Gulf Weekly Book Club

BOOK OF THE WEEK with Linda Jennings. The Art Of Coaching (A Handbook Of Tips And Tools), Jenny Bird & Sarah Gornall, ISBN 9781138891869 (Routledge) BD14 for Gulf Weekly Book Club members Part of the Routledge professional coaching list and written by two very experienced coaches, this is a book to shift thinking and open up new possibilities, to stimulate fresh insight, to adapt to your needs as a coach or manager and to use creatively in practice.

Offering ideas to use across the range of coaching contexts including leadership, decision-making, change and supervision it combines brand-new, original diagrams with classic models from the learning development and management fields.

In fact, Jenny Bird and Sarah Gornall have created a valuable resource for quick reference, instant accessibility and fast learning, built on a strong theoretical base. Each model in the book is explained with a clear, accessible diagram and a simple guide to what it is, how it works and how to put it into action. The text is full of inspiration for applications of the ideas in scenarios based on real coaching practice.

The Art of Coaching will be an invaluable companion for coaches looking for new ways of developing awareness with clients, coaching students and trainees, coach supervisors, learning and development professionals and those working in human resource departments.

With an aim to develop practice rather than theory, each chapter finishes with a bibliography of references, offering the opportunity of following up in more depth on theory and research as desired. However, I must stress that the unusual ‘readability’ of this coaching book does make it suitable for anyone with a questioning mind (in particular the chapter on Learning and Personal Growth) and whilst it is obviously written for the professional coach, any middle or upper member of management would find it a worthwhile read.

Read it now in paperback
Carry On, Rainbow Rowell, ISBN 978-1509812011 (MacMillan) BD6.500 for Gulf Weekly Book Club members This is the book all the teenage girls have been waiting for … Simon Snow just wants to relax and savour his last year at the Watford School of Magicks, but no one will let him.

His girlfriend broke up with him, his best friend is a pest and his mentor keeps trying to hide him away in the mountains where, maybe, he’ll be safe.

Simon can’t even enjoy the fact that his roommate and long-time nemesis is missing, because he can’t stop worrying about him. Plus there are ghosts. And vampires. And actual evil things trying to shut Simon down. When you’re the most powerful magician the world has ever known, you never get to relax and savour anything.

Based on the characters Simon and Baz who featured in Rainbow Rowell’s bestselling novel Fangirl, Carry On is a ghost story, a love story, a mystery and a melodrama. It has just as much kissing and talking as you’d expect from a Rainbow Rowell story – but far, far more monsters.

My favourite read of the week
The Tea Planter’s Wife, Dinah Jefferies, ISBN 9780241969557 (Penguin) BD4.500 for Gulf Weekly Book Club members

Dinah Jefferies’ unforgettable new novel, The Tea Planter’s Wife is a haunting, tender portrait of a woman forced to choose between her duty as a wife and her instinct as a mother.

Gwendolyn Hooper, 19, steps off a steamer in Ceylon full of optimism, eager to join her new husband. But the man who greets her at the tea plantation is not the same one she fell in love with in London.

Distant and brooding, Laurence spends long days wrapped up in his work, leaving his young bride to explore the plantation alone. It’s a place filled with clues to the past – locked doors, a yellowed wedding dress in a dusty trunk, an overgrown grave hidden in the grounds, far too small for an adult.

Gwen soon falls pregnant and her husband is overjoyed, but she has little time to celebrate. In the delivery room the new mother is faced with a terrible choice, one she knows no one in her upper class set will understand – least of all Laurence. Forced to bury a secret at the heart of her marriage, Gwen is more isolated than ever. When the time comes, how will her husband ever understand what she has done?

The Tea Planter’s Wife is a story of guilt, betrayal and untold secrets vividly and entrancingly set in colonial era Ceylon.