Interview with Gwen Adshead & Eileen Horne, author of The Devil You Know : Encounters in Forensic Psychiatry
Gwen Adshead & Eileen Horne, authors of The Devil You Know : Encounters in Forensic Psychiatry recommend some fantastic books! Before jumping into the interview, please check out Gwen & Eileen's book:
Review from Book Depository:
Dr Gwen Adshead is one of Britain's leading forensic psychiatrists. She treats serial killers, arsonists, stalkers, gang members and other individuals who are usually labelled 'monsters'. Whatever their crime, she listens to their stories and helps them to better understand their terrible acts of violence. Here Adshead invites the reader to step with her into the room to meet twelve patients and discover how minds can change. These men and women are revealed in all their complexity and shared humanity. Their stories make a powerful case for rehabilitation over revenge, compassion over condemnation. The Devil You Know will challenge everything you thought you knew about human nature.
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The Devil You Know : Encounters in Forensic Psychiatry
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Q. Do you have a favourite smart thinking book (and why that book)?
Gwen:
I think it must be Thinking Fast & Slow by Daniel Kahneman, based on his work with Amos Tversky. I like this book for many reasons, not least its writing style which is accessible given the complexity of the topic. But I like it especially because it explains how we can fool ourselves about how we make decisions. We tell ourselves that we make great decisions based on 'facts' but don’t factor in that the last emotion we had has a big influence on how we think about chance and risk. This is big issue in my world because forensic professionals have to assess risk a lot; and it’s important to try and do that justly and fairly. This book really was a shock to read but in a good way, and I feel that it has helped be a bit more sceptical about opinions that I am certain are right!
Review From Book Depository: Why is there more chance we'll believe something if it's in a bold type face? Why are judges more likely to deny parole before lunch? Why do we assume a good-looking person will be more competent? The answer lies in the two ways we make choices: fast, intuitive thinking, and slow, rational thinking. (All links earn commission from purchases. Prices accurate at time of writing)
Thinking, Fast and Slow
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So many - but the one that's top of mind today is Consolations by David Whyte because it offers a new way of thinking about ideas of humanity through common words; Review From Book Depository:
In Consolations David Whyte unpacks aspects of being human that many of us spend our lives trying vainly to avoid - loss, heartbreak, vulnerability, fear - boldly reinterpreting them, fully embracing their complexity, never shying away from paradox in his relentless search for meaning.
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the poet's reflections draw new contours and beautiful resonance from words he lays out on an a to z spectrum, encompassing his elegant insights into everything from ambition and anger to gratitude and heartbreak to vulnerability and work.
Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words
Beginning with 'Alone' and closing with 'Withdrawal', each piece in this life-affirming book is a meditation on meaning and context, an invitation to shift and broaden our perspectives on life: pain and joy, honesty and anger, confession and vulnerability, the experience of feeling overwhelmed and the desire to run away from it all. Through this lens, procrastination may be a necessary ripening; hiding an act of freedom; and shyness something that accompanies the first stage of revelation.
Consolations invites readers into a poetic and thoughtful consideration of words whose meaning and interpretation influence the paths we choose and the way we traverse them throughout our lives.
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Q. What's the most recent smart thinking book you've read (and how would you rate it)?
Gwen
Not sure if this counts as smart thinking; but I’ve just finished reading a book called The Word by Professor John Barton which is about the history of Bible translation. Professor Barton is an expert in his field as an academic; but his prose style is very readable and I read this book pretty much at a sitting. It may not sound like it but it’s a book for everyone who is interested in language and myth making; and how we interpret language. The history and process of translation is fascinating, whatever book you translate; and even the most hardened atheist should find something here of interest to explore how one book has come down to us through the ages, and remains the top best-selling book still. I’d give it 4/5 stars; only because it is a little bit specialist: but it has something to say to anyone who has ever had to translate for someone else and found it hard to do well.
Review From Book Depository:
The Bible is held to be both universal and specific, the source of fundamental truths inscribed in words that are exact and sacred. For much of the history of Judaism and almost the entirety of Christianity, however, believers have overwhelmingly understood scripture not in the languages in which it was first written but rather in their own - in translation.
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The Word: On the Translation of the Bible
This book examines how saints, scholars and interpreters from ancient times down to the present have produced versions of the Bible in the language of their day while remaining true to the original. It explains the challenges they negotiated, from minute textual ambiguities up to the sweep of style and stark differences in form and thought between the earliest writings and the latest, and it exposes the bearing these have on some of the most profound questions of faith: the nature of God, the existence of the soul and possibility of its salvation.
Reading dozens of renderings alongside their ancient Hebrew and Greek antecedents, John Barton traces the migration of biblical words and ideas across linguistic borders, illuminating original meanings as well as the ways they were recast. 'Translators have been among the principal agents in mediating the Bible's message,' he writes, 'even in shaping what that message is.' At the separation of Christianity from Judaism and Protestantism from Catholicism, Barton demonstrates, vernacular versions did not only spring from fault lines in religious thinking but also inspired and moulded them. The product of a lifetime's study of scripture, The Word itself reveals the central book of our culture anew - as it was written and as we know it.
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A Swim in the Pond in the Rain by George Saunders and I'd rate it an 11 on scale of 1-10. At least!
Review From Book Depository:
For the last twenty years, George Saunders has been teaching a class on the Russian short story to his MFA students at Syracuse University. In A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, he shares a version of that class with us, offering some of what he and his students have discovered together over the years. Paired with iconic short stories by Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Gogol, the seven essays in this book are intended for anyone interested in how fiction works and why it's more relevant than ever in these turbulent times.
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A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life
In his introduction, Saunders writes, "We're going to enter seven fastidiously constructed scale models of the world, made for a specific purpose that our time maybe doesn't fully endorse but that these writers accepted implicitly as the aim of art-namely, to ask the big questions, questions like, How are we supposed to be living down here? What were we put here to accomplish? What should we value? What is truth, anyway, and how might we recognize it?" He approaches the stories technically yet accessibly, and through them explains how narrative functions; why we stay immersed in a story and why we resist it; and the bedrock virtues a writer must foster. The process of writing, Saunders reminds us, is a technical craft, but also a way of training oneself to see the world with new openness and curiosity.
A Swim in a Pond in the Rain is a deep exploration not just of how great writing works but of how the mind itself works while reading, and of how the reading and writing of stories make genuine connection possible.
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Q. Do you have a favourite childhood book?
Gwen
Oh, wow… too many to choose from! And I acquired others when my children were small, as well as reading to them the ones that I loved. And 'children' is such a broad term; as a young child I loved >Beatrix Potter ( and still do), but as an older child, I loved the Wind in the Willows and The Sword in the Stone ( which I re-read the other day and it’s still fabulous and very funny) and all the Narnia books. But I think I’m going to have to choose The Tailor of Gloucester by Beatrix Potter; a tale of magic and kindness and repentance, and all on Christmas Eve.
Review From Waterstones:
In the time of swords and periwigs and full-skirted coats with flowered lappets—when gentlemen wore ruffles, and gold-laced waistcoats of paduasoy and taffeta—there lived a tailor in Gloucester.
It is Christmas Eve and the mayor must have a new coat to be married on Christmas Day morning, what is a poor tailor to do?
This tailor is very poor indeed, so poor he has barely enough money to feed himself and keep warm. With his last strength he sends out his sly cat Simpkin to fetch him the last twist of pink thread he needs to finish the coat but Simpkin has his eyes on his supper. Only some kind and rather resourceful mice that live in the dresser can save the tailor from certain ruin, will they finish in time and will they keep out of the jaws of the hungry Simpkin?
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The Tailor of Gloucester
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In early childhood, growing up by the Pacific, I loved the beautifully illustrated story of Pagoo, a baby Hermit Crab guided by his pal Instinct on an undersea adventure; a little later, one beloved novel was Elizabeth Goudge's The Girl of the Limberlost, a piece of classic Americana that made me want to be a writer. And everything by Daphne du Maurier.
Review From Book Depository:
This story is set in Indiana. Most of the action takes place either in or around the Limberlost, or in the nearby, fictional town of Onabasha. The novel's heroine, Elnora Comstock, is an impoverished young woman who lives with her widowed mother, Katharine Comstock, on the edge of the Limberlost. Elnora faces cold neglect by her mother, a woman who feels ruined by the death of her husband, Robert Comstock, who drowned in quicksand in the swamp. Katharine blames Elnora for his death, because her husband died while she gave birth to their daughter and could not come to his rescue. The Comstocks make money by selling eggs and other farm products, but Mrs. Comstock refuses to cut down a single tree in the forest, or to delve for oil, as the neighbors around them are doing, even though the added income would make their lives easier.
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A Girl of the Limberlost
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Q. Do you prefer reading on paper, Kindle or listening to an audiobook?
Gwen
Paper, paper, paper….. Kindle for holiday backup where I can’t transport actual books easily (although that doesn’t stop me trying). I have listened to audiobooks when I’m driving but at no other time.
PAPER
Q. Do you have a favourite bookshop (and why that shop)?
GwenWell, I am fond of Daunts in Marylebone High St for its atmosphere and my local Waterstones in Reading is a nice place to spend time in…but my favourite is still Blackwells in Oxford because we used to go as a family and pick ‘just one book’… and then be there for a long time choosing. It was my father’s favourite and is associated in my mind with happy days out with him.
Eileen
In London, it would probably be Daunts in Holland Park - I can duck off the bustling high street and browse for hours; every staff suggestion seems to be a gem.
Many thanks to Gwen & Eileen for recommending an interesting list of books! Please don't forget to check out Rebecca's book Chokepoint Capitalism: How Big Tech and Big Content Captured Creative Labor Markets and How We'll Win Them Back.
Daryl
Image Copyrights: Penguin Books Ltd (Thinking, Fast and Slow, The Word), Faber & Faber (The Devil You Know), Canongate Books (Consolations), Bloomsbury Publishing PLC (A Swin in a Pond in the the Rain), Penguin Random House Children's UK (The Tailor Of Gloucester), Ancient Wisdom Publications (A Girl From The Limberlost).
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