DANIEL FINKELSTEIN
...are you reading now?
I’VE always wanted to be able to read two books at the same time, but weirdly I’ve found it really hard. Now I’ve discovered the solution — audiobooks. So I’m just coming to the end of reading Say Nothing, Patrick Radden Keefe’s extraordinary book on the modern history of the Irish Troubles. And I’m about halfway through listening to Rory Sutherland recite his book Alchemy: The Surprising Power Of Ideas That Don’t Make Sense.
Say Nothing uses the 1972 abduction and murder of the widow and mother-of-ten Jean McConville as a way of telling the story of the IRA. It’s a very well told tale and, to my amazement, the author seems to have solved the mystery of her murder and disappearance. Gerry Adams will not be buying this book for his friends for Christmas, let’s put it that way.
Alchemy is a very strong book too. I’ve read a lot of social psychology, which features heavily in my journalism.
I’ve become used to books just repeating the same stuff. But I suspected advertising guru Rory Sutherland would do better than that and I was right.
He is really on top of the subject, original and often funny (sample: ‘Flowers are just weeds with an advertising budget’).
His theme is that what things are and what they mean are different. Now he’s said it, I see it everywhere.
...would you take to a desert island?
WINNIE-THEPOOH. It’s a book I can read again and again and always enjoy its humour and its insight into mankind. It also reminds me of my mother who, as anyone who reads my book Everything In Moderation will discover, was a big influence on my outlook.
I read the last passage of The House At Pooh Corner, the one where Christopher Robin says goodbye to Pooh, at Mum’s funeral. This was satisfying (as she would have found it funny and appropriate) but also a bit of a mistake (as it was very hard to get to the end).
...first gave you the reading bug?
AS I explain in my book, my political interest began with (certainly at the same time as) Watergate. And so did my reading. Some books had enthused me before, To Kill A Mockingbird for instance. But the first book I bought and the one that started my never-be-without-a-book-onthe-go habit was All The President’s Men by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.
It didn’t just set me reading, it also set the template for the sort of books I read and made the media seem a very attractive profession. I’m no Bob Woodward, to say the least, but without him I wonder if there’d be a book’s worth of my newspaper columns.
...left you cold?
DIPLOMACY by Henry Kissinger. I’ve met him several times and his conversation about strategy is enthralling. So I was excited to read his book, but I’ve tried three times and page 100 is as far as I got. It’s probably me.
EvEryThInG In Moderation by Daniel Finkelstein is published by Collins, £25.