BOOKS | 100 Books To Read 2016

1. Emotional Agility • Susan David
   [ 23/09/2016 ~
2. On the Move: A Life • Oliver Sacks
   [ 31/08/2016 ~
3. •
4. Running & Being: The Total Experience • Dr George Sheehan
   [ 28/08/2016 ~
5. The Power and the Glory • Graham Greene
6. Orlando • Virginia Woolf
7. My Brilliant Friend • Elena Ferrante
   translated by Ann Goldstein
8. Work Clean: The life-changing power of mise-en-place to organize your life, work, and mind • Dan Charnas
9. Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance • Angela Duckworth
10. Americanah • Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
11. The Bone People • Keri Hulme
    [ 30/7/2016 ~
12. Your Song Changed My Life • Bob Boilen
    [ 05/06/2016 ~
13. Dig Me Out • Jovana Babovic
    [ 16/07/2016 ~
14. The Wretched: A New Translation of Les Misérables • Victor Hugo [ translated from the French by Christine Donougher]
    [03/07/2016 ~
15. The Folded Clock: A Diary • Heidi Julavits
    [ 05/03/2016 ~
16. At the Existentialist Cafe: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails • Sarah Bakewell
    [ 07/03/2016 ~
17. The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals • Michael Pollan
    [ 12/03/2016 ~
18. In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto • Michael Pollan
19. Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World • Adam Grant and Sheryl Sandberg
20. Their Eyes Were Watching God • Zora Neale Hurston
21. Dune • Frank Herbert
22. SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome • Mary Beard
    [ 04/01/2016 ~
23. If the Oceans Were Ink • Carla Power
    [ 15/08/2015 ~
24. Mani: Travels in the Southern Peloponnese • Patrick Leigh Fermor
25. Go Tell It On the Mountain • James Baldwin
    [ 11/12/2015 ~
26. Baghdad Sketches (1932) • Freya Stark
27. The Valleys of the Assassins and Other Persian Travels (1934) [On Mazandaran, Iran]• Freya Stark
28. The Southern Gates of Arabia: A Journey in the Hadhramaut (1936)• 
29. A Winter in Arabia (1940) [On Hadhramaut] • 
30. Perseus in the Wind (1948). [Essays on philosophy and literature] • 
31. Ionia, A Quest (1954) • Freya Stark
32. The Lycian Shore (1956) [On Turkey] • Freya Stark
33. Alexander's Path: From Caria to Cilicia (1958) [On Turkey] • Freya Stark
34. The Zodiac Arch (1968) [Miscellaneous essays] • Freya Stark
35. The Minaret of Djam: An Excursion into Afghanistan (1970) • Freya Stark
36. Where the Stress Falls • Susan Sontag
37. On Photography • Susan Sontag
38. Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963 • Susan Sontag
39. Against Interpretation: And Other Essays • Susan Sontag
40. As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980 • Susan Sontag
41. The Book of Disquiet • Fernando Pessoa
42. Jane Eyre • Charlotte Bronte
43. Venice • Jan Morris
44. Bleak House • Charles Dickens
45. The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
46. A Time of Gifts (1977) • Patrick Leigh Fermor
47. Between the Woods and the Water • Patrick Leigh Fermor
48. The Broken Road • Patrick Leigh Fermor
49. The Magician • W. Somerset Maugham
50. River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West • Rebecca Solnit
51. A Writer's Diary • Virginia Woolf
52. The Violet Hour • Katie Roiphe
53. The Handmaid's Tale • Margaret Atwood
54. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek • Annie Dillard
55. The Abundance • Annie Dillard
56. I'm Your Man: The Life of Leonard Cohen • Sylvie Simmons
    [ 25/04/2015 ~
57. On Looking: Eleven Walks with Expert Eyes • Alexandra Horowitz
58. The Design of Everyday Things • Donald A. Norman
59. The Heart of the Matter • Graham Greene
60. Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
61. No Time to Lose: A Timely Guide to the Way of the Bodhisattva •  Pema Chodron
62. Quiet: The Power of Introverts • Susan Cain
63. The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot • Robert MacFarlane
64. Passionate Nomad: The Life of Freya Stark • Janet Fletcher Geniesse
65. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks • Rebecca Skloot
66. Felicity: Poems • Mary Oliver
67. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience • Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
68. Real Happiness: The Power of • Sharon Salzberg
69. The Seven Storey Mountain • Thomas Merton
70. Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind • Shunryu Suzuki
71. Collection of Sand • Italo Calvino
72. Landmarks • Robert Macfarlane
73. A Book of Silence • Sara Maitland
74. Acedia & me • Kathleen Norris
75. The Red Parts • Maggie Nelson
76. Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered • E.F. Schumacher
77. Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness • Jon Kabat-Zinn
78. 2666 • Roberto Bolaño
79. A Philosophy of Walking • Frederic Gros
80. Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity • Katherine Boo
81. The Pirate King • Laurie R. King
    [ 23/12/2015 ~ 09/01/2016 ]
82. Garment of Shadows • Laurie R. King
    [ 09/01/2016 ~ 10/01/2016 ]
83. My Life on the Road • Gloria Steinem
    [ 09/01/2016 ~ 23/01/2016 ]
84. Dreaming Spies • Laurie R. King
    [ 11/01/1016 ~ 26/01/2016 ]
85. The Argonauts • Maggie Nelson
    [ 28/05/2015 ~ 29/01/2016 ]
86. When Breath Becomes Air • Paul Kalanithi
    [ 23/01/2016 ~ 30/01/2016 ]
87. H is for Hawk • Helen Macdonald
    [ 18/05/2015 ~ 08/02/2016 ]
88. Girl Waits with Gun • Amy Stewart
    [ 01/02/2016 ~ 14/02/2016 ]
89. In Other Words • Jhumpa Lahiri
    translated from the Italian by Ann Goldstein
    [ 27/02/2016 ~ 05/03/2016 ]
90. Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation • Michael Pollan
    [ 28/02/2016 ~ 12/03/2016 ]
91. The Murder of Mary Russell • Laurie R. King
    [ 09/04/2016 ~ 10/04/2016 ]
92. To the River: A Journey Beneath the Surface • Olivia Laing
    [ 08/02/2016 ~ 14/04/2016 ]
93. The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone • Olivia Laing
    [ 14/04/2016 ~ 26/04/2016 ]
94. The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu and Their Race to Save the World's Most Precious Manuscripts • Joshua Hammer
    [ 30 April 2016 ~ 5 June 2016 ]
95. Wild by Nature: From Siberia to Australia, Three Years Alone in the Wilderness on Foot • Sarah Marquis
    [ 16/06/2016 ~ 03/07/2016 ]
96. White Sands: Experiences from the Outside World • Geoff Dyer
    [ 03/07/2016 ~ 15/08/2016 ]
97. Gratitude • Oliver Sacks
    [ 16/08/2016 ~ 18/08/2016 ]
98. Just Kids • Patti Smith
    [ 15/08/2016 ~ 23/08/2016 ]
99. The Fifth Season • N. K. Jemisin
    [ 23/08/2016 ~ 28/08/2016 ]
100. The Obelisk Gate • N. K. Jemisin
     [ 28/08/2016 ~ 12/09/2016 ]

BOOKS | The End of Your Life Book Club, for the Waiting Room

After The Obelisk Gate, I was at a temporary loss at which book to read next. I eventually started on The End of Your Life Book Club, and continued On the Move, the Oliver Sacks memoir that I picked up from the library a while ago.

Will Schwalbe, the author of The End of Your Life Book Club, started writing this when his mother was being treated for cancer. They spent many hours sitting in the hospital waiting together, and to pass the time, they started talking about books. They got around to exchanging books, and Will told his mom that this will be a bookclub of two.

It was the state of my mind then, which led me to pick up The End of Your Life Book Club. I am following up on some medical issues right now, and it has led me to some reconsideration of my life and my priorities. I have also been spending too much time in the hospital waiting room this year, and on days when I forgot to bring something to read, the waiting just feels harder. Which is perhaps why The End of Your Life Book Club rang true to me; I have always believed a person's brings their own experience and state of mind into the books they read. We are meaning-makers, and if someone is made conscious of their own mortality, how will this likely influence their reading?

I was reading this book last week while waiting in the hospital waiting room. So far, it feels interesting, and the conversations between the family and their dying mother were touching. They obviously love their mother. Sadly, it reminded me of my own damaged relationship with my mother. I thought about how it was all those weekly Saturday trips to the library with my mother, that probably turned me into the reader that I am now. Yet ironically, I have never discussed books with my mother.

I'm barely a quarter into the book, but it has already made a recommendation for a title to check out: Susan Halpern's Etiquette of Illness. The book was supposed to be able how to talk to people with illness. It's something that I feel I should pass to friends and acquaintances. To offer as a guide on how to approach this.

Some tips from the book on how to approach the people with illness:

1. Ask: "Do you want to talk about how you're feeling?"
2. Don't ask if there's anything you can do. Suggest things, or if it's not intrusive, just do them.
3. You don't have to talk all the time. Sometimes just being there is enough.

I felt there could also be a fourth tip - depending on the person, it is also important to know when to give space, and respect their need for privacy. Most of all, don't always assume you know better - because you don't.

BOOKS | The Fifth Season

I just finished reading N.K. Jemisin's The Fifth Season, and am working my way through the second book in the series, The Obelisk Gate. It's been a wild ride. Grand world-building, with a world built on people, known as orogene, or rogga, as they are also called by those with little reason to love them. It is difficult to explain how the orogenes' powers work, but in a nutshell, they are able to harness the energy in the physical universe, and part of it includes harnessing sesmic forces - they are able to cause and redirect earthquakes, air and wind currents, heat and other types of energy. They are born with their powers, and their race has been vilified for their potentially destructive powers. It's a story full of a lot of hate, and death, as it begins with a father's murder of his son, after he realised his son is a rogga, inherited from their mother. The mother returns to find the battered body of her son, and her husband and older daughter, gone. Oh, did I also mention it also begins with someone setting out a massive sesmic rift that brought forth a type of apocalypse? Yeah, there's a lot of death and destruction in just the first few pages.

The story unfolds with multiple point-of-views, and I was curious how these different plotlines and characters will converge later. The beauty is they do eventually fold unto each other seamlessly, like stacking up Russian dolls, until there is only one grand doll left. Jemisin patiently builds up the intrigue, in the nature of her world, and the characters. There is a grand mythology at work, and you are left with a nagging sense at the back of your mind that the history and lore in this world is never the truth, and there's always something that was forgotten, or lost and misinterpreted through time and memory, or manipulated by those who in power. From the beginning, you are told this:

This is what you must remember: the ending of one story is just the beginning of another. This has happened before, after all. People die. Old orders pass. New societies are born. When we say "the world has ended." it's usually a lie, because the planet is just fine.

The Fifth Season was one of the few books lately that made me stay up all night to try to finish reading it, because the story was so compelling. Not just in the world she creates, but also in the themes, and the social consciousness inherent in her stories. In the Foreword of The Fifth Season, it says:

For all those who have to fight for the respect that everyone else is given without question.

Which reminds me of the recent debacle of the Sad Puppies and the Hugo Awards, where some "aggrieved" people (I'm not sure if I want to call them "fans") are trying to manipulate the results of the Hugo Awards. Jemisin by the way, won this year's Best Novel Hugo Award with The Fifth Season. (The Atlantic spoke with Jemisin after she won, and she is both articulate and thoughtful about her books, and what drives her as a writer.)

For me, what's interesting about Jemisin's stories is her narrative on power - how we would seek to control those with power, because we fear them, and because we seek their power to serve us. In The Fifth Season, the orogenes are brought up to be trained in controlling their powers, and to serve the Fulcrum - the faceless authority in their world. However, those who are not able to control their powers are taken away. Brutal brain surgery were performed on them to reduce them to a zombie state, strapped to a wire chair, and sent to node stations across the country, so use their powers to repel earthquakes etc. It is one of the more disturbing part of the book, but so powerful as it set up the motivation for the characters later, as this is a cruel, unjust social system that needs to be broken, so that one might build something better.

I love her stories that dare says, we cannot look away from a cruel, unjust system, and we need to have the courage and the strength to change it, for something better. And I love that her universe is populated by people of different races, of various shades of colours, and sexual orientation. Her stories do not look away from differences, and prejudices - but acknowledges them as part of the world as it is. That, is something beautiful.

BOOKS | White Sands: Experience from the Outside World

The best things about deleting Pokemon Go from my phone was that I finally found myself reading again. Granted, I am still not reading as much as I would like to, but some reading on the bus is still better than nothing; still a lot better than wasting it trying to catch Poke stops to refill my Poke balls, and catching Pokemons. Yep, I was one of those people.

I finished Geoff Dyer's White Sands eventually. I was still one day late to return it to the library. What can you do about it, right?

The thing that caught my attention in the beginning (the Author's Note part of the book) was how he stated that the book was "a mixture of fiction and non-fiction". He explained, or maybe just stated, "The main point is that the book does not demand to be read according to how far from a presumed dividing line--a line separating certain forms and the expectations they engender--it is assumed to stand. In this regard 'White Sands' is both the figure at the centre of the carpet and a blank space on the map."

A little cheeky, and it reminded me of the time when we had to do Bruce Chatwin's The Songlines for a literature class, and some of us were a little perturbed at the idea that while the narrator is known as Bruce Chatwin, Bruce Chatwin the narrator might not be Bruce Chatwin the author; Bruce Chatwin the narrator might just be a fictional construct of the author, and the book might not be meant as non-fiction. Now Geoff Dyer seems to be doing something similar, subverting the expectations of the readers, or just simply refusing to play by the conventions of genre or classification.

So what exactly is this book about? Well, I'm not totally sure. It's about going somewhere else, and not necessarily always somewhere geographically somewhere else. He wrote about going to China, to Tahiti, living in Los Angeles -- but along the way, he also ruminated on his childhood, thoughts on looking at certain pictures and art. I guess ultimately, this is a book about how we see: within and without.

From White Sands:

What is the difference between seeing something and not seeing it? More specifically, what is the difference between seeing Tahiti and not seeing it, between going to Tahiti and not going? The answer to that, an answer that is actually an answer to an entirely different question, is that it is possible to go to Tahiti without seeing it.

This quote drew a nod from me, because it is possible to look at a piece of art, and not see it - not understand it. It is also possible (and it happens a lot of the time) to be somewhere and not see what surrounds us. To be talking to someone, and not be communicating. To know something, and not see them.

Or I might be wrong. Either way, it had been an enjoyable book.

BOOKS | Girl Waits with Gun

Some books, while good, have demands slow reading because they are so dense. Then there are the other types of books that are fun to read, and the writer knows how to pace the narrative so that there's a momentum that keeps you turning the pages - and before you know it, you're done and asking for more.

I was so glad to pick up Amy Stewart's Girl Waits with Gun. Amy Stewart took the characters of Constance Kopp and her sisters straight out of the newspapers from 1914-1915, and created this funny, historical pastiche of one of the early female Deputy Sheriff in the United States of America. All three Kopp sisters are funny caricatures, and their dynamics was the main part of the entertainment.

The story began when the Kopp sisters' trolley was knocked over by an automobile, owned by a rich man, Henry Kaufman, with shady connections. The Kopp sisters asked for compensation, and what followed was a series of events set out to intimidate them - bricks thrown through their windows, their house was also set on fire, and letters threatening to sell the youngest sister into white slavery. What I love about the story is how the sisters, while under considerable duress, never gave in to become the victims. We need more books abut women standing up for themselves, and looking out for each other.

This, and catching Deadpool at the cinema was a good conclusion to a Sunday.

I have my eyes out for Amy Stewart's other books. There's supposed to be a second Kopp Sisters titles out later this year in September. I hope it's as good, or even better than this one. Meanwhile, I am curious about The Drunken Botanist. How can I not be curious about a book about the plants behind our alcoholic beverages?

BOOKS | H is for Hawk

I've just finished reading Helen Macdonald's H is for Hawk. My reading journal tells me that I started the book May of last year, and I finished it in February of this year. It took me a while, through no fault of the book itself. Life, and my short attention span made it so.

The book isn't always an easy read - partly because it's a few narrative threads running through, and because it is essentially a book on grief, on memories. Helen Macdonald tells of her experience trying to raise a hunting goshawk, even as she narrates the story of author T.H. White's (the author of The Once and Future King, the re-telling of the young Arthur's training under Merlyn) own neurotic attempt to raise a goshawk. For T.H. White, the desire to raise a goshawk comes from some self-seated self-loathing and anxieties over his own repressed homosexuality, for Helen Macdonald, it came soon after the death of her beloved father.

The two narratives run side by side in a somewhat lopsided fashion. T.H. White's narrative makes him seem like an odd, silly little man, throwing himself towards danger his entire life to prove his own masculinity to himself. That is sad, really, because he never could master the goshawk, and in the end lost it, by sheer negligence. Meanwhile, Helen Macdonald's grief was palpable through out the book, and her goshawk feels feral, alien and emotionally unavailable (I can't believe I am using this term for a bird of prey). The human trying to master the goshawk, and both learning that they would never quite tame the creature that is violence and murder, and both wondering if perhaps there is something within themselves that has been found wanting by their goshawk.

In the end, grief resolves itself. Nothing changed. Macdonald's hands are full of scars from the goshawk, and then there are the other scars, unseen. Yet time does heal, and she moved on, as she ends the book with her passing the goshawk to a friend for a few month; the goshawk would be moulting soon, and the next time she sees the goshawk, it shall be with a new set of feathers, and she will be different. Perhaps, that is Macdonald's own process of moulting, of shedding old grief, and growing new ones.

PS: Mid-way through the book last night, I came across a mention of Olivia Laing's The Trip to Echo Spring in H is for Hawk. It was an odd sort of synchronicity, because I had just picked up Olivia Laing's To the River earlier from the library. Soon after I finished H is for Hawk, I picked up and read To the River, and there in the page listing the Illustrations, was this credit: Map of the River Ouse, by Helen Macdonald.

Sometimes, it seems like my books are talking to one another, and they lead us to their friends by whispering to us through the pages.

BOOKS | "The bad news is that I haven't written anything"

I finished reading Paul Kalanithi's When Breath Becomes Air this afternoon. Before this, some of my ex-colleagues were talking about the book, and I was curious when they seem to think they would cry buckets reading it, even before they had even started on the book. Why do they assume that? I wondered.

The author was a neurosurgeon who discovered he had lung cancer when he was in the 30s. Faced with the prospect of death, he began writing this book. He passed away before he could finish the book, and his wife, Lucy, ended it with an afterword.

It was a contemplative read. Kalanithi was a man of the arts and the sciences. I admired his insights, his questions, and how he truly believed in making meaning of his life's work.

I was driven less by achievement than by trying to understand, in earnest: What makes human life meaningful? I still felt literature provided the best account of the life of the mind, while neuroscience laid down the most elegant rules of the brain. Meaning, while a slippery concept, seemed inextricable from human relationships and moral values. 

Paul Kalanithi was truly an amazing man. A brilliant neurosurgeon, a kind man, and someone who could recite the poems of T.S. Eliot from memory. It should not have to take a medical emergency to force us to examine the meaning of our lives, yet most of the time, that's what is necessary. While reading the book, it does in a way lead me to consider how I am using the time in my own life, and those important questions. It was beautifully summed up in Lucy's afterword:

When Paul emailed his best friend in May 2013 to inform him that he had terminal cancer, he wrote, "The good news is I've already outlived two Brontes, Keats, and Stephen Crane. The bad news is that I haven't written anything." 

It is not just about how long you have lived - but what have you done. Time to start writing.

Now.

100 BOOKS | 100 Books to Read 2015

This is the list in progress for my readings in 2015.

1. If the Oceans Were Ink • Carla Power
   [ 15/08/2015 ~
2. Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books • Azar Nafisi
   [ 27/09/2015 ~
3. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks • Rebecca Skloot
   
4. Authority: Book 2 of the Southern Reach Trilogy • Jeff VanderMeer
   [ 30/08/2015 ~
5. Acceptance: Book 3 of the Southern Reach Trilogy • Jeff VanderMeer
6. Girl in a Band: A Memoir • Kim Gordon
   [ 02/08/2015 ~
7. Loitering: New & Collected Essays • Charles D'Ambrosio
   [ 21/07/2015 ~
8. The Argonauts • Maggie Nelson
   [ 28/05/2015 ~
9. H is for Hawk • Helen Macdonald
   [ 18/05/2015 ~
10. I'm Your Man: The Life of Leonard Cohen • Sylvie Simmons
    [ 25/04/2015 ~
11. The Empathy Exams • Leslie Jamison
    [ 22/04/2015 ~
12. The Buried Giant • Kazuo Ishiguro
    [ 07/03/2015 ~
13. The Nuns of Sant'Ambrogio: The True Story of a Convent in Scandal • Hubert Wolf
    [Translated by Ruth Martin]
    [ 16/03/2015 ~
14. Small Victories: Spotting Improbable Moments of Grace • Anne Lamott
    [ 04/12/2014 ~
15. What Days Are For: A Memoir • Robert Dessaix
    [ 20/11/2014 ~
16. A History of the World in Twelve Maps • Jerry Brotton
17. Hardwiring Happiness: The New Brain Science of Contentment, Calm, and Confidence • Rick Hanson
18. Running and Being • Dr George Sheehan
19. Buddha's Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom • Rick Hanson
20. The Wisdom of Yoga: A Seeker's Guide to Extraordinary Living • Stephen Cope
21. The Sanity We Are Born With: A Buddhist Approach to Psychology • Chogyam Trungpa
22. Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism • Chogyam Trungpa
23. Smile at Fear: Awakening the True Heart of Bravery • Chogyam Trungpa
24. The Emotional Life of Your Brain: How Its Unique Patterns Affect the Way You Think, Feel, and Live--and How You Can Change Them • Richard J. Davidson & Sharon Begley
25. Grain Brain: The Surprising Truth about Wheat, Carbs, and Sugar--Your Brain's Silent Killers • David Perlmutter & Kristin Loberg
26. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West • Dee Brown
27. Blue Plate Special: An Autobiography of My Appetites • Kate Christensen
28. The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals • Michael Pollan
29. In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto • Michael Pollan
30. Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation • Michael Pollan
31. Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History • S. C. Gwynne
32. Dearie: The Remarkable Life of Julia Child • Bob Spitz
33. Love Your Enemies: How to Break the Anger Habit & Be a Whole Lot Happier • Sharon Salzberg
34. Provence, 1970: M.F.K. Fisher, Julia Child, James Beard, and the Reinvention of American Taste • Luke Barr
35. Running with the Buffaloes: A Season Inside with Mark Wetmore, Adam Goucher, and the University of Colorado Men's Cross Country Team • Chris Lear
36. The Age of Insight: The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art, Mind, and Brain, from Vienna 1900 to the Present • Eric Kandel
37. The Source of All Things: A Memoir • Tracy Ross
38. No Time to Lose: A Timely Guide to the Way of the Bodhisattva •  Pema Chodron
39. Quiet: The Power of Introverts • Susan Cain
40. The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot • Robert MacFarlane
41. A Tale for the Time Being • Ruth Ozeki
42. David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants • Malcolm Gladwell
43. When Women Were Birds: Fifty-Four Variations on Voice • Terry Tempest Williams
44. Real Happiness: The Power of Meditation • Sharon Salzberg
45. Hild • Nicola Griffith
46. Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind • Shunryu Suzuki
47. Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
48. The Names of the Rose • Umberto Eco
49. Dune • Frank Herbert
50. The Stars My Destination • Alfred Bester
51. Jane Eyre • Charlotte Bronte
52. The Windup Girl • Paolo Bacigalupi
53. Regenesis • C.J. Cherryh
54. Among Others • Jo Walton
55. The City & The City • China Miéville
56. Baghdad Sketches (1932) • Freya Stark
57. The Valleys of the Assassins and Other Persian Travels (1934) [On Mazandaran, Iran]• Freya Stark
58. The Southern Gates of Arabia: A Journey in the Hadhramaut (1936)• 
59. A Winter in Arabia (1940) [On Hadhramaut] • 
60. Perseus in the Wind (1948). [Essays on philosophy and literature] • 
61. Ionia, A Quest (1954) • Freya Stark
62. The Lycian Shore (1956) [On Turkey] • Freya Stark
63. Alexander's Path: From Caria to Cilicia (1958) [On Turkey] • Freya Stark
64. The Zodiac Arch (1968) [Miscellaneous essays] • Freya Stark
65. The Minaret of Djam: An Excursion into Afghanistan (1970) • Freya Stark
66. Where the Stress Falls • Susan Sontag
67. On Photography • Susan Sontag
68. Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963 • Susan Sontag
69. Against Interpretation: And Other Essays • Susan Sontag
70. As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980 • Susan Sontag
71. The Histories • Herodotus
72. Shantaram • Gregory David Roberts
73. The Magicians • Lev Grossman
74. The Magician King • Lev Grossman
75. The Magician's Land • Lev Grossman
76. Their Eyes Were Watching God • Zora Neale Hurston
77. A Fine Balance • Rohinton Mistry
78. Ancillary Justice • Ann Leckie
79. Ancillary Sword • Ann Leckie
80. The Little Stranger • Sarah Waters
81. The Paying Guests • Sarah Waters
82. The Trauma of Everyday Life • Mark Epstein
    [ 15/09/2014 ~
83. Encyclopedia of Trouble and Spaciousness • Rebecca Solnit
    [ 26/11/2014 ~ 18/01/2015 ]
84. The Outsider • Albert Camus
    Translated from the French by Sandra Smith
    [ 01/10/2014 ~ 19/01/2015 ]
85. The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere • Pico Iyer
    [ 19/01/2015 ~ 25/01/2015 ]
86. Station Eleven: A Novel • Emily St. John Mandel
    [ 23/11/2014 ~ 04/02/2015 ]
87. Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith • Anne Lamott
    [ 15/10/2013 ~ 09/02/2015 ]
88. Travels with Herodotus • Ryszard Kapuscinski
    translated from the Polish by Klara Glowczewska
    [ 05/02/2015 ~ 15/02/2015 ]
89. Wild: A Journey from Lost to Found • Cheryl Strayed
    [ 25/01/2015 ~ 14/03/2015 ]
90. Bluets • Maggie Nelson
    [ 09/06/2015 ~ 17/06/2015 ]
91. My Fight/Your Fight • Ronda Rousey
    [ 27/06/2015 ~ 13/08/2015 ]
92. The Shepherd's Crown • Terry Pratchett
    [ 28/08/2015 ~ 29/08/2015 ]
93. Annihilation: Book 1 of the Southern Reach Trilogy • Jeff VanderMeer
    [ 28/08/2015 ~ 30/08/2015 ]
The Inheritance Trilogy • N. K. Jemisin
94. The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms
    [ 06/09/2015 ~ 13/09/2015 ]
95. The Broken Kingdoms
    [ 13/09/2015 ~ 26/09/2015 ]
96. The Kingdom of Gods
    [ 26/09/2015 ~ 17/10/2015 ]
97. Fail Fail Again Fail Better • Pema Chodron
    [ 31/10/2015 ~ 02/11/2015 ]
98. M Train • Patti Smith
    [ 13/10/2015 ~ 16/11/2015 ]
99. Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl • Carrie Brownstein
    [ 14/11/2015 ~ 05/12/2015 ]
100. Slouching Towards Bethlehem: Essays • Joan Didion
     [ 27/11/2015 ~ 10/12/2015 ]

BOOKS | 100 Books to Read 2014

A new year is beginning, and it is time to get back to some tradition. I intend to read more in 2014. A long time ago, I started an annual list of 100 books that I would like to read in a year. While I have never actually completed all 100 books, I like how it directed my reading. I really do read more when I have an aspirational list.
So here is the 100 Books to Read List 2014 - it is still a work in progress - but past experience has taught me that the 100 titles will fill itself up in due course. As you start reading again, you will want to read more.
So here it is:

1. A History of the World in Twelve Maps • Jerry Brotton
2. Hardwiring Happiness: The New Brain Science of Contentment, Calm, and Confidence • Rick Hanson
3. Running and Being • Dr George Sheehan
4. Buddha's Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom • Rick Hanson
5. The Wisdom of Yoga: A Seeker's Guide to Extraordinary Living • Stephen Cope
6. The Sanity We Are Born With: A Buddhist Approach to Psychology • Chogyam Trungpa
7. Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism • Chogyam Trungpa
8. Smile at Fear: Awakening the True Heart of Bravery • Chogyam Trungpa
9. The Emotional Life of Your Brain: How Its Unique Patterns Affect the Way You Think, Feel, and Live--and How You Can Change Them • Richard J. Davidson & Sharon Begley
10. Grain Brain: The Surprising Truth about Wheat, Carbs, and Sugar--Your Brain's Silent Killers • David Perlmutter & Kristin Loberg
11. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West • Dee Brown
12. Blue Plate Special: An Autobiography of My Appetites • Kate Christensen
13. The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals • Michael Pollan
14. In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto • Michael Pollan
15. Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation • Michael Pollan
16. Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History • S. C. Gwynne
17. Dearie: The Remarkable Life of Julia Child • Bob Spitz
18. Love Your Enemies: How to Break the Anger Habit & Be a Whole Lot Happier • Sharon Salzberg
19. Provence, 1970: M.F.K. Fisher, Julia Child, James Beard, and the Reinvention of American Taste • Luke Barr
20. Running with the Buffaloes: A Season Inside with Mark Wetmore, Adam Goucher, and the University of Colorado Men's Cross Country Team • Chris Lear
21. The Round House: A Novel Paperback • Louise Erdrich
22. The Road of Lost Innocence • Somaly Mam
23. The Age of Insight: The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art, Mind, and Brain, from Vienna 1900 to the Present • Eric Kandel
24. The Source of All Things: A Memoir • Tracy Ross
25. No Time to Lose: A Timely Guide to the Way of the Bodhisattva •  Pema Chodron
26. Give and Take • Adam Grant
27. Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them • Joshua Greene
28. The Social Neuroscience of Education: Optimizing Attachment and Learning in the Classroom • Louis Cozolino
29. Quiet: The Power of Introverts • Susan Cain
30. The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot • Robert MacFarlane
31. A Tale for the Time Being • Ruth Ozeki
32. David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants • Malcolm Gladwell
33. S. Rajaratnam on Singapore: From Ideas to Reality • edited by Kwa Chong Guan
34. When Women Were Birds: Fifty-Four Variations on Voice • Terry Tempest Williams
35. Real Happiness: The Power of Meditation • Sharon Salzberg
36. Hild • Nicola Griffith
38. Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
39. The Names of the Rose • Umberto Eco
40. Dune • Frank Herbert
41. The Stars My Destination • Alfred Bester
42. Jane Eyre • Charlotte Bronte
43. The Windup Girl • Paolo Bacigalupi
44. Regenesis • C.J. Cherryh
45. Among Others • Jo Walton
46. Ready Player One • Ernest Cline
47. The City & The City • China Miéville
55. Their Eyes Were Watching God • Zora Neale Hurston
56. A Fine Balance • Rohinton Mistry
57. The 1963 Operation Coldstore in Singapore • Edited by Poh Soo Kai, Tan Kok Fang & Hong Lysa
    [ 01/01/2014 ~
58. Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith • Anne Lamott
    [ 15/10/2013 ~
59. How to Meditate: A Practical Guide to Making Friends with Your Mind • Pema Chodron
    [ 27/01/2014 ~
60. Mindset: The New Psychology of Success • Carol Dweck
    [ 30/01/2014 ~
61. An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace • Tamar Adler
    [ 10/02/2014 ~
62. The Goldfinch • Donna Tartt
    [ 14/03/2014 ~
73. Small Victories: Spotting Improbable Moments of Grace • Anne Lamott
    [ 04/12/2014 ~
74. Encyclopedia of Trouble and Spaciousness• Rebecca Solnit
    [ 26/11/2014 ~
75. Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption • Laura Hillenbrand
    [ 23/11/2014 ~ 
76. Station Eleven • Emily St. John Mandel
    [ 23/11/2014 ~
77. What Days Are For: A Memoir • Robert Dessaix
    [ 20/11/2014 ~
78. The Outsider • Albert Camus
    Translated from the French by Sandra Smith
    [ 01/10/2014 ~
79. The Trauma of Everyday Life • Mark Epstein
    [ 15/09/2014 ~
80. Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage • Haruki Murakami
    Translated from the Japanese by Philip Gabriel
    [ 12/08/2014 ~
82. The Devil's Star • Jo Nesbø
    Translated from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett
    [ 28/07/2014 ~
91. Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence • Daniel Goleman
    [ 04/11/2013 ~ 01/01/2014 ]
92. What I Talk About When I Talk About Running • Haruki Murakami
    [ 02/01/2014 ~ 27/01/2014 ]
93. The Hunger Games • Suzanne Collins
    [ 31/01/2014 ~ 08/02/2014 ]
94. Catching Fire • Suzanne Collins
    [ 08/02/2014 ~ 09/02/2014 ]
95. Mockingjay • Suzanne Collins
    [ 09/02/2014 ~ 10/02/2014 ]
96. Nemesis • Jo Nesbø
    Translated from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett
    [ 19/07/2014 ~ 28/07/2014 ]
97. Cave in the Snow • Vicki Mackenzie
    [ 18/10/2014 ~ 08/11/2014 ]
98. The Land Where Lemons Grow: The Story of Italy and its Citrus Fruit • Helena Attlee
    [ 13/09/2014 ~ 15/11/2014 ]
99. Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar • Cheryl Strayed
    [ 28/09/2014 ~ 2/11/2014 ]

CAMUS | To Read

The absurdity of my life is not lost on me. I have began to wonder about my own sanity. Perhaps this is why I decided to start a reading list for myself yesterday. I have decided I will read the works of Albert Camus - works by him, works about him. I may not read everything, but as much as possible.

So here we go - for 1st October 2014, I read The Outsider, by Albert Camus. Translator: Sandra Smith.

BOOKS | The Hunger Games

I just finished the final book in The Hunger Games series. One of my friends commented a few days that she was surprised it took so long for me to hit these books, since these are the type of books one would expect me to read. Fair enough - just that I had been on something of a reading dry spell, and I haven't actually been reading much fiction the last few years. I had been reading for work, for knowledge - but I haven't actually been reading for fun. Perhaps the fact that I was so taken with the Hunger Games books is a good sign that I am at this place in my life when I finally am able to read for fun.

The books were definitely richer and darker than the movie - which always reminds me of how the cinema can be such a vulgar entertainment. The Hunger Games is a narrative on the idea of Panem et Circenses (Latin for "Bread and Circus") where politicians rule by material appeasement and entertainment. Cinema itself might qualify as our modern mode of Circenses. Then people are rich enough, and entertained enough, they forget things like civic duties, and ignore injustice within the political and social system, it seems.

Which feels so close to modern life - and I am as guilty of this as anyone.

I love the social consciousness in The Hunger Games books, and while I disliked the tedious journey the third book took to get to the conclusion - it was a fitting ending.

I just hate the love triangle in the book between Katniss, Gale and Peeta. Quit it - the story of Katniss is more interesting than the love triangle. Not every story with a female lead needs romance.

The 100 Most Celebrated Travel Books

This blog started a lot time ago as my blog about reading. Then I started doing yoga, learning more about the dharma, and the blog became a kind of spiritual exploration through blogging. It's been a long journey since those fine days. I lost myself for a while. Had my heart broken twice. Now I'm starting to come back to myself again. Some things feel familiar. Some things feel different. I need to let go how it is supposed to feel, and just be.

But I do like coming back to the little things that I loved - I guess I still love them. I haven't really had a chance to travel recently - or read. Then I came across this list of The 100 Most Celebrated Travel Books. I might have read it some time back (who knows?) But right here, right now, it made me want to start drawing up a reading list, and working through the list again. I used to do that every year with my 100 Books to Read Lists.

What the hell? Let's just start.

1) A Dragon Apparent, by Norman Lewis
2) A House in Bali, by Colin McPhee
3) A Moveable Feast, by Ernest Hemingway
4) A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush, by Eric Newby
5) A Time of Gifts, by Patrick Leigh Fermor
6) A Turn in the South, by V.S. Naipaul
7) A Walk in the Woods, by Bill Bryson
8) A Winter in Arabia, by Freya Stark
9) Among the Russians, by Colin Thubron
10) An Area of Darkness, by V.S. Naipaul
11) Arabian Sands, by Wilfred Thesiger
12) Arctic Dreams, by Barry Lopez
13) The Art of Travel, by Alain de Botton
14) As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning, by Laurie Lee
15) Baghdad Without a Map, by Tony Horwitz
16) Balkan Ghosts, by Robert D. Kaplan
17) Beyond Euphrates, by Freya Stark
18) The Bird Man and the Lap Dancer, by Eric Hansen
19) Bitter Lemons of Cyprus, by Lawrence Durrell
20) Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, by Rebecca West
21) Black Like Me, by John Howard Griffin
22) Blue Highways, by William Least Heat-Moon
23) Brazilian Adventure, by Peter Fleming
24) Chasing the Sea, by Tom Bissell
25) City of Djinns, by William Dalrymple
26) Coasting, by Jonathan Raban
27) Coming Into the Country, by John McPhee
28) Dark Star Safari, by Paul Theroux
29) Desert Solitaire, by Edward Abbey
30) Down the Nile, by Rosemary Mahoney
31) Eat, Pray, Love, by Elizabeth Gilbert
32) The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, by Tom Wolfe
33) Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage, by Alfred Lansing
34) Facing the Congo, by Jeffrey Tayler
35) Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, by Hunter S. Thompson
36) Four Corners, by Kira Salak
37) Full Circle, by Michael Palin
38) Full Tilt: Ireland to India With a Bicycle, by Dervla Murphy
39) Golden Earth, by Norman Lewis
40) Great Plains, by Ian Frazier
41) The Great Railway Bazaar, by Paul Theroux
42) Holidays in Hell, by P.J. O’Rourke
43) Homage to Catalonia, by George Orwell
44) Hunting Mister Heartbreak, by Jonathan Raban
45) In a Sunburned Country, by Bill Bryson
46) In Patagonia, by Bruce Chatwin
47) In Siberia, by Colin Thubron
48) In Trouble Again, by Redmond O’Hanlon
49) The Innocents Abroad, by Mark Twain
50) Into the Wild, by Jon Krakauer
51) Into Thin Air, by Jon Krakauer
52) Iron and Silk, by Mark Salzman
53) Kon-Tiki, by Thor Heyerdahl
54) The Lady and the Monk, by Pico Iyer
55) Life on the Mississippi, by Mark Twain
56) The Log From the Sea of Cortez, by John Steinbeck
57) The Long Walk, by Slavomir Rawicz
58) The Lost Continent, by Bill Bryson
59) Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found, by Suketu Mehta
60) The Motorcycle Diaries, by Ernesto “Che” Guevara
61) The Muses Are Heard, by Truman Capote
62) No Mercy, by Redmond O’Hanlon
63) Notes From a Small Island, by Bill Bryson
64) Nothing to Declare, by Mary Morris
65) Old Glory, by Jonathan Raban
66) The Old Patagonian Express, by Paul Theroux
67) Out of Africa, by Isak Dinesen
68) Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, by Annie Dillard
69) The Pillars of Hercules, by Paul Theroux
70) The Places in Between, by Rory Stewart
71) Riding to the Tigris, by Freya Stark
72) The Rings of Saturn, by W.G. Sebald
73) The River at the Center of the World, by Simon Winchester
74) River Town, by Peter Hessler
75) Road Fever, by Tim Cahill
76) The Road to Oxiana, by Robert Byron
77) Roughing It, by Mark Twain
78) Sea and Sardinia, by D.H. Lawrence
79) Seven Years in Tibet, by Heinrich Harrer
80) The Sex Lives of Cannibals, by J. Maarten Troost
81) The Size of the World, by Jeff Greenwald
82) Slowly Down the Ganges, by Eric Newby
83) The Snow Leopard, by Peter Matthiessen
84) The Soccer War, by Ryszard Kapuscinski
85) The Songlines, by Bruce Chatwin
86) Terra Incognita, by Sara Wheeler
87) Their Heads are Green and Their Hands are Blue, by Paul Bowles
88) Three Cups of Tea, by Greg Mortenson
89) Travels With Charley, by John Steinbeck
90) Travels With Myself and Another, by Martha Gellhorn
91) Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere, by Jan Morris
92) Two Towns in Provence, by M.F.K. Fisher
93) Under the Tuscan Sun, by Frances Mayes
94) Video Night in Kathmandu, by Pico Iyer
95) West With the Night, by Beryl Markham
96) When the Going was Good, by Evelyn Waugh
97) The World of Venice, by Jan Morris
98) The Worst Journey in the World, by Apsley Cherry-Garrard
99) Wrong About Japan, by Peter Carey
100) Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert M. Pirsig

100 BOOKS | 100 Books To Read 2011

1. Man's Search for Meaning • Victor Frankl
   [12/02/2011


2. Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers • Leonard Koren
   [07/02/2011 ~


3. The Call of Stories: Teaching and the Moral Imagination • Robert Coles
   [24/01/2011 ~


4. Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human • Richard Wrangham
   [23/12/2010 ~


5. A Paradise Built in Hell • Rebecca Solnit
   [14/12/2010 ~


6. The Classical World • Robin Lane Fox
   


7. Sergio: One Man's Fight to Save the World • Samantha Power
   


8. The Shadow of the Sun • Ryszard Kapuscinski
   


9. The Histories • Herodotus
   


10. Guns, Germs and Steel • Jared Diamond
    


11. No Logo • Naomi Klein
    


12. War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
    [translated by Richard Pevear & Larissa Volokhonsky]
    


13. Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi • Geoff Dyer
    


14. Out of Sheer Rage: In the Shadow of D.H. Lawrence • Geoff Dyer
    


15. The Death of Ivan Ilyich & Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
    [translated by Richard Pevear & Larissa Volokhonsky]
    


16. Just Kids • Patti Smith
    


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64. Eat, Pray, Love • Elizabeth Gilbert
    [02/12/2010 ~ 08/12/2010]


65. Outliers: The Story of Success • Malcolm Gladwell
    [30/12/2010 ~ 02/01/2011]


66. Let the Right One In • John Ajvide Lindqvist
    [translated from the Swedish by Ebba Segerberg]
    [18/11/2010 ~ 03/01/2011]


67. Opening the Door of Your Heart and other Buddhist Tales of Happiness • Ajahn Brahm
    [15/01/2011 ~ 23/01/2011]


68. Shah of Shahs • Ryszard Kapuściński
    [translated from the Polish by William R. Brand & Katarzyna Mroczkowska-Brand]
    [05/01/2011 ~ 23/01/2011]


69. The Little Prince • Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
    [30/01/2011 ~ 31/01/2011]


70. The Miracle of Mindfulness: A Manual on Meditation • Thich Nhat Hanh
    [05/02/2011 ~ 07/02/2011]

100 BOOKS | 100 Books To Read 2011 - The Planning

People who have been reading this blog since it first started probably recall the 100 Books to Read lists. This blog was first started to alleviate boredom at work, but slowly evolved into a place where I kept track of my reading. I started drawing up a list of 100 books I aspire to read every year, fully conscious of the fact that real life makes it almost impossible to finish 100 books in a year -- but going ahead anyway. None of us will ever truly be able to finish all the books we want to read in this life-time anyway, so we might as well just try and enjoy the ride: The journey is the destination.

I have decided to revive the 100 Books To Read List for 2011. It has been something I enjoyed doing for several years -- but I have neglected it the past two years. I guess this is as much a sign that the circumstances in my life is finally improving.

For 2011, I hope to finally tackle Ryszard Kapuscinski, to read more history -- and maybe finally finish some of the classics I have always wanted to read.

As it is every year, the list is fluid and evolving, full of good intentions.

100 Books To Read 2011

1. Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human • Richard Wrangham
   [23/12/2010 ~


2. A Paradise Built in Hell • Rebecca Solnit
   [14/12/2010 ~


3. Let the Right One In • John Ajvide Lindqvist
   [Translated from the Swedish by Ebba Segerberg]
   [18/11/2010 ~


4. The Classical World • Robin Lane Fox
   


5. Sergio: One Man's Fight to Save the World • Samantha Power
   


6. The Shadow of the Sun • Ryszard Kapuscinski
   


7. The Histories • Herodotus
   


8. Guns, Germs and Steel • Jared Diamond
   


9. No Logo • Naomi Klein
   


10. War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
    [translated by Richard Pevear & Larissa Volokhonsky]
    


11. Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi • Geoff Dyer
    


12. Out of Sheer Rage: In the Shadow of D.H. Lawrence • Geoff Dyer
    


13. The Death of Ivan Ilyich & Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
    [translated by Richard Pevear & Larissa Volokhonsky]
    


14. Just Kids • Patti Smith
    


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41. Eat, Pray, Love • Elizabeth Gilbert
    [02/12/2010 ~ 08/12/2010]

As you can see- the list is still in the planning process.

Records for 2008

100 Books To Read: Version 2.2

100 Books To Read 2008 [Original List]

Graphic Novel Challenge

Outmoded Author Challenge

Comics & Manga Read 2008

Books Read 2008

100 Books To Read 2008 Version 2.2

This an aspirational list - the key is just to try to read as many as I can.

1. Arabian Sands • Wilfred Thesiger
   [21/11/2008 ~


2. With Billie • Julia Blackburn
   [07/11/2008 ~


3. The Name of the Rose • Umberto Eco
   [translated by William Weaver]
   [03/09/2008 ~


4. The Idiot • Fyodor Dostoevsky
   [translated by Richard Pevear & Larissa Volokhonsky]
   [11/07/2008 ~


5. The Histories • Herodotus
   [24/04/2007 ~


6. The Surgeon's Mate • Patrick O'Brian
   [18/04/2008 ~


7. The Open Road: The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama • Pico Iyer
   [11/04/2008~


8. Touchstone • Laurie R. King
   [08/04/2008 ~


9. The Stress of Her Regard • Tim Powers
   [07/04/2008 ~


10. A Voice From the Attic: Essays on the Art of Reading • Robertson Davies
    [13/11/2007 ~


11. Seduction and Betrayal • Elizabeth Hardwick
    [17/03/2008 ~


12. Weight • Jeanette Winterson


13. The Looking Glass Wars • Frank Beddor


14. Wabi-Sabi: for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers • Leonard Koren


15. The Neverending Story • Michael Ende


16. The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol
    [translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky]


17. The Worst Journey in the World • Apsley Cherry-Garrard


18. War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
    [translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky]
    [01/01/2008 ~


19. 三国演义 • 罗 贯 中
    [26/12/2007 ~


20. In Search of Lost Time Marcel Proust
    Swann's Way
    In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower
    The Guermantes Way
    Sodom and Gomorrah
    The Prisoner & The Fugitive
    [Translated by Carol Clark & Peter Collier]
    [26/11/2007 ~
    Finding Time Again
    [Translated by Ian Paterson]


21. Kristin Lavransdatter • Sigrid Undset
    [Translated by Tiina Nunnally]
    [27/08/2007 ~


22. The Three Musketeers• Alexandre Dumas
    [Translated by Richard Pevear]
    


23. The Book of Disquiet • Fernando Pessoa


24. Good Morning, Midnight • Jean Rhys


25. After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie • Jean Rhys


26. Orlando • Virginia Woolf


27. The Napoleon of Notting Hill • G.K. Chesterton


28. Rebecca • Daphne Du Maurier


29. Jane Eyre • Charlotte Bronte


30. The Masterpiece • Emile Zola


31. The Plague • Albert Camus


32. The Myth of Sisyphus • Albert Camus


33. Cheri and The Last of Cheri • Colette


34. Earthly Paradise • Colette


35. Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette • Judith Thurman
    [09/12/2006 ~


36. Flaubert In Egypt • Gustave Flaubert


37. Bel-Ami • Guy de Maupassant


38. Gargantua and Pantagruel • François Rabelais [translated by M. A. Screech]


39. Assassin's Apprentice (The Farseer Trilogy, Book I) • Robin Hobb


40. Royal Assassin (The Farseer Trilogy, Book II) • Robin Hobb


41. Assassin's Quest (The Farseer Trilogy, Book III) • Robin Hobb


42. A Canticle for Liebowitz • Walter M. Miller Jr.


43. Slow River • Nicola Griffith


44. In Praise of Shadows • Junichiro Tanizaki


45. Vermeer In Bosnia: Selected Writings • Lawrence Weschler


46. Out of Sheer Rage: Wrestling With D.H. Lawrence • Geoff Dyer


47. Pashazade [Arabesk Trilogy Book I] • Jon Courtenay Grimwood


48. Effendi [Arabesk Trilogy Book II] • Jon Courtenay Grimwood


49. Felaheen [Arabesk Trilogy Book III] • Jon Courtenay Grimwood


50. Fledgling • Octavia E. Butler


51. The Ionian Mission • Patrick O'Brian


52. Under the Volcano • Malcolm Lowry


53. Love Medicine • Louise Erdrich


54. Molloy • Samuel Beckett


55. Love • Stendhal


56. The Red and the Black • Stendhal


57. The Charterhouse of Parma • Stendhal


58. Walden and Other Writings • Henry David Thoreau


59. Essential Writings • Ralph Waldo Emerson


60. The Twelve Caesars • Suetonius


61. Candide • Voltaire


62. Arctic Dreams: Imagination and Desire in a Northern Landscape • Barry Lopez


63. The Little Prince • Antoine de Saint-Exupery


64. An Unexpected Light • Jason Elliot


65. The Carpet Wars • Christopher Kremmer


66. The Shadow of the Sun • Ryszard Kapuscinski


67. The Places in Between • Rory Stewart


68. The Power and the Glory • Graham Greene


69. The Heart of the Matter • Graham Greene


70. The Solace of Open Spaces • Gretel Ehrlich


71. A Match to the Heart: One Woman's Story of Being Struck By Lightning • Gretel Ehrlich


72. Bleak House • Charles Dickens


73. The Iliad • Homer


74. Three Bags Full • Leonie Swann


75. The Stones of Florence and Venice Observed • Mary McCarthy


76. Venice • Jan Morris


77. Darkmans • Nicola Barker


78. The Married Man • Edmund White


79. The Salterton Trilogy • Robertson Davies


80. The Leopard • Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa


81. • Jorge Luis Borges



82. Ghosts of Spain • Giles Tremlett


83. Storming the Gates of Paradise: Landscapes for Politics • Rebecca Solnit
    [26/04/2008 ~ 13/08/2008]


84. Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly • Anthony Bourdain
    [27/05/2008 ~ 11/07/2008]


85. Into Thin Air • Jon Krakauer
    [03/01/2008 ~ 12/01/2008]


86. The Wild Places • Robert Macfarlane
    [12/01/2008 ~ 26/01/2008]


87. Cyteen • C. J. Cherryh
    [29/12/2007 ~ 01/02/2008]


88. Shadow of the Silk Road • Colin Thubron
    [21/01/2008 ~ 26/02/008]


89. A Time to Keep Silence • Patrick Leigh Fermor
    [10/02/2008 ~ 02/03/2008]


90. Cleopatra's Nose: 39 Varieties of Desire • Judith Thurman
    [16/02/2008 ~ 20/03/2008]


91. The High King (Chronicles of Prydain, Book V) • Lloyd Alexander
    [24/03/2008 ~ 24/03/2008]


92. Taran Wanderer (Chronicles of Prydain, Book IV) • Lloyd Alexander
    [23/03/2008 ~ 24/03/2008]


93. The Castle of Llyr (Chronicles of Prydain, Book III) • Lloyd Alexander
    [22/03/2008 ~ 23/03/2008]


94. The Black Cauldron (Chronicles of Prydain, Book II) • Lloyd Alexander
    [21/03/2008 ~ 22/03/2008]


95. The Book of Three (Chronicles of Prydain, Book I) • Lloyd Alexander
    [21/03/2008 ~ 21/03/2008]


96. The Strangers in the House • Georges Simenon
    [Translated by Geoffrey Sainsbury]
    [22/03/2008 ~ 24/03/2008]


97. Monsieur Monde Vanishes • Georges Simenon
    [Translated by Jean Stewart]
    [24/03/2008 ~ 05/04/2008]


98. The Riddle-Master's Game • Patricia A. McKillip
    The Riddle-Master of Hed
    [24/03/2008 ~ 05/04/2008]
    Heir of Sea and Fire
    [05/04/2008 ~ 06/04/2008]
    Harpist in the Wind
    [06/04/2008 ~ 07/04/2008]


99. The Fortune of War • Patrick O'Brian
    [23/03/2008 ~ 16/04/2008]


100. Falconer • John Cheever
     [16/04/2008 ~ 22/04/2008]

Alternatives (What a lot of them!):

Her Smoke Rose Up Forever • James Tiptree, Jr.

• Between the Woods and the Water: On Foot to Constantinople: From The Middle Danube to the Iron Gates • Patrick Leigh Fermor


• The Marsh Arabs • Wilfred Thesiger


• House Rules • Heather Lewis

Touchstone and Other Meanderings

Convalescence Update:

I know I should be convalescing, but I'm having trouble keeping still everyday. I need to sit up to read and that alone involves moving the stitches. It's still going to be a while before I can resume yoga. It has been about a week since my last practice and I already feel ill at ease.

I found out recently that two of my friends just signed up for the gym. It feels like the world changes the moment I go for surgery. I have half a mind to join them after I recover. Right: yoga and gym. Where will I find the time to do anything else? Let us leave that thought for another day and focus on getting better, shall we?

Starting on Laurie R. King's Touchstone & Writers That Challenge Themselves:

In my restlessness I have started many books, the latest being Laurie R King's Touchstone. I have been a fan of Laurie R. King since 1999 and I still look forward to each new title with excitement.

Laurie R. King is most famous for her Mary Russell series, a Sherlock Holmes pastische that features Mary Russell as the great detective's partner – professionally and as his wife. She also has her Kate Martinelli series, a contemporary police procedural series that I also enjoy.

Touchstone, however, is one of her four stand-alone novels – unrelated to all her other books. King herself has remarked on her blog that while she still loves writing the characters she is famous for, a writer can be bored just writing the same books all the time. Her stand-alone novels are her creative ventures outside the familiar. They can be frightening for an established author, as the audience may not always be accepting of differences.

Neil Gaiman himself faces the same problem. I read recently on his blog, his response to a fan who wrote in to tell Gaiman that he isn't spending enough time writing. The fan then asks Gaiman for the sequel to Neverwhere. Gaiman's reply (with much aplomb, I must say) is that what the fan is asking for is not more new books, but rather, more of the same type of books. He goes on to explain that he would much prefer to write something new than rehash old ideas, and any attempt at something new will take more time. Which is why he isn't writing as fast as a lot of his fans prefer.

If the writers are not the sort to constantly challenge themselves creatively, they probably wouldn't be the sort of writers worth reading anyway. This is one of my frustration with one of my favourite writer (who shall remain unnamed) and the new works she has been producing past few years. I have no doubt on her ability as a writer – she still writes beautifully. Yet there is the teeth-gnashing resentment within me each time I read her newest book. She seems to be circling the same ideas, working in the same style – so smug and self-satisfied with the brilliance of herself. There is nothing challenging about her writing anymore. In fact, she now reads like a lyrical parody of her earlier self. It breaks my heart to admit this, because I had loved those earlier works of hers which are refreshing with their audacity and wit. Now she just feels like a one-trick pony.

Now We Actually Talk About Touchstone:

Which brings me back to Touchstone, in case you think I forgot. I have read one of Laurie R. King's other stand-alone, A Darker Place, a contemporary thriller about a theology professor going undercover to investigate a cult that. It is definitely a departure from what I would expect of Laurie R. King – but to my surprise, it is one my favourite among Laurie R. King's novels. She certainly is not a One Trick Pony – or perhaps she just does that one trick very well – the ability to draw research and characters into good storytelling.

Touchstone qaulifies as a period novel, with its story set in the 1920s, where England the America are coming out of The Great War (World War I) with new enemies, in the form of unions, socialists and communists. There has been three bombing incidents in America, seemingly unrelated until Harris Stuyvesant, an agent from the U.S. Bureau of Investigation, finds a common link between all three in the form of a British Richard Bunsen – a man with connections to the English workers' union, a rising star in British politics and who is romantically linked to a lady from one of the oldest and most influential family of the British aristocracy. Stuyvesant travels to England, and in the process picks up a suspicious ally – a man known as Touchstone.

The touchstone of the story, is one Captain Bennett Grey, a war veteran who was injuried in the line of fire. His injuries led to a perculiar hypersensitivity in Captain Grey's perception of humans and things. Touchstone, as explained in the book:

"It's a soft stone used to prove the purity of gold or silver. But the alchemists used quicksilver, or mercury, because when one touches gold to mercury, the liquid is drawn up to cover the soild, making it look like lead. The inestimable value of touchstone is in the way it reveals the true nature of gold. In the same way, Captain Grey is drawn to the true nature of the person of thing he encounters: He cannot help himself, he reacts and reveals the nature of the person. True or false? Gold or pyrite?"

With a character like Captain Bennett Gray, with his special ability, Laurie R. King is asking for a good degree of suspension of disbelief. I find myself a little challenged in this areas as I could accept, conditionally, Captain Grey's ability to sense the dissonance among the people he interacts with – but the logic as explained by the author is unable to explain his sensitivity to the integrity of inanimate objects.

I also noticed one problem with King's stand-alone novels – as her strength is in characterisation over plot, she now has to spend more time building up several new characters. The process is gradual, but it slows the action of the book somewhat.

I'm about halfway through the book, and most of the principal characters have met. Yet there is a sense of things not yet falling into place – not a good sign since this is supposed to be a period political thriller – and it's not thrilling me yet.

But I'm going to give it more time. There is justifiable reason for me following Laurie R. King for 9 years.

And Now I Conclude With An Ironical Comment:

Oh cool. As I'm typing this, the mail just came in – with the hospital bill. The stitches are still on my body and they are already billing me for the procedure? They are efficient.

The End.

BOOKS | The Riddle-Master's Game (Possible Spoiler)

In the Riddle-Master trilogy, Patricia A. McKillip built a grand fantastic world, filled with engimatic characters that lived century-long lives with immense powers. Shape-shifters walked the land, knowledge comes from the learning of riddles.

There are no more wizards in the land since the city of Lungold – the centre of learning for wizards, was destroyed centuries ago. Yet the riddles of the land is filled with the tales of these wizards and magic from long ago.

The people reveres the High One – a mysterious, god-like figure that rules over the land through the land-law. The king of each country holds land-law. Through land-law the king is inextricably bonded to the land and its protection. He senses and awareness of his realm is heightened, almost on a psychic level.

The High One, from the beginning, had left men free to find their own destinies. His sole law was land-law, the law that passed like a breath of life from land-heir to land-heir; if the High One died, or withdrew his immense and intricate power, he could turn his realm into a wasteland.

The High One is never seen; his will is made known through his harpist – a similarly enigmatic figure named Deth, a man who had lived for centuries unaged. One day, Deth came to Morgon of Hed. He came to offer the High One's condolescences on Morgon's parents' death, and to find, on the bequest of the King of An, the one who solved the riddle of Peven. The King of An had sworn a long time ago, one who solves the riddle of Peven will win the hand of his daughter, Raederle – known as "the second most beautiful woman in An." (One is curious on how does one measure beauty? With a rule or a measuring jug?)

Morgon of Hed, the new King of Hed, has solved the riddle of Peven without telling anyone. He is a farmer-king, a true-hearted but very gifted young man born with three stars on his face. As he goes forth to answer the riddle of the three stars on his face, he suddenly finds himself pursued by unnameable shape-shifters who tried to kill him. There he learns the five riddles behind the three stars on his face, and a name given to him before he was born: Star-Bearer:

Who is the Star-Bearer and what will he loose that is bound?

What will one star call out of silence, one star out of darkness, and one star out of death?

Who will come in the time's ending and what will he bring?

Who will sound the earth's harp, silent since the Beginning?

Who will bear stars of fire and ice to the Ending of the Age?

A prophecy speaks of the coming of the Star-Bearer and of a harp and a sword both bearing three stars.

Morgon ends up acquiring great power – at great pain, and great cost. He also learns of the return of an ancient enemy of the land, and somehow their return – as well as the key to defeating them – is tied up with the three stars on his face.

McKillip wove Mogon's journey much like a riddle: with each riddle untangled, more riddles unfold – and one person can wear many masks.

***POSSIBLE SPOILER AHEAD***

But most of all, I love the theme of vengeance and love in the story. Morgon is saved by his gentleness, his love for the land and the people in it. His love saves him from being broken inspite of great suffering, and it saves him time and again from turning into a murderer.

Towards the end, one of the character said to Morgon:

'…When you broke free of Ghisteslwchlohm's power, why was it me you hunted, instead of him? He took the power of land-law from you. I took your trust, your love. You pursued what you valued most …'

'You and the Morgol kept my heart from turning into stone. I was forced to turn everything I had ever said to her into a lie. And you turned it back into truth. You were that generous with someone you hated.'

In a Revenger's Tale, there can only be two endings: Tragedy or Forgiveness. The answer to The Riddler-Master's Game is forgiveness – or perhaps something greater: love. It was the love Morgon carries in him, a farmer-king of a peaceful land, that made it possible to turn a lie into truth, betrayal into love.

Final Three Books of The Chronicles of Prydain

I'm going to write about the final three books of The Prydain Chronicles in a single post, since I ran through all three books in the same weekend. It was a furious weekend, full of reading and sleeplessness.

The Castle of Llyr, Book III of The Chronicles of Prydain, opens with Princess Eilonwy, Daughter of Angharad, Daughter of Regat of the Royal House of Llyr, she of the red-gold hair and the too-sharp tongue, leaving Caer Dallben. Eilonwy is being sent to the Isle of Mona, where the King and Queen will teach her how to be a princess.

If you know what kind of girl of a girl Eilonwy is, you would snicker too.

Coll embraced Eilonwy. "When we see you again," he told her, "I doubt we shall recognize you. You shall be a fine Princess."

"I want to be recognized!" Eilonwy cried. "I want to be me!"

I smiled when I read this. It endears Eilonwy to me, because she wants nothing more than to be recognised for who she is.

Eilonwy is the last living successor to the magic of the House Of Llyr. The magic is available to Eilonwy on her reaching her womanhood. Achren desires the power for herself, and for this purpose, Eilonwy is kidnapped and brought to Caer Colur, the castle where the House of Llyr once stood.

Although her storyline is smaller than Taran, she too has to make a choice – and she chose well, proving she is capable of sacrifice. For one of the great themes of the Chronicles of Prydain is as Dallben said, "For each of us comes a time when we must be more than what we are." Though what this will be is often unknown to us until the time comes.

Taran Wanderer, Book IV continues the journey of Taran, Assistant Pig-Keeper (can you tell how much I love saying this?) as he tries to find out more about himself. Specifically, he now knows he wishes to marry Eilonwy, and to do so, he needs to be worthy of a princess. He goes off to answer the question of his parentage – because a princess cannot marry a nobody, much less an Assistant Pig-Keeper.

Taran Wanderer is the dramatisation of something Taran said in The Castle of Llyr, about Prince Rhun: "For a man to be worthy of any rank, he must strive first to be a man." This is the tale of Taran striving to master himself, to learn to be a man.

This is actually my favourite book of the series. My earlier dissatisfaction with the stereotypical plot structure of the series has greatly dimished. Fantasy often works by means of metaphor, and Taran Wanderer works in a systematic structure of a Hero's Quest. Taran has several encounters. From each he learns something valuable. He then undergoes apprenticeship of various trades – from each he learns the wisdom of Life.

From the blacksmith – the life is a forge. "Metal's worthless till it's shaped and tempered!"

From the weaver – that we choose the pattern of our lives. If we do not like the pattern we have woven, we can either continue, or choose to start over. "Either finish a cloak you'll be ill-content to wear, or unravel it and start anew."

From the potter – he learns to put his heart into clay and gives shape to what lies within. "Craftsmanship isn't like water in an earthen pot, to be taken out by the dipperful until it's empty. No, the more drawn out the more remains. The heart renews itself, Wanderer, and skill grows all the better for it."

I appreciate wisdom that is pretty and lyrical – but just because a truth is delivered in a simple but familiar adage doesn't make it any less meaningful. Less glamorous, perhaps – but not necessarily less valuable.

By the end of Taran Wanderer, he returns to Caer Dallben – wiser and changed. He is now a man who can do anything he sets his mind to – and that is the truest mastery of self.

The High King, the final book in The Prydain Chronicles brings the battle against Arawn to the forth. There is betrayal, death, loss, sacrifice, grief – and courage. Finally, there is victory. The secret of Dallebn's Book of Three is also finally revealed, along with the secret of Taran's parentage.

But was the ending satisfying for me? There was closure, and it ended as one might suspect -- the fact is nothing was surprsing about the ending. I have enjoyed the reading of the series, but I know I wouldn't re-read it in any near future.

[The Castle of Llyr, Taran Wanderer and The High King are readings for the Once Upon a Time II Challenge. Visit the Once Upon a Time II Review Site for more fantasy related review.]

Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander

Today is Good Friday, and a public holiday. I've taken advantage of the day off to start on the first book of Lloyd Alexander's Prydain Chronicles: The Book of Three.

Lloyd Alexander wrote in his introduction to The Book of Three, that while some of the characters and plot lines may seem similar to Welsh mythology, it is only very loosely inspired by the Welsh tales.

As the story goes, we are introduced to Taran, a boy dubbed the "Assistant Pig-Keeper", who dreams of battles, honour and a life out of his home of Caer Dallben. He lives with Dallben, a three-hundred year old scholar and Coll -- both of whom are more than meets the eyes.

One day the bees and the chickens flown away. Recognising this as an ill omen, Dallen asks Taran to bring Hen Wen, the oracular pig to him. But Hen Wen runs away instead, and Taran, Assistant Pig-Keeper, runs after him. Here his adventures begin. Along the way he meets Prince Gwydion, a son of Don and War Leader of High King Math -- a sort of a Strider figure in the story.

As it turns out, Arawn, the Death-Lord of dark magic and darker ambitions, is after Hen Wen also. His champion and War Leader is the Horned King, a terrible warrior who wears a mask of skull and an antlered helmet; the Horned King is assembling an army towards Caer Cadarn.

The premise of the story is familiar -- it is a young hero's quest, with Taran being helped by companions he picked up along the way. He also earns unexpected allies through his random acts of compassion. There is little that seems extraordinary about Taran, Assistant Pig-Keeper, but he manages to come up as a hero at the end. As Dallben reminds him later, no great task is ever undertaken alone. The role Taran plays is not to be the sole hero of the mission, but the one who help hold it all together.

When asked what he wishes as his reward, all he asks for, is to be home at Caer Dallben. Yet when he is home, he finds his surroundings different, perhaps a little smaller, though he still loved his home. Dallben tells him then, that in fact, Taran has become larger after his experience.

I have to admit I'm not 100% taken with The Book of Three. I find the plot a little too abrupt -- things move too fast without sufficient build-up to the action. Taran stumbled upon Gwydion a little too conveniently -- even in The Lord of the Rings, there was a dramatic run-in with the Nazgûl before the hobbits are rescued by Strider.

It may be unfair to compare The Book of Three to Fellowship of the Ring -- but I am the kind of reader who would appreciate a richer fantasy world with deeper characters.

Recognising this, I am still going to continue with The Black Cauldron, the second book in The Chronicles of Prydain. Perhaps the tale will pick up as I progress down the series.

[The Book of Three is my first book for the Once Upon a Time II Challenge. Visit the Once Upon a Time II Review Site for more fantasy related review.]