The worth of a book is to be measured by what you can carry away from it.
- James Bryce
Now Reading
I’m now reading two books concurrently: Iran Awakening by Shirin Ebadi and Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama.
Just Read
I have just finished reading Outliers: The Story of Success, the third book (2008) by Malcolm Gladwell, the Canadian journalist who authored The Tipping Point (2000) and Blink (2005) to much success. Outliers explains why some people succeed while others don’t, and why historically, geniuses and prodigies are not propelled to success just by their innate abilities alone, but more often than not by the internal and external environments that surround their lives. In other words, a lot of good luck and a lot of practice. The explanations offer a lot of consolation to why I am not a genius and might never be one, but in another way it also reminded me that everyone has the potential to be a genius if the environment was induced to produce one. Check out Malcolm Gladwell’s website or google for his photos and look at that explosive hairstyle! After Outliers, I read Waiting by Ha Jin.
Reading Next
The next book in queue to read is Kabul Beauty School, by Deborah Rodriguez. The other books I need to catch up on are The Lovely Bones (protagonist was murdered and narrates from heaven) and The Almost Moon (protagonist murdered her mother and chronicles the next 24 hours after the murder), both by Alice Sebold. I hardly read fiction but I’ve been told that The Lovely Bones, one of the books on the Oprah’s Book Club, is a good read and I found The Almost Moon for a steal at a book fair. I’m trying to read some fiction to inject some creativity and imagination into my head!
Looking For
The book I want to buy next is Shanghai Girls, the new book (2009) by Lisa See, the Chinese-American author (she does not look Chinesey at all) who authored Snow Flower and the Secret Fan (2005) and Peony in Love (2007). Her new book is about two sisters from Shanghai who were married off to men in America as a bundled payment to settle their father’s gambling debts. Yes, I hardly read fiction but Snow Flower and the Secret Fan appeared to be written based on extensive and thorough research and was a good read, so I am looking forward to read fiction between the pages of Shanghai Girls. On the non-fiction side by Chinese-American authors, I am looking for Finding Iris Chang, a memoir about the famous author of The Rape of Nanking, who committed suicide (shot herself in the mouth with a revolver) years after chronicling the account of the Japanese invasion in the old capital of China, now called Nanjing.
