Golfer Lydia Ko and MMA fighters Israel Adesanya and Kai Kara-France have employed David Niethe’s methods. In The Winning Mindset(HarperCollins) the Auckland-based Niethe, who has been a “mental-performance” coach for 30 years, sets out his strategies and how he got to them, from being bullied at school and movingpast dyslexia to competing in Strongman competitions. Some of it is familiar stuff, but doubtless hard won – and homegrown: pain and frustration are teachers, identify your values, fears and limiting beliefs, building your self-image, and so on.
Sam Smith used to be a dentist, but rather than pulling teeth now he comes up with gags, including scripting 7 Days. His latest graphic novel for tweens, drawn by César Lador, is Miles and Jones (Little Moa), an Indiana Jones-esque story of a family, floods and anacondas. “When’s the next one?” asked the 8-year-old. November, it turns out, to be titled The Blizzard of Blobs.
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What if Ezra Pound had not cut in half TS Eliot’s early version of The Waste Land? If Edgar Allan Poe’s poem had been called The Parrot? Or The Wind in the Willows remained as The Mole & the Water Rat?Write Cut Rewrite by Dirk Van Hulle and Mark Nixon (Bodleian) is a smart square hardback that explores vital cuts to famous works, sometimes self-administered, sometimes imposed.
In The Third Love (Granta), the shy and old-fashioned Riko finds herself trapped in a marriage to her childhood sweetheart, who has been unfaithful. An old friend gives her a way to escape via an unusual method: travelling in time to two different periods through her dreams. Prize-winning author Hiromi Kawakami’s new novel unfolds quietly and gently, says the Literary Review, and don’t try too hard to pin down what it all might mean.
