Newsletters have become more important to my regular reading, and alongside those of Audrey Watters’ Second Breakfast (on technology and fitness) and Helen Beetham’s Imperfect Offerings (on education, technology and AI), I find John Naughton’s Memex a very valuable source of inspiration and further reading.
One of the links I followed from Memex was Cory Doctorow’s McLuhan lecture on enshittification. It makes for very interesting and insightful reading, analysing our relationship with tech platforms and how their evolving priorities impact on our lives.
Other articles I read this month:
- The Social Cost of Algorithmic Management
- From beating burglary to weight gain: 12 ways that working from home has changed Britain
- Working from home can bring big health benefits, study finds
One of the books I read recently is Lol Tolhurst’s Goth – A History. Lots of anecdotes and archive pictures from the late 70s and early 80s made this a treasure trove for fans of The Cure and their contemporaries. It reads more like a memoir than a history to me, but I found plenty of things I enjoyed.
On my radar for this month
Work’s been so busy at the moment that I have been mainlining fiction in recent weeks, and I am grateful indeed to have a great local library system here in Cardiff, so that I can borrow old Discworld novels to my hearts content.
Non-fiction reading 2024
Creativity and culture
- Art Matters by Neil Gaiman and Chris Riddell
- Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert
Hybrid working and leadership
- Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
- Rooms of Their Own (Where Great Writers Write), Improbable Libraries and Shedworking, all three by Alex Johnson
- Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career by Herminia Ibarra
Coaching and reflective inquiry
- The Big Book of Beautiful Questions by Warren Berger
- Coach the Person not the Problem by Marcia Reynolds
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