What Readers Have Said About The Luck Illusion

Since The Luck Illusion was published, one of the most interesting parts of the whole experience has been discovering what readers actually think of it.

I have now added a review page to this website, bringing together many of the comments from people who have read the book. Some are short observations, others say a little more about the ideas within it, but together they give a much better picture of how the book has been received than anything I could say about it myself.

You can find the page directly from the home page. Look for the link to The Luck Illusion review page, where I have collected a selection of comments and responses from readers.

I have deliberately included different views rather than trying to make the page look like an advertisement. A review is useful because it belongs to the reader, not the author, and I would much rather someone said what they genuinely thought than felt obliged to say something complimentary.

There are also still a few advance reading copies available for a short while.

Anyone interested in reading The Luck Illusion can request a copy here:

https://tally.so/r/A7WlLk

There is no obligation to leave a review afterwards. The copy is offered simply for anyone who would like to read the book.

If you do decide to review it, however, there is only one thing I ask: please make it honest.

Praise is pleasant, of course, but an honest opinion is worth far more.

If you want, I can also tighten this slightly so it reads more like a short Blogger announcement rather than a full article.

 

The Shadow Biography: The Life We Never Lived

 

Most of us have probably wondered how life might have turned out differently.

What if I had taken that job? What if I had stayed? What if I had left sooner? What if I had said yes instead of no?

Sometimes those thoughts last only a few seconds. At other times they remain with us for years and slowly begin to form another version of our life. A version in which the right decision was made, the opportunity was taken, the relationship survived or circumstances somehow worked out better.

That imagined life is at the centre of my forthcoming book, The Shadow Biography.

The book looks at the stories we create about the lives we did not live and asks how reliable those stories really are. When we look back, are we comparing the present with a genuine alternative, or with something that has been quietly improved by hindsight?

A decision made twenty or thirty years ago was made by the person we were then, with the knowledge, circumstances, pressures and possibilities available at that time. Looking back from the present gives us information that person could never have possessed.

Yet it is remarkably easy to forget this.

An alternative life can also become strangely convincing because it has never had to survive reality. It has not experienced the ordinary problems, disappointments, illnesses, mistakes, financial pressures or unexpected events that shape an actual life. We imagine the road not taken, but rarely everything that might have happened along it.

The Shadow Biography is not intended to tell readers that regret is pointless or that we should simply accept every decision we have ever made. Reflection matters. Regret can teach us something. Wishes can reveal what we value.

The question is what happens when an imagined possibility begins to acquire the authority of fact.

Can a life that never happened really prove that another would have been better?

That is the territory I am exploring in The Shadow Biography. Not how to erase regret, but how we construct it, how hindsight changes the evidence, and how easily an unlived life can begin to compete with the one we actually have.

It has certainly given me plenty to think about while writing it.

I hope it will do the same for the reader.

 

Bulgarian Humour by Misunderstanding

‘Pinch, punch, first day of the month’ is something many English children grow up saying. On the first day of each month, the words are accompanied by a light pinch and punch on someone’s arm, supposedly to bring good luck. No one seems certain where the custom began, although one explanation links the pinch with salt, once believed to weaken witches, and the punch with driving them away.

On 1st September, I said the familiar words to my Bulgarian partner while giving her arm the required pinch and punch. I explained that it was an English tradition, after which she copied me and returned both. We laughed, and I assumed that was the end of it.

The following day, I received another pinch and punch.

‘Pinch, punch, second day of the month,’ she said.

I had obviously failed to explain that the custom applied only to the first day. She had remembered everything else and simply changed the words to suit the date, which I found much funnier than the original English version.

I am now waiting to see what the third day brings. If her Bulgarian interpretation continues throughout September, I may well have a very sore and bruised arm by the time 1st October arrives, when the real tradition begins again.

The Luck Illusion in Sofia City Library

I had some very good news today. The Luck Illusion has been accepted into Sofia City Library and is now part of its collection.

I am proud of this, probably more than I expected.

The book has only been published for a month, and when it first appeared, I had no idea where it would go. I was a novice author with a first nonfiction book trying to find its place among thousands of others. The prospects for getting much attention were not exactly encouraging.

A month later, things look rather different.

There are now more than twenty-five positive reviews on Amazon, averaging 4.7 out of 5, along with a 4.4 rating on Goodreads. Reedsy Discovery gave the book a very positive review, and Vagabond magazine followed with a feature that gave it another welcome boost.

It is now in the Sofia City Library.

That means something different to me. Reviews are wonderful to receive, but seeing the book accepted by a public library somehow gives it a permanence that ratings and sales figures do not. Someone can find it on a shelf, take it home and perhaps discover it without ever having seen an advert or heard of me.

Considering where the book started, I find that quite humbling.

None of this means that The Luck Illusion has suddenly become a great success. It hasn't. I am still learning how difficult it is to get a book noticed, particularly when doing almost everything yourself. What has happened, though, is considerably more than I expected after only one month.

It also gives me something I did not have when I began writing my second book, The Shadow Biography: a little history behind me.

When that book eventually appears, it will not be the work of someone publishing for the first time. I will have made plenty of mistakes by then, learned a great deal and, most importantly, already have one book out there finding its readers.

Today, one of the places where those readers can find it is Sofia City Library.

I am rather proud of that.

 

A Book That Stayed With Me

 

There are not many books in my library that I can honestly say I would sit down and read all the way through again. I have never been an avid reader, which probably makes the few that have stayed with me for many years all the more noticeable.

One of them is Upside Down Stories by Donald Bisset.

I found the book many, many years ago and it has been in my library ever since. During my years teaching in primary school, it became one of those books I regularly turned to when reading to a class. I knew the stories well, but that did not matter. Children hearing them for the first time had no idea what was coming next, and that was always part of the pleasure.

There are twenty short stories, each with its own collection of eccentric characters and strange situations. They are funny, slightly rude in places and just naughty enough to make children listen more carefully. Not rude enough to shock, but enough to produce that familiar reaction when a class suddenly realised that the story had said something they were not quite expecting.

That was often when the room became quiet.

Children seem to recognise that kind of humour immediately. Adults sometimes try to tidy childhood up too much, forgetting that children have always enjoyed nonsense, absurdity and things being just a little bit improper. Bisset understood that very well.

The stories are also short, which made them ideal for school. There was no need to spend several days building towards an ending or trying to remember where we had stopped the previous afternoon. A complete little world could appear, become ridiculous and disappear again within a few pages.

I can still remember reading some of them aloud and watching children wait for the next strange turn. There is something very satisfying about reading to a class when you know they are genuinely listening rather than simply being quiet because they have been told to be. A good story can do that far better than a teacher asking for attention.

Perhaps that is one of the reasons the book has remained with me for so long.

Even now, as a considerably older adult, I can pick it up and enjoy it. That is not something I can say about many books. Some belong very clearly to the time in which we first read them and lose much of their appeal when we return years later. Others seem to sit outside age altogether.

Upside Down Stories is one of those for me.

The copy on my shelf has travelled through a large part of my life. It has moved house, moved country and survived the usual clear-outs when other books were given away or forgotten. There was never any particular decision to keep it. I simply did.

Perhaps that says more than any review could.

One day my library will no longer be mine. The books will be divided, given away, sold or simply end up somewhere I could never predict. Most will mean nothing to the person who eventually finds them. They will just be books that once belonged to somebody else.

I hope this one is treated differently.

I would like to think that somebody might take Upside Down Stories from the shelf, wonder why I had kept such an old children's book for so long, and open it.

Perhaps they will read one story.

Perhaps there will be a child sitting nearby.

And perhaps Donald Bisset's strange little characters will make another child laugh in exactly the same way they did in my classroom many years ago.

Good stories have a way of lasting much longer than the people who first read them.

This one will certainly outlast me.

Back Home and a Return to Writing

We got back from our three-day break yesterday, and as usual, three days proved about right for us. Once we have explored an area and seen what there is to see, we tend to get restless. There is also the aquarium to consider. Leaving the fish unattended for much longer than three days is not something we are comfortable with, nor is it particularly healthy for them.

The weather probably helped. Rain had been forecast for two of the three days, but not a drop appeared. Instead, we had blistering sunshine from morning until evening, and I doubt either of us could have taken much more. I am now looking decidedly Greek Cypriot, while my partner has achieved something closer to sore red than Mediterranean brown. Coming home felt surprisingly good.

There is something comforting about walking through your own door, putting everything down and returning to the familiar places where you normally sit. Within a short time we were both settled into our usual positions, effectively having a break from the break. However pleasant it is to get away, your own chair, kitchen and routine quickly regain their appeal. For me, it also means a return to writing.

The Shadow Biography is progressing well, although thinking too far ahead about the work still to be done can be daunting. Writing the words is only part of producing a book, as I discovered with The Luck Illusion. There will be plenty of reading, rewriting, checking, cutting and reconsidering before I am satisfied with it. Fortunately, there is no hurry.

Autumn and winter are approaching, and I am rather looking forward to them. During the warmer months, there is always a slight feeling of guilt when I sit indoors writing. The sun is shining outside, and Bulgaria is giving us long warm days that seem too valuable to spend staring at a screen.

Once the colder weather arrives, that guilt disappears. Writing becomes exactly where I want to be.

The Shadow Biography has already taken several turns in the way I intend to present its arguments. A book can look wonderfully organised when reduced to chapter headings and notes, but once the writing begins, ideas start connecting in ways that were not obvious at the planning stage.

One thing I have been conscious of from the beginning is that I do not want this book simply to become another The Luck Illusion. The subject is different and deserves its own character. At the same time, I want to retain the essence of the writing style because that is not something I have to manufacture. It is simply how I write and, perhaps more importantly, how I think.

So the familiar day-to-day routine has returned, and with it something I value more than excitement these days: contentment.

I should probably admit that travelling no longer holds quite the attraction it once did. Since winning my fight with cancer and losing three ribs along the way, unfamiliar places are not always as comfortable as they used to be. Holidays once meant being constantly active. I was never particularly good at being a beach bum. I would jog, swim, cycle or hike, and if there happened to be a Bulgarian celebration taking place, I was quite capable of joining the street dancing. Staying still seemed like a waste of a holiday.

Most of those things are no longer possible in the way they once were, and that took some adjusting to.

Perhaps this is partly why writing has become so important to me. The exercise has moved elsewhere. My mind rarely sits still. There is always another question to examine, another assumption that does not quite make sense, or another idea that refuses to leave me alone until I have followed it somewhere. At the moment, much of that energy is going into The Shadow Biography.

The suitcases are unpacked, the sunburn is slowly settling, and we are back in our usual places. Outside, summer is beginning its gradual retreat. Inside, the new book is growing.

For now, I am perfectly happy with that.

The Beach DJ Nobody Asked For

 

The last few posts here have not been about books at all. This is understandable because I am trying to give writing, marketing and every other author-related matter a bit of a rest while enjoying the seaside and its surroundings. There is one thing I cannot leave at home, though, and that is an inquisitive mind.

We were sitting on the warm sand, listening to the waves breaking on the shore every few seconds, when a young man arrived on an all-terrain mountain bike laden with luggage. He parked near us and began unloading everything.

What emerged was a small portable office. A folding chair appeared, followed by a table, laptop, breakfast and coffee. Then the umbrella went up. It was quite an impressive arrangement, and there was nothing wrong with any of it.

Then the music started.

Obscene American rap music came blaring from his speaker at a volume that could be heard hundreds of metres away. The peaceful atmosphere he had presumably come to enjoy was instantly destroyed for everyone else.

I was livid. I tried hard to understand why anyone would think this was acceptable. There were plenty of other people on the beach, yet not one of them appeared to complain or even react. Whether they were more tolerant than me or simply unwilling to become involved, Who knows?

When I said that it was unfair for everyone else to be forced to listen to his choice of 'music,' my objection was dismissed as me being fussy. I then offered another possibility. Suppose I had brought a large hi-fi system onto the beach and started playing Mahler’s Eighth Symphony at full volume. Would that have been acceptable?

The answer was neither yes nor no, although I knew perfectly well what it would have been. Apparently, unwanted noise, which in my opinion is what this 'music' was, becomes more acceptable when it happens to be someone else’s unwanted noise/music.

Prevention may be better than a cure, but my hands were tied. Fortunately, I always take a pair of earplugs to the beach because I use them when swimming in the sea. On this occasion, they were required before I reached the water.

The plugs went in and the music disappeared completely. Unfortunately, so did the sound of the waves, the very sound I had come to hear. Still, silence was preferable to the performance being forced upon us.

About two hours later, I felt a nudge. I could not hear anything, so this was the only way to tell me that our unwanted DJ had packed away his office, loaded everything back onto his bicycle and left.

The earplugs came out, the waves returned and the beach sounded as it should again. Mahler would have to wait until I back home to Yambol.