Have you ever regretted reading a book — which one and why?
There have been a number of books I have disliked, a few I have actually been profoundly irritated by – a ‘sequel’ to A Christmas Carol comes immediately to mind – and some that I ploughed through in case I ended up liking it but didn’t. However, I have not at any time regretted reading a book. I don’t see why you would.
Reading a book, even one you don’t like, is always time well spent if only to mark your card for particular authors you won’t read again. There have been a few books I have thoroughly disliked but I have read other books in that style or even by that author and really enjoyed them. The bad sequels have sent me back to the original books with new appreciation for their excellence. The genres that I haven’t liked have become clear and I have avoided them afterwards. In every book, even the least appreciated, there is something to be gained. It might be a sentence that is particularly good, an image that sticks in your mind or even a character whose physical description you enjoy.
So, while there are plenty of books that are not for me, I can never regret reading a single one of them. In a country where 40% of people never read a book I am already immeasurably richer in my own life even reading a bad book. Not reading a book at all would be the real regret.
What’s the best and worst airport you’ve been to?
My family seem to love airports. They get excited when they arrive because it’s the start of the holiday. This baffles me. To me airports are soulless places that exist only to move groups of people from one place to another, usually via an extremely long walk in an atmosphere that ranges from depressing attempts by staff and travellers to ‘have fun’ to the usually offhand and sometimes downright rude attitude displayed by the security staff. In the airport you exist only as a cash cow, where overpriced shops and restaurants compete to reduce the amount of spending money you have on holiday. I get told off for not enjoying myself but I don’t see how you can in a kind of cross between a cattle market and purgatory! The holiday starts only when you get to the hotel for me.
Asian airports tend to try to make the experience of waiting for your plane relatively pleasant with Singapore and Kuala Lumpur being the standouts. Their restaurants are excellent, the shops are fascinating and reasonably priced and the family travelling together are actually cared about with great little play areas. Add to that green spaces and even art galleries and you have airports that make an effort.
The worst airport by a country mile is Newark New Jersey. The food is routinely awful, ludicrously overpriced and served as quickly and in as perfunctory manner as possible. Then you get to security which is unpleasant even by the usual standards of the profession. They all seem to be annoyed that they aren’t in the FBI and therefore are unable to attack you! In all seriousness, there is an atmosphere in that airport that seems to put everyone on edge. I don’t intend to ever go to the US again, but if I did I would avoid Newark like the plague.
It would be so good if someone could temporarily lobotomise me whilst I am in the airport and re-engage my thinking faculties when I get to my hotel at the other end!!
If you could relive one year of your life, which one would it be?
This is similar to a recent daily prompt but supersized to ask about a whole year. So, let’s look at the concept in detail to examine how flawed it actually is.
There are three possibilities. One, you relive it from the inside as it happened only with the knowledge of what happens afterwards. How bad would that be? You could see your mistakes, know what they lead to but be compelled to make those mistakes once more. It would be like a horror story. Whichever year you were forced to relive you would see so many stupid decisions and so many difficulties that you created for yourself or that others created for you. It would be like watching a slow motion car crash.
Two, you relive it but you have the opportunity to change what you did. OK, that’s superficially appealing, but what do you change and how do you change it? You could change something short term that has a massive long term impact because you didn’t think it through properly. You could come back to the modern day and find that it’s completely changed. Read the Butterfly Effect short story to see how that works or watch Back to the Future! You could end up completely ruining what you have.
Three, you relive it as a spectator. You just watch it unfold from the outside this time. Again, you can’t change anything and you have to watch all the mistakes and all the arguments and problems without being able to do anything about them. It would be the world’s most frustrating film!
On balance it’s far better to live life forwards. I will leave the dangerous or sterile or maddening process of reliving your life to others!
On September 5, 1983 I entered the world of work for the first time, starting a career that has had more twists and turns than most! 40 years on, I thought it might be interesting to look back to what the office looked like in the analogue days of the early 80s. Now, this is […]
The World of Work 1983 style
This was written three years ago today and it is, I think, one of my best pieces of writing. Please click on the link and if you agree please comment on the original post or on this one. It’s certainly good enough to earn a much bigger audience. Whether you were around in 1983 or not, this is personal and social history par excellence.
