What Are You Reading The Week of 7 March 2015?

Daniel Goleman (born March 7, 1946) is an author, psychologist, and science journalist. For twelve years, he wrote for The New York Times, specializing in psychology and brain sciences. He is the author of more than 10 books on psychology, education, science, ecological crisis, and leadership.
Biography
Goleman was born in 1946 in Stockton, California, the son of Jewish college professors. He received a scholarship from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to attend Amherst College. The Amherst Independent Scholar program allowed him to transfer for his junior year to the University of California at Berkeley. He then returned to Amherst where he graduated magna cum laude. He then received a scholarship from the Ford Foundation to attend Harvard University where he received his PhD studying under David C. McClelland. He studied in India using a pre-doctoral fellowship from Harvard and a post-doctoral grant from the Social Science Research Council. He wrote his first book based on travel in India and Sri Lanka and then returned as a visiting lecturer to Harvard where during the 1970s his topic of the psychology of consciousness was popular. McClelland recommended him for a job at Psychology Today from which he was recruited by The New York Times in 1984.
Goleman co-founded the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning at Yale University's Child Studies Center which then moved to the University of Illinois at Chicago. Currently he co-directs the Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations at Rutgers University. He sits on the board of the Mind & Life Institute.
Career
Research
Goleman authored the internationally best-selling book, Emotional Intelligence (1995, Bantam Books), that spent more than one-and-a-half years on The New York Times Best Seller list. Goleman developed the argument that non-cognitive skills can matter as much as I.Q. for workplace success in Working with Emotional Intelligence (1998, Bantam Books), and for leadership effectiveness in Primal Leadership (2001, Harvard Business School Press). Goleman's most recent best-seller is Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships (2006, Bantam Books).
He developed the Emotional Intelligence Appraisal test, specifically the Emotional Competencies (Goleman) model.
In his first book, The Varieties of Meditative Experience (1977) (republished in 1988 as The Meditative Mind in 1988) Goleman used sequential chapters to describe almost a dozen different meditation systems. He wrote that "the need for the meditator to retrain his attention, whether through concentration or mindfulness, is the single invariant ingredient in the recipe for altering consciousness of every meditation system".
As an educator
Goleman has published a series of dialogues with More Than Sound entitled "Wired to Connect" on the applications of social intelligence. Those already published include:
Psychiatrist Daniel J. Siegel
Renowned brain researcher Richard Davidson
Expert on the social and economic effects of Internet technologies Clay Shirky
Film director and Educational innovator George Lucas
World-renowned psychologist on emotions Paul Ekman

A topic of his discussion with Ekman was how to empathize with others, and how we can understand other's emotions as well as our own. Goleman suggests that in light of tragedies like Hurricane Katrina, we must learn how to empathize with others in order to help them. Goleman and Ekman are both contributors to Greater Good magazine, Greater Good Science Center, University of California, Berkeley.
In 2012 Goleman published a new management training series called Leadership: A Master Class. Participants include George Kohlrieser, Howard Gardner, Warren Bennis, Daniel Siegel, Bill George, Teresa Amabile, Claudio Fernández-Aráoz, and Erica Ariel Fox.
Awards
Goleman has received many awards for his writing, including a Career Achievement award for journalism from the American Psychological Association. He was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in recognition of his efforts to communicate the behavioral sciences to the public.
Publishing history
Books
1977: The Varieties of the Meditative Experience, Irvington Publishers. ISBN 0-470-99191-7. Later republished as The Meditative Mind: The Varieties of Meditative Experience, Tarcher. ISBN 978-0-87477-833-5.
1985: Vital Lies, Simple Truths: The Psychology of Self Deception, Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 978-0-7475-3413-6
1995: Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ, Bantam Books. ISBN 978-0-553-38371-3
1997: Healing Emotions: Conversations with the Dalai Lama on Mindfulness, Emotions, and Health, Shambhala. ISBN 978-1-59030-010-7
1998: Harvard Business Review on What Makes a Leader?, Co-authors: Michael MacCoby, Thomas Davenport, John C. Beck, Dan Clampa, Michael Watkins. Harvard Business School Press. ISBN 978-1-57851-637-7
1998: Working with Emotional Intelligence, Bantam Books. ISBN 978-0-553-37858-0
2001: Primal Leadership: The Hidden Driver of Great Performance, Co-authors: Boyatzis, Richard; McKee, Annie. Harvard Business School Press. ISBN 978-1-57851-486-1
2001: The Emotionally Intelligent Workplace, Jossey-Bass. ISBN 978-0-7879-5690-5
2003: Destructive Emotions: A Scientific Dialogue with the Dalai Lama, Bantam Books. ISBN 978-0553801712. 2004 Pbk: ISBN 978-0-553-38105-4
2006: Social Intelligence: The New Science of Social Relationships, Bantam Books. ISBN 978-0-553-80352-5
2009: Ecological Intelligence: How Knowing the Hidden Impacts of What We Buy Can Change Everything, Broadway Business. ISBN 0-385-52782-9, ISBN 978-0-385-52782-8
2011: The Brain and Emotional Intelligence: New Insights, More Than Sound. ISBN 978-1-93444-115-2
2011: Leadership: The Power of Emotional Intelligence – Selected Writings, More Than Sound. ISBN 978-193444-117-6
2013: Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence, Harper. ISBN 0062114867

What are you reading this week?

Oh my gosh, MDG, I took a class with Daniel Goleman back when dinosaurs roamed the earth. He was quite a nice guy. I haven't read his books, but he certainly seemed emotionally intelligent!

I'm currently reading No Time Like the Past, Jamaica Inn, and March Book 1.

Top on my current list of eight in-progress titles is The Singer's Gun, by Emily St. John Mandel, and I can tell already, on page 89, that it's going to rate some stars. After Station Eleven and Last Night in Montreal, I trust the author, and the situation she sets up here is unique and fascinating.

Thanks for the bio - not someone I'd heard of before (although I say that quite often ;D)

I'm reading Fergus Crane by Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell and 61 hours by Lee Child. I've got Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte to listen to in the car. I'm still dipping into The Motorcycle Diaries by Che Guevara and The Day Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko. I will get back to them properly once Fergus Crane and 61 hours are done (I hope).

61 hours made me pause today with a description of Jack Reacher as "six feet five inches tall and had hands the size of supermarket chickens".... isn't this the same Jack Reacher as played by Tom Cruise in the film of the same name? I can't say that TC has ever struck me as being particularly near 6 feet let alone 6 feet five - and as for 'hands the size of supermarket chickens' - it is actually a quite disturbing image that description creates in my head.

Marking my spot: still reading The Summer of the Danes by Ellis Peters and The Very Best of Charles de Lint by Charles de Lint. Still suffering from a slight reading slump.

I am still reading In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson.

I'm just getting into H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald but so far the writing is lovely.

I am still working on Brown Girl Dreaming. That free verse is slow going but leaves lots of white space on the page, so even though it is 300 pages, it isn't nearly that long.

I'm just past the halfway mark of my third very long book in a row. This time it's Carlos Santana's free-flowing, enjoyable autobiography, The Universal Tone: Bringing My Story to Light.

Finished the Early Reviewer edition of Get In Trouble: Stories by Kelly Link.....stylistically inventive and at times magically charming.

Next up is Elephant Company: The Inspiring Story of an Unlikely Hero and the Animals Who Helped Him Save Lives in World War II by Vicki Constantine Croke.

I am going to start Ragged Company by one of my favourite authors Richard Wagamese.

I've been reading further in The Plantagenetsby Dan Jones. I'm still enjoying it even though I keep picking it up and putting it down.

I treated myself the John Le Carre's The Perfect Spy. It is very good but there is quite a vein of sadness in it that I wasn't expecting. I'm about halfway through it and it seems like there aren't any nice characters to be had.

I picked up an old hardcover by Fred Mustard Stewart, Lady Darlington. It was a bit of a soap opera with a 'murder mystery' that really wasn't. Maybe I've just been spoiled by modern forensics but it struck me as a tempest in a teacup. Still, it zipped along, didn't make any demands and I finished it in a day.

I'm more in need of a silly, comforting kind of read but I can't seem to find anything that suits me so I'm limping along(literally, because I've done something to my knee that has me worried) with the above.

>10 hemlokgang: I read Vicki Croke's Animal ER. I didn't realize she had written anything else. Elephant Company sounds interesting.

I finished Mollie Panter-Downes' One Fine Day, a lovely, subtle, intelligent novel that reveals so much about the cultural changes England underwent due to WWII.

I'm now reading The Gallery by John Horne Burns.

> diekatze.....so far it is very good. Did you like Animal ER?

I have about 75 pages left to go in The Halder War Diary: 1939-1942. I should finish it up today. It's been a tough slog but enlightening.

Finished The Very Best of Charles de Lint and started Splendors and Glooms by Laura Amy Schlitz.

I am mid-way through The Art of Joyful Living and I love much of it, but sometimes he's a little, I dunno, "tough love" ish and not in a good way? Not sure how I feel, or if he is saying stuff I need to listen to and change/understand. Spiritual work on self, oy, how it goes.

I started The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and my love-not-so-sure-I-love relationship with Haruki Murakami. The thing is I love weird in the every day/reality: people, events, thoughts, etc. However, I'm not a big fan of magic realism (or talking, then untimely death of cats - which he seems to like) ... he tends to interweave both and so throughout the last book I read by him Kafka on the Shore, I truly vacillated the entire way between loving it and wanting to pitch in into the fireplace. But so far I like this one!

I finished listening to The Increment by David Ignatius. I like to read spy novels from time-to-time and I must say I enjoyed this one even if it reminded me of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and other great spy novels of the past. Ignatius can certainly take his place along side of Le Carre and Len Deighton.

This novel is all about how things go bad at intelligence agencies all over the world and how the first duty of an intelligence officer is to tell the truth. The danger of prostituting the agency in favor of political favor is always present and this novel is about what can go wrong when that happens. I enjoyed reading this novel but do think it took a long time to get going (the first half of the book) but about half way through the action took off and never stopped. Rumor has it that this novel is required reading at certain U. Sl governmental agencies, but I doubt that. Even so it was a nice enjoyable book to listen to while communting.

I finally finished The Goldfinch, a haunting story but too much of it. It could have been shorter and packed just as strong or stronger a punch. Tired of stories of alcohol and drugs and often wondered why I didn't stop reading but it redeemed itself a lot in the last few pages. Despite all of my irritations with the book, I predict it will stay with me for some time.

>20 snash: I felt exactly the same way about it. I did like what it had to say about art.

Spring fever's got me in its grip. Spending all day outdoors while the thermometer hovers around 70. Consequently, I'm so full of fresh air and mild exercise that I have no time to read because I fall asleep. . .about now.

Very similar experience with The Goldfinch. I almost gave up on it at several different points but at the end I was really glad I finished it.

Last week I finished The Red Garden and Garden Spells , both very satisfying reads. I am almost done with Louise Penny's Bury Your Dead, the sixth in the series and for me, the best so far. Next is Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances by Neil Gaimen. I have only read two books by Neil Gaimen. I have to say each was creepy and a tad disturbing but I was in awe of his writing. When reading his books I often had a surreal, visceral experience, as if my imagination soared, and my heart was agape, stunned by the words I just read.

Finishing up the delightful The Rosie Effect and moving on to Good Evening Mrs. Craven: The Wartime Stories of Mollie Panter-Downes.

Okay, really sucked in to Wind-Up Bird Chronicle ... I have to wonder if there just is a "right" time for some books. I think what I love about Murakami the most isn't the "surreal" aspect of his writing, but the day to day things. He's incredible at looking at what makes humans tick (or fail to), yet is so matter of fact about it all.

All ~ Bailey's (previously Orange/Women's Prize, etc.) long list comes out tomorrow!

>26 CarolynSchroeder: Oh, Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is one of my top books ever. Glad you're really sucked in; I found it spellbinding.

>24 MsMaryAnn: I'm a fan of Garden Spells and, FYI, the sequel is out, First Frost. It's very satisfying, too, IMO.

I'm currently reading Jamaica Inn, and starting to like it better, and Murder in Montparnasse, and the graphic memoir El Deafo. I just finished March Book 1, a graphic memoir by Congressman John Lewis, which does an excellent job of bringing to life a time of dramatic change in the U.S. Looking forward to reading Book 2.

I gave up reading The Cuckoo's Calling. So did my wife - life's too short. I couldn't even be bothered turning to the end of the book to see who dunnit.

Still reading, and enjoying Flying Dutchman by Anthony Fokker.

I'm still reading The Lotus Eaters by Tatjana Soli. My book club met on Friday to discuss it and only 1 person had finished it, which is really unusual because we usually all finish the book on time. We all love the book, but had various road blocks preventing us from finishing.

Just 2 out of 6 short stories left of A Day of Fire reading aloud with DH after visiting the Pompeii exhibition in Seattle on Saturday. The interconnected stories started off rather slow and with a bit of silly romance but stories 3 and 4 were quite an improvement.

I recently finished Terry Tempest Williams' Refuge and Edwidge Danticat's Claire of the Sea Light. Both were excellent.

I'm currently reading Erik Larson's Dead Wake which is great.

And I'm actually listening to two books, Amy Poehler's very funny Yes Please and Colin Cottrell's The Merry Misogynist.

It's spring break and I thought I was going to spend it catching up on grading and reading, but I've been in bed the whole time with such a bad cold that even my "light" reading seems overwhelming. I WOULD still be reading Der rote Ritter (The Red Knight) by Adolf Muschg, which will probably take a while, since it's over a thousand pages. Almost done with Book I. Also almost done with L. Frank Baum's The Marvelous Land of Oz, which, I think, would be more interesting to a child than it is to me; the events are too random. Still reading Sussman's The Speech of the Grail.

>26 CarolynSchroeder: I am not usually a fan of magical realism, but thoroughly enjoyed The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. It seemed that once I stopped trying to make sense of everything, that I could just go along for the ride.

>28 cappybear: I also gave up on The Cuckoo's Calling. I found it incredibly dull, and quit about 1/3 of the way in.

>20 snash: Although there were things about The Goldfinch that I enjoyed, I really felt that it could have been much shorter. I was unimpressed by the ending, particularly, and I also found the ending of The Secret History a let-down.

Daylight savings time = more light = mild mania, so I'm not able to concentrate much on books, while being quite attuned to housework and creative projects. I am, bit by bit, re-reading an old favourite, Bill Bryson's Notes from a Small Country.

Finished the marvelous Elephant Company: The Inspiring Story of an Unlikely Hero and the Animals Who Helped Him Save Lives in World War II. Gripping from start to finish and it's true!

Next up is A Journal of a Plague Year by Daniel DeFoe.

Finished The Marvelous Land of Oz by L. Frank Baum. I found the ending quite unexpected and pleasing. I'm not sure though if I'll go on to the next volume, or read something else.

>26 CarolynSchroeder: I worried about the cat in Wind-up Bird Chronicle for most of that book (and I don't even like cats). But never fear - turns out well for the cat. Not so much for some humans. Loved that book. Kafka on the Shore remains my favorite, but WUBC is a very close second of the numerous Murakami works I've read.

Now reading The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan. I'm finding the book a little bit aware of its own worthiness (the author's voice, perhaps), but the scenes from World War II are well handled.

Finished The Boy in the Song.

So far this week, I've finished Fergus Crane, 61 hours and The Outsiders. I'm still making my way through Wuthering Heights and am trying to hurry my way through The Boy in the Smoke by Maureen Johnson as it was loaned to me and needs to be returned fairly promptly - it's the prequel to The Shades of London and I'm not sure yet whether the series would appeal to me or not - haven't read enough of the book at this point.

I really need to get my attention back on The Motorcycle Diaries and The Day Watch.

#35
Marvelous Land of Oz was a banned book in the U. S. for much of the 1950's and 60's and was removed from many public libraries during that time. The reason - supposedly Baum was a socialist, or even worse - a communist, and the book was full of socialist symbolism. Fortunately my school library had many of the series and I have read most of them. I think there were 12 in the original series written by Baum.

>39 benitastrnad: Oh my, I'd never heard that one. I loved all the L. Frank Baum Oz books (there were a lot of them - 12 sounds about right) and never picked up on that socialist/communist idea.

Just picked up Shopaholic to the Stars today. What a nice surprise; I had no idea Sophie Kinsella was coming out with another one. I haven't been reading much in the last few weeks. About 15% through How to build a Girl, which seems interesting but always manages to put me to sleep.

Finished Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard by Kiran Desai and listening to Rocks: My Life In and Out of Aerosmith by Joe Perry and David Ritz.

Reading Wildlife in America, Updated and Revised Edition by Peter Mathiessen, She Had Some Horses by Joy Harko, and One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Listening to the last disc of Holidays on Ice by David Sedaris.

I've been missing a collection of essays or articles to read between books (I rotate essays, short stories and poetry) and unable to get out of here. Should have read an old magazine instead of starting One Hundred Years. A bunch of books arrived and there is one in there that should make me very happy in this regard. I'd actually ordered it years ago and it was mistakenly returned instead of delivered. When I saw it at 25% or less than what I'd paid before I could not resist and for the first time in a long while, was able to order some books. (It's Jean Donaldson's Oh Behave! Dogs from Pavlov to Premack to Pinker. I love her work, The Culture Clash is an excellent book and I also have one of her other books, Mine!, detailed programs for counter-conditioning (etc.) dogs who resource guard.)

>39 benitastrnad: I'd never heard of that either. Makes me glad I read it!

Finished The Summer of the Danes and started The Holy Thief by Ellis Peters.

Started The Real Jane Austen, and Stumptown Volume 2, both of which I'm liking.

I'm about 60% of the way through The Bellwether Revivals (a book bullet from around here someplace) and, on another track, continuing with Middlemarch.

Bellwether has a creepy Tana French feel to it right from the beginning, especially reminiscent of the atmosphere in The Likeness. I'm not sure how much I like it, and the frequent, persistent use of "alright" is getting on my nerves, but I definitely want to know what happens.

I finished the absolutely wonderful H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald; worthy of all the buzz. Not sure what I'll read next.

No progress whatsoever on the backlog of reviews, but I finished reading two books: The Dinosaur Feather and Soldier Girls (for a RL book group). Also started reading two books: The Signature of All Things (for another RL book group) and Blood of the Tiger (ER).

Finished the very intense A Journal of the Plague Year.

Next up is a short story collection from Open Letter publications, Two or Three Years Later: Forty-nine Digressions by German author, Ror Wolf.

>2 jnwelch: I have to admit that when I am choosing the author I can be swayed by their picture. Does this person look like someone I'd want to hang out with? Daniel Goleman did. I am glad to have you confirm that :-). I read Emotional Intelligence years ago. It wasn't the best written book I've ever read and often seemed like commonsense to me, but I thought that it represented a change in thinking about intelligence and worthwhile skills to have. I do have Social Intelligence on my TBR. When looking for information on Daniel Goleman, I did find a web-site of haters. None of that information seemed to make it into the Wikipedia entry, but what I read on the web-site had the smell of jealousy to me.

I finally finished le Carre's The Perfect Spy. I wish I could say I enjoyed it as much as some of his other novels but I really can't. The phrase "a hot mess" comes to mind because it has some of his wonderful tone and phrases but, really, parts of it I didn't get what was going on. I've never said that about a le Carre!

It has been a stressful month so I'm reading a very old and old fashioned romance by Betty Neels about a vicar's daughter titled, oddly enough, The Vicar's Daughter. I am 100% certain that no one will die by violence or be betrayed in this short romance.

Still plowing ahead in The Plantagenets by Dan Jones and I have another Fred Mustard Stewart on the go, The Mephisto Waltz. It's a lot like Rosemary's Baby and, right now, that is just not what I'm needing in a novel. Also, it never ceases to irk me when these women's husbands start changing in nasty ways and the wives never seem to grasp that their husband has sold his soul to the devil. Come on, that is my go- to thought when my husband does something weird! ;)

Finished Flying Dutchman by Anthony Fokker. Am not sure which non-fiction to turn to next.

Am about 200 pages into the Narrow Road to the Deep North.

Finished the charming Mrs. Queen Takes the Train by William Kuhn, and I'm reading another Phryne Fisher mystery, this time The Castlemaine Murders. Also, Stumptown Volume 2.

Whoops! Wrong thread. Nothing to see here. . .