My #reading December 2016

Why shouldn’t we separate children as young as seven or eight into two groups: those few children who are “gifted and talented” and the many, many more who aren’t? What harm is there, really, in a talent show being named a “talent show”? In my view, the biggest reason a preoccupation with talent can be […]

A Baker’s Dozen: Most Enjoyable Reads of 2016

Reviewing the books read or re-read in 2016, I chose the thirteen most satisfying. In other words, I reflected on how much stimulation and pleasure was felt sitting with the book – and why. If you have the patience, the following slideshow will countdown for this year. The rest of the post details why I […]

My #reading November 2016

When the Europeans arrived in the Sydney region, writes Aboriginal activist and elder Burnum Burnum, ‘they landed in the middle of a huge art gallery’. On the shorelines today, in the national parks and reserves, and even silently underlying suburbia, are more than 10 000 artworks, carved or painted on stone. Sydney is the world’s […]

My #reading October 2016

The upgrading of humans into gods may follow any of three paths: biological engineering, cyborg engineering and the engineering of non-organic beings. …in an upgraded world you will feel like a Neanderthal hunter in Wall Street. You won’t belong. I read Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah Harari on my kindle and highlighted […]

My #reading September 2016

“I came to the realisation that there was a major disconnect between leadership and teaching, and between teaching and learning. I realised I needed to know more about learning, how teaching facilitates this, and how teaching can be supported by leaders, whose main function shouldn’t be management.”         Prof. Stephen Dinham Leading […]

My #reading: August 2016

The Stupidity Paradox: The Power and Pitfalls of Functional Stupidity at Work by Mats Alvesson, André Spicer “Our thesis in this book is that many organisations are caught in the stupidity paradox: they employ smart people who end up doing stupid things. This can produce good results in the short term, but can pave the way […]

My #reading: July 2016

Historians indeed hope that their books might entwine intimately with the lives of their readers and that their histories may sit on bedside tables ready to enter dreams. History – that unending dialogue between the present and the past – is essential to human consciousness. It is conducted as part of the daily business of […]

My #reading: June 2016

“This is to be a sort of diary or book of notes. When I have finished filling these pages, I shall burn them. But if they should happen to survive, lets hope they fall into the hands of some curiosity-driven chatterbox of a writer; what’s it to me? The world concerns me not at all, […]

My #reading: May 2016

Schopenhauer argued that the best books deserved two readings. The second allowed for finer, more reflective interpretations, as the beginning was read in light of the end and the whole work in a new mood.   Damon Young Last month was spent in the USA; my first visit. Travelling alone, on my study tour, there was […]

My #reading April 2016

Every day I work on the edit of my book. I slog away, shifting chunks of material and moving them back, eating my salad in a daze, wondering if the linking passages I’ve written are leading me up a garden path, or are sentimental, or violate some unarticulated moral and technical code I’ve signed up […]

My #reading: March 2016

“Academic writing was actually about hiding what you didn’t know. There was a language, a technique, and I had mastered it. In everything there were gaps which language could cover over as long as you had acquired the know-how. I had, for instance, never read Adorno, knew practically nothing about the Frankfurt School, just the […]

My #reading: February 2016

“We are creatures made as much by art as by experience and what we read in books is the sum of both.”  Andy Miller “I wanted to possess all the books I had already read, as well as all those I had not – every book in the whole wide world, in other words.”  Andy Miller  Filmish: […]

Travelling in Japan: Books & Bookshops

“As in China, the Japanese literati were an unstable combination of two opposites – Confucian scholar and free-minded Taoist – so they tended to lean to one side or the other. Beian and Bosai represent the two poles. Beian was a strict moralist who refused to teach dubious people like geisha or Kabuki actors, and […]