Books of the month!

Book 35. Bought this at some diversity book fair about 3-4 months ago. Finally getting around to it. 😎😎😎

“So we may well be mortal, but we have escaped eternal death. We have succeeded in stealing a chunk of time, the days, months, years during which we have been alive, each moment when we are still living- from that enormous death and happen what may, that time will always be ours, time belonging to those who triumphed against death through being born.” 😭😭😭

Book 31 for the year! New book! Hope I have better luck with this philosophy book. 😜😜😜 The Cat threatens to bite my book cover. 🤬🤬

A book gift from my cousin! And starting on a new book! 😘😘😘😘

Reading Saturday. :) Milk pudding with almonds and a good read. 📚📚📔🍵☕️

Finally! New book! 🎉🎉🎉🎉

Finished a book on the train and realised I did not have another with me. Urghhh!!! What should I read nowww?

A friend documents my neurotic talk in a book store.

Picture 1: Stepped into store and immediately announced “I cannot buy any more books” three times.

Picture 2: Wandering around the store after tea... before hurriedly rushing to the door. “Let‘s get out of here. I just saw the book I want.”

Gotta run before I succumb to temptation. 🏃🏻‍♀️🏃🏻‍♀️🏃🏻‍♀️🏃🏻‍♀️🏃🏻‍♀️

Still at this. Chapter is entitled: What is Normal? in a series of essays discussing sexuality and legislation. Reading philosophy in Chinese is tough AF. #notgivingup #yet #zzzz

Oops. My books finally arrived...

after 40 days of waiting and...

after Book Depository finally dispatched a replacement set...

... after I queued at the post office for 40 minutes only to read through 20 pages of names of people with undelivered packages.

😣😣😣 Guess I‘ll bless my book tribe with the replacement copies.

Okay... Now where is my Lazada package? Wahahahaha! #firstworldwoes

1st June. 1st book of the month. :)

Evening read. Nothing better than a well-loved book and some teh-o, kosong (black tea without sugar).

Penguin book haul. Gosh. It‘s generally a BAD idea to step into bookstores.

Okay. No more book hauls in June. Promise. Promise. 🤭🤭🤭

“I always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library.” Jorge Luis Borges

Orange book haul! 🤪🤪#Totallycoincidental

Sunday lazing and reading. ☕️☕️☕️

There is something petrifying about re-encountering a book you read and loved 8 years ago. You worry it was naivety and romanticism that kept you intrigued by an author‘s work. Ultimately, you‘re afraid you‘ll fall out of love with a book you held close to your heart.

And hell, I got myself a new copy so I will not be influenced by the scribblings and highlighter marks of my younger self. #melodramaticbookwoes

A familiar place for a familiar activity. This book is a Christmas gift from my cousin. 💕💕

Finished my current book and darn it, my new books have not arrived in the mail. 😬😬😬😬😬*checks the mailbox obsessively* It‘s been a month, Book depo. What the f?

Some exquisite passages from the book.

Been a while since I posted! Book 26 for the year.

Matcha latte @ Kyoto prefecture today.

2017, Book 26 "And when the capsule was travelling at almost the speed of light, the motor had hardly any effect at all. And it was pushing just as hard. Why?"Are you saying that the capsule got heavier the faster it went?" she ventured. Uncle Albert nodded. "But why should a space capsule behave like that?"Anything that goes really fast must get heavier. Not only the capsule, but everything on board."

2017, Book 25 "We see how ubiquitous and vital microbes are. We see how they sculpt our organs, protect us from poison and diseases, break down our food, uphold our health, calibrate our immune systems, guide our behaviour, bombard our genomes with their genes. We see the lengths to which animals must go to keep their multitudes in check, from the ecosystem managers of the immune system to the bacteria-feeding sugars in breast milk."

2017, Book 24 "現在回想起來，塞翁失馬焉知非福，沒有遺恨，只幸當時還是父母張開手臂，替我擋著了狂風暴雨。寫下幾本書，心情踏踏實實，不再去想人生最終的目的，而這做父母的，捧著孩子寫的幾張紙頭，竟又喜得眼睛沒有乾過，那份感觸，安慰，就好似捧著了天國的鑰匙一樣."

Packing 3 books for my trip to Kazakhstan! :)

2017, Book 23 "All growth comes from changing your model of reality or upgrading your systems for living."

2017, Book 22 "Our minds seek causality because it suggests an order to the universe that may not actually exist, even if you believe in some higher power. Many people would prefer to accept an undue share of blame for a tragic event than concede that there's no order to things. Chaos is frightening. A capricious existence where bad things happen to good people for no discernible reason is frightening." ?❤️❤️❤️?

2017, Book 21 "If this is the Large Hardon Collider," George continued, "that means we're underground. That thing is probably some kind of detector wrapped around the tube where the protons collide." In the spooky quiet by the great detector, both children imagined they could hear the bomb ticking down the last few minutes until it exploded, destroying humanity's greatest ever experiment and large number of human lives.

2017, Book 20 "Maybe he loved you."
"I thought of that."
"Do you believe that?"
"I only want to believe it if it is true."
"We won't ever know, Zach. Can I tell you a secret? Sometimes, Zach, all we have is what we make up."
?????????????????

New book before the celebration. :)

2017, Book 19 "Just days before, an American warship had shelled a Syrian troop position in the hills above Beirut. Yet, when Ford found himself on a bus filled with Syrian soldiers, he was treated with a graciousness that still stuck with him decades later. In a more serious moment, one of the officers in the group pulled Ford aside to make a request.
"When you get back to America," the officer said, "tell them we are not barbar-"

barbarians."

One would expect that a book on ISIS will be anything but remotely interesting. But man... Black Flags is. some. freaking. sorcery. Been gripped since chapter 1.

2017, Book 18. Splendid graphic history of human sexuality written/drawn with wit and gut-imploding humour.

Also learnt about how the conceptions of female purity, monogamy and sexual orientation emerged in human consciousness.

In spite of its humour, the book also touches on darker issues behind human sexuality...the repression, genital mutilation, control of women and discrimination endured by the LGBT community.

2017, Book 17 "Maybe moral outrage is just the culmination of an insoluble lingering. So prepare yourself to live in it for a while. The great shame of your privilege is a hot blush the whole time. The truth of this place is infinite and irreducible, and self-reflexive anguish might feel like the only thing you can offer in return. It might be hard to hear anything above the clattering machinery of your guilt. Try to listen anyway."

2017, Book 16 "The universe takes care of its most fragile creatures in ways we can't see. Like parents who adore you blindly. And a big sister who feels guilty for being human over you. And a little gravelly-voiced kid whose friends have left him over you and even a pink-haired girl who carries your picture in her wallet. Maybe it is a lottery, but the universe makes it all even out in the end. The universe takes care of all its bird."

This book is FANTASTICALLY NUTS! 😜😜🤣🤣🤣It's so crazily tragic yet freakin hilarious at the same time. Love the macabre sense of humour.

2017, Book 15 "The doctor said gently,
"What I'm going to say will sound pretty wild.
But you're not the father
of this strange-looking child.
You see, there still is some questions
about the child's gender,
but we think that its father
is a microwave blender.

The Smiths' lives were now filled
with misery and strife...
He never forgave her unholy alliance:
a sexual encounter
with a kitchen appliance."

2017, Book 14 "Keynes believed that the problem at the heart of a recession was that resources were not fully used as there was not enough demand in the economy. The solution therefore was to intervene to stimulate demand. He said that cutting interest rates and boosting government spending would trigger recovery. Hayek, on the other hand, believed Keynesian policies to support employment would lead to higher inflation."

2017, Book 13 "No matter where we are, whenever we're sitting, over our heads there is a river of trillions of stars. We are sitting on a planet, a very beautiful planet, which is revolving in the Milky Way galaxy. When we sit with that awareness, we can embrace the whole world, from the past to the future. When we sit like that, our happiness is very great."

2017, Book 12 "What the eye fails to see is what prepares it to see everything else...We are defined by what we cannot see. What we see, we seal in with language, thought and concomitant feelings. I see you. We are mirrors for each other. One day, you will "see" me; your capacity for perception will have altered. My faith in a fundamental accuracy of your visualisation remains unwavering."

2016, Book 11 "50 percent of individual differences in happiness are governed by genes. 10 percent by life circumstances, and the remaining 40 percent by what we do and how we think- that is, our intentional activities and strategies"

2017, Book 10 "有时候，贺辞忽然跳出来 ［万事如意］， ［心想事成］这类的话。 一看到这样的贺辞，我不免要想。。不要吧。 如果［万事如意］， ［心想事成］真能实现的话，一定是超级大灾难，人类大浩劫吧。。。。幸亏老天创造了一个万事不一定如意，心想不一定成的世界，我们才有机会安居乐业。“

2017, Book 9 "Why do teenagers do anything?" Dad asked sighing. "To rebel."

Mom elbowed him in the ribs. "He means everybody has their own path to follow, even if nobody else can understand it yet." She smiled at Inspector Lestrade, who was still in her robot suit.

2017, Book 8 "And I can think of another reason to suspect this isn't the right place. How many stars did the clue show? asked Eric.

"Two," said George.

"Here," said Eric, "there are three. That fainter star, the one you can only just see over there- that's Proxima Centauri, so called because it's the closest star to Earth. So this a triple star system."

2017, Book 7 "It is often said that depression is a thing to which a leisured class falls prey in a developed society; in fact, it is a thing that a certain class has the luxury of addressing. Between the Inuit's silence and our verbalized self-awareness lie a multitude of ways of speaking of psychic pain, of knowing that pain. Context, race, gender, tradition, nation- all conspire to determine what is to be said and what is to be left unsaid."

2017, Book 6 "Rigorous scientific studies are providing new and powerful evidence about what works to increase our satisfaction and joy in life, and we now know what contributes to a better life and how to get it. Building a better life has to do with:

1) Enjoying life
2) Making blessings a habit
3) Strengthening our relationships
4) Thinking more positively
5) Living with purpose and meaning"

2017, Book 5 "The reverberations of that voice wandered sweetly, softly, working like a massage on the area of my heart that was the most tightly clenched, helping those knots to loosen. It was like the rush of waves, and like the laughter of people I'd met in all kinds of places, people I'd become friendly with and then separated from, and like the kind words all those people had said to me, and like the mewing of a cat I had lost..."

2017, Book 4 "Wise men say that, in fact, this monk published three editions of the Tao: two invisible and one in print. He believed in his utopia, he fought the good fight, he kept faith with his objective, but he never forgot to look after his fellow human beings. That is how it should be for all of us- sometimes the invisible books, born out of generosity towards other people, are as important as those that fill our libraries."

2017, Book 3 "Call me disingenuous, manipulative or whatever you want. But after 35 years on this planet, I've come to the realisation that we do not live in a world comprised of perfectly objective and logical decision-making. Human beings are emotional creatures, and one thing's for sure: feelings always tend to cock up the equation."