised that I enjoyed it – particularly as she read it herself. My surprise with the fact that stores used to have prop departments and employ oh-so-many people to dress windows was only replaced with sadness when I got thinking about how much we lose with our mass-produced world. I’m hoping there’s a second book on the way.
Too Much Information… or Can Everyone Just Shut Up for a Moment, Some of Us Are Trying to Think
It’s hard to imagine a world where anything you could possibly want to know about – and everything you don’t even know you want to know about – isn't accessible 24-hours a day, seven days a week, with just a few taps of our fingers. But that world once existed. And Dave Gorman remembers it. He remembers when there were only three ch...
I found Dave Gorman last year in about November (I was aware of him, but I’d never really paid attention), and the next few weeks were filled with just a little bit too much Dave Gorman. This book filled a gap that’ll keep me going until his show in November. A top read if you like stats, facts, logic and being taken on a journey which feels coincidental but which is entirely intentional.
And furthermore
From the moment Judi Dench appeared as a teenager in the York Mystery Plays it was clear that acting would be her career. Trained at London's Central School of Speech and Drama it was her performance in her twenties as Juliet in Franco Zeffirelli's memorable Old Vic production that turned her into a star. In the theatre since she has played...
Fairly entertaining, but not exactly revealing the woman behind the actor, this book is basically a look back into how things “used to be”. A nicer time, perhaps? Certainly a lot more density of talent and a much more considered theatre. Who can’t love Dame Judi, anyway?
WTF: What have we done? Why did it happen? How do we take back control?
In WTF? Robert Peston draws on his years of experience as a political, economics and business journalist to show us what has gone bad and gives us a manifesto to put at least some of it right.
WTF. Quite.
My Grandmother Sends Her Regards and Apologises
Everyone remembers the smell of their grandmother's house. Everyone remembers the stories their grandmother told them. But does everyone remember their grandmother flirting with policemen? Driving illegally? Breaking into a zoo in the middle of the night? Firing a paintball gun from a balcony in her dressing gown?
A nice bit of escapism, mixing an easy-to-guess story with harder-to-guess twists in a way which pleases me – just because I’m really impressed when things pan out to have been planned all along. Which, of course, they were – because it was bloody planned, pitched, commissioned and written. Still, one to keep you company on a long car ride.
Abandoned
Who really runs Britain?
‘Outsourcing’ – when will the horror stories stop coming? Every year the government gives private companies like G4S, Serco, Capita and ATOS £80 billion of taxpayers’ money to handle some of our most sensitive and important services – but where is their transparency? Immigration is perhaps the most challenging and divisiv...
I might come back to this at the end of the year (if there’s time), but it was just incredibly dense and from the part of it that I did read I just came to one conclusion: private companies sometimes don’t deliver contracts as they should, but most of the fuss comes from private companies delivering what they were asked to.
