Daniel Goleman on Emotional Intelligence It’s been over two decades since the publication of Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence , which coincided with a spike in populism and hatred of others centred around the divisive figure of Donald J. Trump around a decade ago. Emotional Intelligence is empathy at work, which has never worked for Trump. Emotional self-awareness is a misnomer. At the memorial for conservative activist Charlie Kirk, whom...

Edna O’Brien claimed The Country Girls wrote itself. The best books often do. Indeed it’s a marvel and she is a marvellous writer. It’s easy to make the mistake of confusing her with Caithleen (Cait) Brady. The teenage protagonist growing into womanhood in rural, 1950s Tuamgraney, East Clare, and later Dublin, with a little help from her frenemy Baba Brennan. Write what you know. O’Brien/Cait knows the in and outs of every field and path through...

Filed by Fletcher Moody — Literary Correspondent I have, over the course of my career, failed to obtain interviews with some of the finest writers of the twentieth century. Hemingway refused to acknowledge I existed. Christie pretended to be someone else. But William Faulkner is the only author who ever lost my mail. I first wrote to Faulkner in the spring of 1923 at the University of Mississippi post office in Oxford, where he served as...

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-unlikely-pilgrimage-of-harold-fry Jim Broadbent usually plays somebody’s dad. Here he’s Harold Fry. Solid. Dependable. Middle-class and retired. In one of those long-standing relationships. Husband and his wife Maureen (Penelope Wilton) have signed a grief-fire. Both are retired, standoffish and stuck in their middle-class home getting further and further from each other and fading into the wallpaper. A...

BBC Radio Wales, BBC Sounds, Secrets of the Salt Path. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/p0n5p4w5 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0n7b8j7 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj32vx61x6lo https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c80p2pzgpmgo In films and television drama writers are one dimensional. Invariably, they are portrayed as some tortured soul that knocks off an international bestseller. It happens. Irvine Welsh is the poster boy...

I’d bought this book for 20 pence. I’d read the first page and thought this iit pretty good, which was a mistake, because it’s great. I read the start of the book during a hospital appointment and finished 410 pages later. I liked the Social Realism. Ben Creed is actually two writers: Chris Rickaby and Barry Thompson. I’m not sure how that works, but it does. I’m going to read their follow up books set in the same milieu, which is the USSR, one...

Penny’s Pass the Story I’m delighted to introduce our shiny new writing challenge. Our very own Penny4athought will donate $50 to ABCTales if we can finish her story in ten parts. How it works: Penny has posted the first part here and celticman has taken up the baton! https://www.abctales.com/story/penny4athought/pennys-pass-story To be next in line to do a part of the story, you will need to comment under the previous part and it'll be first...

Filed by Fletcher Moody — Literary Correspondent My editor sent me to Harrogate to find Agatha Christie. This was December 1926, and the woman had been missing for ten days. Her Morris Cowley had been found abandoned at Newlands Corner in Surrey — headlights on, fur coat on the seat, no driver. Over a thousand police officers were searching. Fifteen thousand volunteers were combing the countryside. The Home Secretary was demanding daily updates...

A writer’s job is simple as Satan testing Job. Take everything away and have the protagonist curse god (and die). Nobody much likes happy endings in The Bible or good books generally unless there’s been boils, blood, sweat and tears. Even then, somebody is going to get crucified. Tick list. Ray loses her home. Her husband, Moth has been casually told the good news from a medical specialist that they’ve identified his illness. A terminal,...

A simple way to think about Perversion of Justice: The Jeffrey Epstein Story is True Perversion of Justice: The Donald J. Trump Story. In interviews the 47 th United States President between berating those that denied him the Nobel Peace Prize and starting his latest war with Iran finds time to comment on release of the latest batch of files relating to Jeffrey Epstein. This is a subject he his intimate and expert knowledge, the kind he claims...