Recent reads

Thermopylae

As a total outsider to Ancient Greek history, I found this book hard to follow. Too many unfamiliar names being brought up. But the names are brought to context by the author Paul Cartledge so one begins to get acquainted with names and terms like Herodotus, Plutarch, Greco-persian wars. Anyway, obviously my interest was piqued when I watched 300. I rewatched it before the marathon and the words of Gorgo to Leonidas “Come back with your shield or on it”. Some borrowed bravado to complete 42K. Pretty apt since the battle at Marathon was important in the War against the Persians.

The Mystic Masseur

VS Naipaul is probably an author that is a must-read but this is the first of his books that I have read and will definitely not be the last. This novel is written simply but reads vividly as though I was watching a movie. He adds interesting details to the description of the characters and what they are doing that the characters take on a life in the book. Thoroughly enjoyed reading this over 3 days.

The Children of Hurin

I have read the entire trilogy of the LOTR but I felt this book to be more captivating. Its well described as one of the more dark stories by Tolkien but still not off-puttingly dark. Its more dramatic in terms of what the character Turin faces and is a deviation from the long detailed descriptions found in the trilogy especially of the battles. So in a way, I found this book to be a better read.

All these books were from the MPH sale at the Expo and were selling at $8 a piece.

Octopus’ Garden

I was reading Sea Stories (Classic Illustrated Edition) Compiled by Cooper Edens. Its a really nice compilation of stories inspired by the sea. Like the 20,000 Leagues under the sea, Captain Blackbeard, The Old Man and the Sea, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner…

What attracted me to book was the front cover.. it was a nice painting

One of the entries for the book was this Poem by Richard Starkey. Turns out to be Ringo Starr from the Beatles.

Octopus’s Garden

“I’d like to be under the sea
In an octopus’ garden in the shade
He’d let us in, knows where we’ve been
In his octopus’ garden in the shade

I’d ask my friends to come and see
An octopus’ garden with me
I’d like to be under the sea
In an octopus’ garden in the shade.

We would be warm below the storm
In our little hideaway beneath the waves
Resting our head on the sea bed
In an octopus’ garden near a cave”

(these are just 3 stanzas>

“The idea for the song came about when Starr was on a boating trip with his family in Sardinia in 1968. He was offered an octopus lunch, but turned it down. Then the boat’s captain told Starr about how octopuses travel along the sea bed picking up stones and shiny objects with which to build gardens. Starr said that hearing about octopuses spending their days collecting shiny objects at the bottom of the sea was one of the happiest things he had ever heard, inspiring him to write this song.”

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octopus’s_Garden

Here are the Beatles fiddling with the song.

Here’s a Sesame Street version…

-Adrian

Multiple Intelligences

NOBEL LAUREATES IN SEARCH OF IDENTITY AND INTEGRITY Voices of Different Cultures

A collection of essays, biographies and Nobel lectures from 10 Nobel Laureates. The literary styles were contrasting and for some, I just couldn’t read beyond 2-3 paragraphs so I skipped them. Those in asterisk were the ones I really got down to reading as they were styles that appealed to me more. I liked especially the one by Amartya Sen and he also wrote about Rabindranath Tagore in this book. which is interesting as Amartya was a student of Visva-Bharati in Santiniketan, the school which Tagore had set up. So there was a good insight about how the school was run from a student’s perspective. Genuine interest and curiosity in subject matter was more important than academic excellence in the school and most of the time, classes were held outdoors if Tagore had the choice as he believed a natural setting was conducive.

Memorable quote from Tagore as he described blind following of tradition – “lost in the dreary desert sand of dead habit”

I enjoyed reading VS Naipaul as he wrote in a simple style that was pleasing and relaxing and not at all flowery, which I can’t take to. The life of Grazia from Sardinia was also interesting and dramatic and the education of the very learned Amartya Sen was impressive to read as he went from one reknown university to another as an academic.

Sir V S Naipaul (United Kingdom, born in Trinidad)*
Nadine Gordimer (South Africa)
Derek Walcott (St Lucia)
Naguib Mahfouz (Egypt)
Patrick White (Australia)
Ernest Hemingway (USA)
Grazia Deledda (Sardinia, Italy)*
Amartya Sen (United Kingdom and the USA, born in India)*
Rabindranath Tagore (India)*
Nelson Mandela (South Africa)

*ones that I read fully, others were skimmed through.

Books read (starting Nov 2007)

1. The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid – Bill Bryson

2. The Monk who sold his Ferrari – Robin Sharma

3. Universal Father, A Life of Pope John Paul II – Garry O’connor

4. Five Minds for the Future – Howard Gardner

5. Nobel Laureates in Search of Identity and Integrity: Voices of Different Cultures – Anders Hallengren

Five Minds for the Future

Howard Gardner, Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education, Harvard Graduate School of Education, is the guy who came up with Multiple Intelligences. Basically, “In his conception, a child who masters the multiplication table easily is not necessarily more intelligent overall than a child who struggles to do so. The second child may be stronger in another kind of intelligence…” Nice huh? I like that. At least not all are left out of the intelligence game. Who wouldn’t or who wouldn’t want to think that their own kid has a shot at being intelligent?

Anyway, I stopped by the community library at Compass Point, Sengkang and chanced upon this book called Five Minds for the Future. I don’t usually read educational references cover to cover but I guess this was no boring textbook reference but a book written in an easy to read manner. It starts with the introduction of the quintet of minds that we should have in the future, especially in a world such as ours. The minds he thinks we should have are: disciplined, synthesized, creative, respectful, and ethical. He is persuasive and reiterates his points in a nice manner so that it becomes easy to remember and to understand what he actually means by it.

More about the five minds described here in this blog from New Zealand.

Gardner also used positive exemplars such as Gandhi, Martha Graham and also negative ones such as Enron, Hitler to illiustrate why it is so important to nurture and cultivate such minds. At the end he prescribes that the respectful mind is one that should be cultivated first. The disciplined mind is not particularly about behavioural management but about disciplines such as thinking in the arts or scientific thinking…which he says takes about 10 years to fully master, at least.

More about Gardner at this website and some of his papers in pdf here which are “provided for research purposes only”.

Anyway, the book read well and quickly too. Not too complex as some educational texts tend to be. Moreover his concepts mainly appeal, mainly because these five minds can be cultivated in all and not only to a select. It was nice to read it in Phuket as the sun set or rose.

The next book, also from the Sengkang library is about how Nobel Laureates searched for indentity and integrity.. The pictures of the laureates are on the front cover and one of them is RabindranathTagore, who is the ultimate writer in my view.

Books read (starting Nov 2007)

1. The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid – Bill Bryson

2. The Monk who sold his Ferrari – Robin Sharma

3. Universal Father, A Life of Pope John Paul II – Garry O’connor

4. Five Minds for the Future – Howard Gardner

Wojtyla

There’s alot more to him than meets the eye… His late teens to his twenties were the hardest, during the occupation of Poland by Germany. He somehow survived an accident by a lorry. By then, he was orphaned and lost his only brother, a doctor who died of some disease as he was working in hospital. Wojtyla* carried his brother’s stethoscope even when he moved to the Vatican. He was passionate about theatre and wrote many poems and plays. A deeply philosophical person, he published many books on morality, sexuality in the church and also books on the emancipation of woman. It is said that the 20th century would have been different without him and indeed when you read this account, one begins to realise the role he played in transforming the political landscape of Poland, the Soviet Union. He particularly thought that Gorbachev was a Godsend and had several meetings with him.

*Pronunciation of Wojtyla (audio link). voy-TIH-wah

The book Universal Father was pro-Pope, but an excellent read in terms of fluidity and context. Context interms of what defined the man – i.e. his history, love for Poland, theatre, his relationship with others, luck, his father, the absence of his mother, his time spent in a chemical factory during the occupation. This context was a good background to Wojtyla’s ascent to Papacy and how it influenced his stewardship of the church. He professed that he was a conservor as opposed to reformer in the Vatican and also in Krakow where he was Archbishop and later Cardinal.

So it makes for good reading and was engrossing. And like most good intimate books, once you pick it up, its hard to put it down…. It was a calming balm and it was nice to finally read about the man. I remember attending the mass that he held in the National Stadium when I was in Secondary school (Sec 2?). I went with my mum and it was raining but we just sat at the Kallang stadium, drenched in the persistent drizzle. It was there that I got reacquainted with my best friend Jee-hin.. We were friends since kindergarten, were in the same class for 6 yrs in primary school and then split apart when we went to separate secondary schools. So the Pope reunited us in some indirect way. Then we started the convention…

There was a quote in there that I liked a lot that autobiographer Garry Conner included and its from St Francis – “Blessed is he who expecteth nothing, for he shall enjoy everything.”

Well, I am seriously quite behind my 20 books goal by the end of the year… hmmph, perhaps can buy or borrow thinner books… Next in line is something from Educationalist Howard Gardner who came up with “Mutiple Intelligences”. But this is his new prescriptive book.. more on that when I am done….

Books read (starting Nov 2007)

1. The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid – Bill Bryson

2. The Monk who sold his Ferrari – Robin Sharma

3. Universal Father, A Life of Pope John Paul II – Garry O’connor

A Bill Bryson Book – The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid

Okay, Bill Bryson is officially one of my favourite authors. I am only halfway through “A Short History of Nearly Everything” I think I am only at the part where he was talking about Protists. But that book’s great. Bill has a way of presenting facts in a most interesting way. He makes it so easy and interesting to digest scientific facts – like how Isaac Newton used a knitting needle to feel around his eye socket just out of curiosity… this I always tell my friends who do Physics. Anyway, that super informative book’s real thick so its used for on the bus reading, plus, its easy to pick up again cos its almost like a reference book.

Anyway, besides reading randomly some serious books i bought in June, I haven’t really gotten down to seriously reading, you know, like getting totally immersed into the pages of a book. So I needed something light to get me on a role. My goal is 20 books by the end of the year – so far 2 in the bag. The Buddhist monks believe in reading as a form of lifelong learning. Also this was recommended by Robin Sharma. So at Popular bookshop a few weeks ago, by happenstance, I met “The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid“

Abit americanish but still that doesn’t take away from the essence of of the book which is basically a humourous reminiscence of his childhood. He’s managed to poke fun at his own pubescent years in a really funny way and at the same time provide some nuggets of American history (again in his own interesting style). Every page and then, there are those laugh-out-loud moments and seriously tears down the cheek kind of laughter.

Books read (starting Nov 2007)
1. The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid – Bill Bryson
2. The Monk who sold his Ferrari – Robin Sharma

The Monk who sold his Ferrari, Nathaniel’s Nutmeg, Pope’s bio

I was hoping for a good book recently and when the book fair at the expo came along I bought 3. I finished the Monk who sold his Ferrari in about 3 days cos it was really easy to read and very interesting, just like the title itself.

What I really like about this book is the emphasis on what really matters in life, e.g., family, relationships with others, what you wish to really do in life. Its got also prudent strategies on how to gain self-mastery like, self-reflection, mindfulness. But what really strikes me was how the Sages of Sivana (hill monks in the book) practiced how to banish negative thoughts from their mind so that they could focus.

It was captivating for the 1st half of the book and then it became too familiar for me. But I guess it still is useful as a meaningful guide to try to better oneself.  Read more about the author and his company here –> www.robinsharma.com 

I hope Nathaniel’s Nutmeg and the Pope’s bio will read even better, especially the latter.

Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma

Got this book in India in June. Its just published this year and gives detailed background to Burmese political history and background. That and also details about The Lady’s dad Aung San takes up about nearly half the book. The other half is a detailed account on Aung San Suu Kyi’s life, her upbringing, her marriage, education in Oxford England, her children and then her involvement in politics.

She had foreseen that she would one day have to leave the comfortable family life in the UK to help her people. She’s had many opportunities to leave Burma and lead a normal life but chose the noble path instead and continues to be present in Burma for her people.

The book also details the appalling atrocities that the army has carried out on the people and especially the minority ethnic groups.

Its a good read and definitely timely now.

Unlikely meetings

On one of the afternoons off from the hectic schedule of the conference, we got a chance to tour Coventry and I decided to  pay a visit to Shakespeare’s birthplace.

One of the cute gifts at that place is an eraser that had the sentence “Out, damned spot” from

Macbeth.  The real big surprise for me was when one of my colleagues told me that Tagore was in the garden.  Here he is in the beautifully tended garden.

The bust of the Great Sentinel, Rabindranath Tagore in the garden of Shakespeare’s birthplace at Stratford-upon-Avon, UK.

Well, that wasn’t all.  When we traveled to London for a few days, we happened to stay near this little park in a square.  Nestled in the middle of  Tavistock Square is a Gandhi statue.

Wow…  2 great people that have been inspiring to read about and of all places to meet them…  I was quite happy about that.  If you look at the lifelike stature; it is lifelike because of the posture and it seems as though the great humble man was there in the square itself, sitting and meditating.   It is so serene just looking at that slightly bent posture in meditation, probably thinking about stuff way beyond what a human mind can focus on.  The artist that sculpted the statue must have captured the man’s peaceful nature.

Ironically, not long ago, the top of a bus blew off near the street from this park.