Category: books

I read a lot, yet I still buy books faster than I read them. There always have been and always will be books in my life.

No One Understands You and What to Do about It by Heidi Grant Halvorson

The book No One Understands You and What to Do about It should be called Why No One Understands You and What to Do about It. The title sounds off balance because the first half is a clause and the second half is a noun phrase. Or perhaps the title should be something that doesn’t sound as self-obsessed or self-pitying, because the book is not so much a self-help book as it is a collection of fascinating psychological insights presented in a way that is both entertaining and informative.

When and Why I Read No One Understands You and What to Do about It

Reading First, Break All the Rules might make you think that people are so unique that we’re all somehow fundamentally unknowable. But apparently there are ways to mitigate this feeling of isolation.

Genre: non-fiction (management, psychology, self-improvement)
Date started / date finished:  18-Dec-16 to 20-Dec-16
Length: 191 pages
ISBN: 9781625274120 (paperback)
Originally published in: 2015
Amazon link: No One Understands You and What to Do about It

Dreamland by Sarah Dessen

Dreamland paints a gripping, believable picture of someone whose choices trap her (and the reader) in a world of hurt. This protagonist doesn’t save herself; she can’t.

When and Why I Read Dreamland

At some point I read or someone told me that Sarah Dessen was an especially articulate writer of contemporary teen fiction, so I started reading her books. Also, I liked the collage covers of the earlier editions. Dreamland is darker than the others.

Genre: fiction (YA)
Date started / date finished:  15-Dec-16 to 16-Dec-16
Length: 250 pages
ISBN: 9780142401750 (paperback)
Originally published in: 2000
Amazon link: Dreamland

Junior Page book sale at Novena

I bought these four books at Velocity in the hallway, where Junior Page had set up a bunch of tables offering discounted books for both children and adults.

When the price is “3 for $20 (or 1 for $10)”, buying four books is not optimal. Nevertheless, I wanted these four books, and only these four books.

Chinese Whispers by Ben Chu
I know a lot more about China than I used to, but in a lot of ways it’s still a black box. This book (which when I first saw it I thought was a novel) is devoted to busting some common myths that circulate in the way that the message does in the game of ‘telephone’—or, as the game is sometimes known, ‘Chinese whispers’.

No One Understands You and What to Do about It by Heidi Grant Halvorson
Reading First, Break All the Rules might make you think that people are so unique that we’re all somehow fundamentally unknowable. But according to this book, there are ways to mitigate this feeling of isolation.

Six Frames by Edward de Bono
I read and loved Six Thinking Hats. This is another of the many, many “creative thinking” books by a true master of the short-but-expensive book, Edward de Bono.

Born Liars by Ian Leslie
I was worried I’d already bought and read this book because it looked familiar. That was just because it has been on my wishlist, however. Glad to have bumped into it at a good price!

First, Break All the Rules by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman

Just another one of the thousands of management advice books, all clamoring to tell you the seven steps to success or some such? Maybe, but First, Break All the Rules speaks to me.

It’s a paean to individuals and their differences—or rather, their talents, a talent being defined as “a recurring pattern of thought, feeling, or behavior that can be productively applied.” The book happens to be talking about individuals as employees, but the psychological insight applies equally outside of work.

The key insight—people are different—sounds obvious, but these authors have data (not cherry-picked anecdotes) to back up their conclusions. Furthermore, their advice is actionable. Moreover, Gallup’s strengths-based management agenda, born in the 90s, is still alive and kicking in 2016.

Read it or regret it!

See below for photos from the book, which, interestingly, before it belonged to me, belonged to an Arabic speaker… and, which judging by the flight ticket stub, was taken to Jeddah, Saudia Arabia! Take that, BookCrossing. Betcha this book has been on the Hajj.

Continue reading First, Break All the Rules by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman

Ruth Chew books from Japan

Below are photos of the three Ruth Chew books translated into Japanese and published in Japan in 2016, which I just ordered by mail from Amazon.jp.

The Amazon Japan website is easy to use (there’s a button to switch the site to English), and you can check out with USD, but now I keep getting emails (marketing emails, presumably) from Amazon in Japanese!

See below for more photos of these exotic books.

Continue reading Ruth Chew books from Japan

The Taken by Alice Clark-Platts

Because it’s 448 pages, maybe you think The Taken is a long book. Didn’t feel that way! It was unputdownable. This, from someone who doesn’t usually read murder mysteries.

This is Alice’s second book about DI Erica Martin. The first was Bitter Fruits.

Set in Durham, the books both feel very British in terms of punctuation, spelling, phrasing, and brand and place names… plus there’s lots of tea and biscuits. Makes me want to go drink a cuppa.

When and Why I Read It

I’m a member of the writing group the author founded, the Singapore Writers’ Group.

Genre: fiction (mystery / thriller)
Date started / date finished:  07-Dec-16 to 09-Dec-16
Length: 448 pages
ISBN: 9780718181109 (paperback)
Originally published in: 2016
Amazon link: The Taken

An Introduction to Fiction by X.J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia

An Introduction to Fiction reminded me why I felt put off by a lot of the literature I studied in high school English classes: modern literary criticism is oppressive in its political correctness, and the stories themselves are almost uniformly depressing.

On page 274 of this textbook, Ursula K. Le Guin, in her story “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”, provides a possible explanation for literary gloom: “[W]e have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting.”

Tolstoy is one of those sophisticates. You will surely recall this famous line (from Anna Karenina): “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

We believe this, do we not? Genre fiction stories in which the characters catch the killer, go on adventures and return triumphant, defeat cosmic evil with the help of magic swords and stalwart companions, and/or fall in reciprocated love with their true soul mates are derided as shallow and commercial, no matter how inventive, entertaining, or uplifting we find them. We are apparently supposed to prefer deep explorations of the multitudes of ways people’s lives can and do go wrong. Blech.

In short, the textbook was mostly a downer. Nevertheless, some of the analysis of the components of fiction was interesting, and I did like a few of the stories. See below for more on what I liked and what I learned, as well as when and why I read the book.

Continue reading An Introduction to Fiction by X.J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia

What You Need to Know about British and American English by George Davidson

I’ve come a long way since the days when I consistently spelled the word ‘British’ with two t’s, which is phonetically intuitive but correct nowhere on the planet. Nevertheless, there were still some new factoids in What You Need to Know about British and American English.

When and Why I Read It

I write English lessons for students in Singapore; it’s important to know the British English standard here.

Genre: nonfiction (language / English)
Date started / date finished:  07-Nov-16 to XX-Nov-16
Length: 216 pages
ISBN: 9814107832 (paperback)
Originally published in: ????
Amazon link: ???

The book was published by some Singapore company called Learners Publishing, which was apparently acquired by Scholastic.

Two More Little Princes

While I returned from Vietnam to Singapore, my husband went on to Bangkok. After seeing how pleased I was to find The Little Prince in Vietnamese, he wanted to surprise me by bringing back The Little Prince in Thai. I spoiled his plan by asking him to look for it when I checked in with him online during his stay. Then he felt it was incumbent upon him to come up with an even surprisier surprise.

The result: The Little Prince deluxe pop-up book! Since I had The Little Prince in English and six other languages (not counting Thai), clearly I needed to have the book in 3D.

It’s pretty spectacular! I was indeed surprised.

tlp-title
The text in the pop-up book is the translation by Richard Howard.

tlp-interior

After a bit of Googling, I realized: nine versions is just a drop in the bucket. There are more than 250!

For comparison, the sensationally successful Harry Potter books are “only” available in about 70 different languages (someone’s got them all); I have copies in about 30 of them.

What about the The Bible? It’s available in over a thousand languages.

Still, The Little Prince is one of the most translated works ever. It’s up there with Pinocchio, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and stories by Andersen.

Given how many versions of The Little Prince there are, owning just one version for English (well, two, counting the pop-up) is paltry. I should figure out which English translation I have, because apparently there are several, and some are more well-regarded than others—or perhaps it would be fairer to say the different versions well-regarded for different reasons.

More on the subtleties and pitfalls of translation and publication across language barriers, with specific reference to The Little Prince, at the link below.

http://ephemeralpursuits.com/blog/2012/10/on-translation-and-the-little-prince/

Update: I’ve done a comparison of all 10 English translations of The Little Prince!

 

Emma by Jane Austen

I read The Annotated Emma when Emma was chosen as the Hungry Hundred Book Club book for November.

There are advantages and disadvantages to reading annotated editions of classics. The advantage is that you get a lot of added historical context (details about clothing, buildings, transportation, manners, etc.) and literary criticism (similarities and differences between related works). The disadvantage is that you aren’t left to see the story and characters reveal themselves to you, or to draw your own conclusions about the author’s themes.

On balance, for Emma, I’d say it’s worth reading an annotated edition if you already know the plot. Knowing the plot made the book a bit—only a bit!—tedious to read, since I spent the entire novel waiting for Emma to discover a bunch of things I already knew… she is, like Cher in the movie Clueless (1995), well meaning but oblivious. Thus, there’s a tinge of “unreliable narrator” syndrome, but in fact the narrator is much wiser than the protagonist, so I’d say the novel doesn’t cause disastrous levels of reader impatience. This is Jane Austen we’re talking about! Her stories are entertaining practically by definition. What more can I say?

When and Why I Read It

Rachel of the Hungry Hundred Book Club Meetup in Singapore chose it.

Genre: fiction (literature)
Date started / date finished:  31-Oct-16 to 27-Nov-16
Length: 863 pages
ISBN: 9780307390776 (paperback)
Originally published in: 1815
Amazon link: The Annotated Emma