Stolen Focus in the Bookshop

Stolen Focus Why You Can't Pay Attention by Johann Hari

"The more novels you read, the better you were at reading other people’s emotions. It was a huge effect. This wasn’t just a sign that you were better educated—because reading nonfiction books, by contrast, had no effect on your empathy." - Johann Hari, Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention—and How to Think Deeply Again

 

A Time Of Gifts in the Bookshop

A Time Of Gifts by Patrick Leigh Fermor

"I found my mind wandering at games; loved boxing and was good at it; and in summer, having chosen rowing instead of cricket, lay peacefully by the Stour, well upstream of the rhythmic creaking and the exhortation, reading Lily Christine and Gibbon and gossiping with kindred lotus-eaters under the willow-branches." - Patrick Leigh Fermor, A Time of Gifts