Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

I’m not even going to try and pronounce this guy’s name! Flow speaks to the feeling we have when doing something we enjoy and attempts to explain it in more detail. Ultimately it seems to boil down to the enjoyment you gain from the act itself rather than the results. So, for example, you make gain some pleasure from reading a book but flow is only achieved from the act of reading itself. There are lots of examples littered throughout the book (all of them far better than my rather poor attempt just then). It’s an easy read and an interesting argument but perhaps a few too many examples to explain a point you’ve probably already got.

The Fifth Discipline by Peter M. Senge

My CIPD course at the moment centres on Knowledge Management and Organisational Learning. One of the gurus in this area is Senge and his book The Fifth Discipline. Senge sets out how he believes organisations can ‘learn’ and how it is what he calls Systems Thinking that is the crucial fifth discipline that ties it all together. The book is very interesting and puts forward some great ideas about how to help design learning interventions that stimulate thought and creativity. My version proclaimed 100 new pages and to be honest they weren’t really needed – it would have been a more enjoyable read without them.

A Fool’s Alphabet by Sebastian Faulks

The blog has taken a bit of a back seat lately with the Tour de France coming to the fore and monopolising a lot of my spare time. And then when it wasn’t that I was busy working on my CIPD homework. But I’m back and kicking things off with a bit of fiction. It’s another book offered to me by a coworker and to be honest I really should stop accepting them! The basic premise of the book is that we followed the life of our protagonist with each chapter being named after a place with some significance to them. Chapter 1 started with an ‘A’, chapter 2 with a ‘B’ etc The book was a little dull and uninspired. Not bad but just not something that will linger long in the memory.