Cider with Roadies (Maconie)

Maconie charts his early life from claims of an early encounter with the Beatles to 70s pop, into prog and discovery of the Northern soul scene before punk blasted everything away ... briefly. He paints the colours of the passing decades in flower power purple, beige polyester, baggy trousers, ripped jeans before returning to beige polyester with the Happy Mondays in Madchester 1989. Love or hate his choice in music, his passion for all music carries you along. The early highlights are avoiding the flying beerpots in a biker club with a band that only knows a handful of songs, massed battles on the dancefloor while discovering Northern Soul and being a punk in South Lancashire 1977. He goes on to drop out of university, take jobs he hates and eventually land the coveted title of music journalist with NME.

He intertwines his own history with tales of minor rock excess, following 80s bands around the world, a slightly more grown up version of 70s rock journalism. Some of the stories are laugh-out-loud funny - best not read on the early morning commuter train. With a cast of characters from his youth, wraggle-taggle teenage bands to the rock celebrities, this is a story charts the course of a generation of forty somethings

A Partisan's Daughter (de Bernieres)

Novella from de Bernieres written in the form of a conversation. Chris is bored, middle aged, middle England, suffering loss of meaning in a tired marriage that has past its sell-buy date. Roza is from Yugoslavia and full of all the passion that Chris is missing from his life. They meet when Chris attempts to pick up a prostitute, and mistakenly chooses Roza. He is embarrased into offering her a lift home. Thus begins their relatonship, with Chris finding excuses to visit, to listen to Roza's stories of her life in Yugoslavia with her Partisan father and her exploits since moving to London. The stories evolve in alternating monologue, with each telling their side of the story.

The story is a slow burner, with an evolving relationship between the characters and an underlying sexually charged connecton, that is clearly building to a crescendo. The manner of the apogee is unexpected from the earlier story, but suitably poignant. The only let-down is the concluson of the book following this point, which feels disappointingly rapid and concluded in haste.

Riding the Waves of Culture (Trompenaars)

This is a classic in exploring organisational culture, using data gathered from global workshops and interviews. Although the focus is on understanding the differences between national cultures, this provides significant context in exploring cultures within an organisation where the differences may be across departments rather than nations. Over many years, the authors have developed a database of cultural responses to their interview questions, and identified a number of axes of cultural difference describing relationships with people, time and the environment. These dimensions measure attitudes to rules vs relationships, group vs individual focus, expression of emotions, range of involvement, how status is noted, time-focus and the relationship with the environment. Each of these axes is explored in detail in the book, with data and anecdotes to illuminate the discussion.

This is a rare book from the scientific management genre, that successfully combines academic rigour with sufficient anecdotes to make the book educational and readable. The book does not contain a panacea for cultural challenges, but includes sufficient tools to enable an astute manager to identify and handle problems arising from cultural differences. In both a global and local context, this is a valuable tool for managing across intra- and extra-organisational cultures.

Salmon Fishing in the Yemen (Paul Torday)

Viewed from a distance, it’s difficult to see how this could be a success – a story of fishing in the desert, told through a series of emails, letters, memos, diary entries and interview transcripts. I had to ignore my initial concerns about the style to get through the start, but this was well worth the effort. The book is a sharp exploration of the cynicism of politics and the governing class, viewed through the eyes of a well-intentioned civil servant. Time-serving official Alfred Jones is plucked from his obscurity to aid the Prime Minister’s aids in a heroically futile scheme – to devise a means of introducing salmon into the Yemen desert, and develop salmon fishing as a tourist attraction there. The powers-that-be are aiming for some grand gesture to Western-Arab relations, as witnessed by the world’s press through a camera-stopping moment. The scientific impossibilities of the scheme are mere project hurdles to be overcome in the search for headlines.

While written as a light farce, the book is cunningly incisive in its attack on the culture of media-hungry ministers and bullying senior officials. Alfred Jones is elevated to the highest ranks in the desire to create the mad project, and dropped just as rapidly as plans develop in an unexpected final twist. The perfect ending to a well constructed argument.

Leadership - Rudolph Giuliani

This is one of the more interesting books on leadership, from a practitioner rather than an academic. Giuliani describes his style of leadership, and how he applied this to bring about change in New York. From communicating with all levels of his organisation and with external stakeholders, through establishing meaningful performance measurements to organising a new command centre during time of crisis, Giuliani explains how he did it, not just what he did. Giuliani’s fame grew from his handling of the 9/11 crisis and aftermath in New York, and this lays a part in the book. But he had done the hard work long before this, establishing his effective leadership style across the New York city agencies, so that he could call on the resources available to handle the crisis. The book has 9/11 as an introduction and ending, but mostly draws examples from other parts of his leadership of New York.

Giuliani opens by admitting his love of writing, and he has a easily readable style. Each chapter is titled with one of his leadership principles, and he then explores, develops and demonstrates this principle in action. Particularly for anyone leading a public sector organisation, this is highly recommended.

God Bless you Dr Kevorkian (Kurt Vonnegut)

This is a collection of short ramblings and comments about life and history, made through interviews with the famous dead. Kurt Vonnegut uses an assisted-suicide to reach heaven and meet the receent- and long-dead, to question motive and challenge assumptions. His suicide-assistant fortunately brings him back just in time to report his findings. Originally broadcast as 90-second monologues on public service radio, these short stories loosely hang together as a collection. They serve as an effective vehicle for Vonnegut's comments on history - from the plight of Aborigines to Hiroshima and Kosovo. The dark humour is typical of Vonnegut's style.

The Adventure of English (Melvyn Bragg)

Melvyn Bragg succeeds in creating a story that lives up to it title. This is a true swash-buckling adventure, full of invasions, rebellions, skulduggery and blossoming new relationships. English, as a living language, tells its own tale under Bragg's guiding hand, developing from the 4th century to modern adaptations. The early chapters explore the French connections and Scandinavian roots of Anglo-Saxon in some detail, but the book comes to life with the religious battles to control access to the bible and translations. The second half of the book describes the spread of English across the globe, the variations that have sprung from this release and modern changes to a global language. Fascinating