Book Rant – Review of ‘The Antidote – Happines for People who Hate Positive Thinking’ by Oliver Burkeman

Have you ever had the sneaking suspicion that ‘positive thinking’, as a lifestyle choice, is a little bit mental? You know the one, it’s the world of goal setting, positive visualisation and endless 10 point plans for success and happiness as expounded by a whole industry of happy clappy optimism gurus.  I have and this stuff can be truly terrifying to someone from Sheffield.   Personally, I have always felt it to be a bit forced, a little desperate, and a lot unsustainable.  But hey, each to his/her own.  I was always content to let the happiness hippies get on with their thing while I got along with my, shall we say, alternative outlook.  And all was well.  Until, that is, I began to feel the spectre of ‘positivity’ begin to encroach on my life in that unavoidable capture net, the workplace.

 It seems that, as the recession bites, positive thinking has become ubiquitous in the workplace.  Desperate Senior Managers increasingly incorporate its teachings into our everyday lives, often in an effort to convince us that doing 3 people’s jobs as well as our own is a sensible way to run a business. I have observed previously sane colleagues become infected with ‘positivity’ and make increasingly irrational decisions in fear of being perceived as ‘being negative’.  Meetings, once the forum for problem solving and debate, have become little more than motivational seminars and an exercise in self-congratulation as staff are encouraged to go around the table and tell everyone “one positive thing that has happened this week”. By the time it gets to me I’m usually too busy vomiting to contribute.

Having experienced the feeling of being devoured by this insane cult of optimism and seen, at first hand, how its overvalued doctrine can override reason and common sense, I was desperate for someone to come along and save me from the positive thinking Nazis.  And they did, in the form of Guardian columnist and psychologist, Oliver Burkeman, with his book ‘The Antidote – Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking.  And what an antidote it is.

What Burkeman doesn’t do is offer an alternative 10 point plan for happiness.  Thank God. What he does do is take you on an exploration of what is actually wrong with the positive thinking industry and the one-size-fits-all definition of happiness.  His journey takes him across the globe, literally, but also into the minds and worlds of people who have really thought about the stuff of happiness.  I mean REALLY thought about it, not just nipped into WH Smith for the latest ‘Path to Delirious Joy ’ best seller to give them a boost when they’re a feeling a bit pissed off.  He delves into the philosophical teachings of Stoicism and Buddhism; offers us psychological research; insightful interviews with a diverse range of free-thinking individuals and imaginative case studies. Then he lays it on a plate and invites the reader to actually think for themselves, something which, it seems to me, is the antithesis of the positive thinking agenda.

Burkeman’s travels take him from a motivational conference where George W Bush is a speaker (need I say more to convince you ) to a silent Buddhist retreat; from the slums of Nairobi to the ‘Museum of Failures’.  It’s a fascinating mission to redefine what we mean by happiness and how we achieve it and is packed with interesting and funny anecdotes and findings. Here are just a few of the questions that he explores:

Can ‘chasing’ happiness be bad for us?

Why do companies set goals then throw everything at achieving them even when it’s apparent that they are not working?

Why do people in the slums of Nairobi achieve a higher happiness rating than people in the affluent West?

Can constantly boosting your child’s self-esteem turn them into a self- absorbed brat?

Can setting goals be at best, unhelpful, and at worst dangerous?

Can changing our ideas on death and dying help us lead more fulfilling lives?

Burkeman puts his ideas across in a non-preachy, balanced way with plenty of wit and bags of common sense.  He doesn’t dismiss positive thinking in its entirety.  He acknowledges that there are situations where it can be useful, for example, getting into the right frame of mind for an interview.  He does, however, challenge the unrelenting doctrine of positive thinking as an all-encompassing means of achieving happiness and success.   He invites the reader to consider the idea that embracing a ‘negative’ path and all that this entails: uncertainty, facing fear and failure head on can help us toward a more contented life.  In short, shit happens, let’s deal with it. But more than that, it confirms everything that I ever suspected about the gospel of positive thinking but was too thick to put into words myself, and for that I will be eternally grateful.

For an excellent video on the perils of positive thinking by Barbara Ehrenreich please click below

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5um8QWWRvo&feature=youtu.be

Book Rant – Saturday by Ian McEwan

Saturday is a carefully executed study of a day in the life of neurosurgeon Henry Perowne and set against the backdrop of the Iraq war protest. As with many of McEwan’s novels, the plot hinges on the events that unfold following a chance incident. In this case the causal agent for all that follows is Perowne’s unpleasant encounter with Baxter, a low-life aggressive little bulldog of a man who, without wanting to give too much away, decides to pop up again in Perowne world ensuring that the poor man’s day goes from crap to very crap.

McEwan’s writing is, as ever, delicious to read. He can capture the essence of time and place better than most writers could only dream of (The Innocent is a great example if this). In Saturday, the fact that the story spans only 24 hours means that the plot can be woven through the descriptions of the minutia of Perowne’s life and for me this offered an insight into this strange middle class land that made for quite compelling reading. OK, so there were some events in Perowne’s day that made me skip a few pages. The seemingly endless depiction of the squash match had me praying for the sweet release of death before the end of the first round, but other than that I enjoyed this foray into the world of Perowne.

I have read some criticisms that object to the myopic middle class perspective, especially regarding the somewhat stereotypical study of Baxter. I can relate to those comments to some extent, but personally I found Perowne world all quite fascinating and at points amusing. As someone from a working class background myself this book was like an anthropologist’s study of posh people and boy was it an eye opener. I may as well have been hiding in a bush with a pair of binoculars for the gleeful thrill it gave me to observe how, as they say, the other half live. So while I accept the aforementioned points, I personally chose to read this detailed study of middle class life not as critique of McEwan’s inability to understand the workings of the George Forman grill while cooking on the Aga, but as a bemused gorilla sniffing an empty coke bottle and banging it on the floor before holding it to his ear. Intrigued.

The family, which comprises of neurosurgeon father, lawyer mother and 2 high achieving children live, as you would expect in a huge house in Fitzrovia Square. For anyone outside London think My fair Lady, the garden scene from Notting Hill, or any depiction of London as constructed by Americans. Man, this is poshville. Not a burger van or a burnt out pram in sight.

Following Perowne’s afternoon from hell the family come together for dinner and we can observe the creatures in their natural habitat, laughing gaily, exchanging opinions on politics without throwing chairs at each other, waxing lyrical about their time studying in Paris, grown up people calling each other “Daddy” and “darling”, not being surprised to find a bottle of wine on the table that wasn’t on a `two-for-one’ at Morrisons and all manner of behaviours that are as alien to me as those of the Wuka Wuka tribe of Borneo. I enjoyed it all immensely!

Then the evening goes, as they don’t say in Fitzrovia Square, a bit Pete Tongue. This leads me into more negative territory, with, as other reviewers have noted, a scene that was almost too ludicrous for words. This is the scene where delightful Daisy, poet extraordinaire, whips out a poem so enchanting that it stops Baxter, her assailant, in his tracks. Yes this really happens. Baxter, who at this point in the novel is happily grunting his way through Daisy’s enforced striptease sees a book of poetry written by the good lady herself and demands that she reads one the poems out loud. As her silken words waft gently towards Baxter’s ears all thoughts of `giving her one’ dissolve from his mind quicker than you can say “do you know one by Pam Ayers?”. Thank God for poetry eh. If only they had read out a few lines of John Keats during the Northern Ireland peace process they could have skipped through it in a week. Yes, I have to say this was a bit of a low point.

Despite this one flaw however, Saturday is clever, beautifully written and I would recommend it to all, whatever your class!!!!

Book Rant – A Sense of Ending – Julian Barnes

Only a mini rant here I’m afraid as I actually enjoyed this book.

The central theme for me, and indeed the point of the book, is how one remembers the past. This is the driver for the plot. It is a beautifully written and poignant examination of how time distorts memory and how we shamble along through our lives, never wanting or needing to have to re-examine past events, or the consequences of our previous actions, from the perspective of the older, and hopefully wiser,  person that we eventually become…..until of course, we do….

Which is where we find the narrator, Tony.  Other reviews can fill you in on plot details without me blathering on about it again, but in short, middle aged Tony finds himself on a bit of a crazy train of discovery as he realises that a rather minor act of petulant jealousy, committed when he was a young man, had set off a chain of events that had ultimately changed many people’s lives.

As for the characters, they are well constructed although not always likeable.  Even poor old Adrian irritated me at times, but then no one likes a smartarse.  Tony, the sort of person you can imagine being referred to as a ‘pleasant chap’, came across as bit dim at times, particularly towards the end of the novel when all the strands were coming together. Middle England , middle of the road and middle aged, Tony is the sort of person that you really want to take out on the town and get smashed on vodka, just to see what happens. However, it was useful to the plot that Tony was just a plod-along, ordinary guy as I felt that had he possessed more personality, imagination or ambition then he certainly wouldn’t have bothered to become embroiled, on any level, with the now matronly and unpleasantly bitter Veronica. Which brings me neatly on. Veronica, as the story goes, didn’t have it easy over the years, Gawd love ‘er, and she hasn’t taken it well. As she drip feeds Tony snippets of information about the previous 30+ years she attempts to ‘communicate’ her general irritation towards him by saying “you just don’t get it do you?” a lot while Tony, in my mind, sits there wearing an expression not dissimilar to one Father Dougal might wear during University Challenge (a point lost on anyone who has never seen Father Ted).  You can hardly blame him.  Dragging a straightforward answer out of poor old repressed Veronica would be like asking Katie Price to recite a soliloquy from Hamlet. On more than one occasion I was overcome with a desire to shout “FOR GOD SAKE WOMAN JUST SPIT IT OUT” while shaking her by the shoulders.  Or sometimes the neck.

As a few other reviewers have noted, I couldn’t quite understand why Tony kept going back for more of this woman’s world weary self-pity.  If you want to get snarled at regularly go to a zoo.  Curiosity was obviously a factor. Or could it be that distorted old nostalgia trip that can befall the bored, the lonely, the middle aged?  The one where they forget why they dumped fat George from Accounts in 1985 and promptly run off to Gretna with them after 3 Facebook emails?  Maybe there was an element of all of the above. I’d be interested to know what other people think about this.

That said, it is the only flaw in what is a beautifully written book.  Some passages where so stunningly crafted that I was compelled to read them several times.  Thought provoking and at times quite touching, if you spend your money on this novel it won’t be wasted. So it’s a 4 star rating from me for the fantastic writing and the poignant central theme.

Book Rant – 50 shades of Grey – Oh My, What a pile of discarded panties

Oh My, I mean really, Oh my, oh my, oh my……No readers, I have not just been whipped (pardon the pun) into a bosom heaving wreck by the size of my partner’s “impressive length”. I have in fact, just dragged myself through to the final page of this ludicrous nonsense and found myself almost speechless. Almost…

The main character, Christian Grey, is quite obviously deranged.  This does not however, deter Ana, who for some inexplicable reason, has spent so long with her head in a book that she has never looked in a mirror and noticed that she is a “total babe”.  A “total babe” who also happens to be a 21 year old virgin.  No, Ana, in the space of 3 weeks, falls so crazily in love with “Mr Grey” that she manages to bypass  the whole deranged thing and instead concentrates all her efforts on a) going from virgin to porn star faster than Usain Bolt off the blocks and  b) deciding whether to let him hit her with stuff.  As you do.

As for Mr Grey, obviously, readers can’t be allowed to see him as simply a deranged, manipulative psycho so let’s give him smouldering good looks, a few zillion quid to throw around and hey, and this is the clincher, the ability to love art and music (y’know, like Nazis do in the war films).  (Note – the bit where he plays the “haunting” piano piece, semi naked, with his eyes closed actually made me laugh so much that I almost wet myself – in a non-orgasmic way. Check it out….enjoy! ). As if that wasn’t enough he also has a personal and financial interest in saving the world from famine.  Just that old world peace and cancer to sort out and then hey, job’s a good ‘un. I mean really, how did the world ever shamble along without him? So what made this beautiful, charismatic and talented man so brutal? Could it be a traumatic childhood perhaps? Why, yes I think it could…yaaaaawn….

So, the 2 beautiful people come together (Oh my, another pun) and the rest of the book is basically about Ana wondering if she should let him hit her with stuff and then letting him hit her with stuff and Mr Grey wondering if he should stop hitting her with stuff but still hitting her with stuff while she whines on about wanting “more” love and less of the hitting stuff  and he whines on about how he doesn’t know how to give “more” cos he has only ever hit people with stuff.

In between these nonsensical blatherings they have lots of sex, which, like piano playing, speaking foreign languages and making zillions of quid, he possesses boundless expertise. Obviously.  Luckily, virginal Ana also has her “inner Goddess” to guide her on the art of sex play and soon becomes an orgasm machine, chucking them out all over the place in a rampant, fevered haze of lust. So much so that she overlooks Mr Grey’s general bastardry and bends over nicely for a few beatings. She is also too enraptured to take much notice his incessant stalking, which would have got lesser men arrested. Oh, and his ‘feeder’ tendencies that, if successful, would have surely added a good 10 stone onto Ana’s lovely buttocks which in turn would have incurred the cost of a refurb’ to the ‘red room of pain’ when his ceiling shackles needed reinforcing.  Luckily he can afford it.

As many other readers have noted, the writing is appallingly poor and, if you removed the sex bits, would resemble a love struck teenager’s diary. It’s all been said before so I won’t dwell on it. I will just say, if you are looking for erotic fiction, look elsewhere, if you are looking for an unintentionally laugh out loud bit of fluff and nonsense then crack open a bottle, put your feet up and prepare to be amused. Personally, I would just say that there goes a day of my life that I will never get back. Oh my!