Brontë, Whitman, et al. Edited by John Boyes. “Poems that will save your life”.

How they lived, in beautiful rhyme.

Isaac Asimov. “I, Robot”. 1950.

Humans' reliance on powerful robots backfires.

Edited by Carol Ann Duffy. “Empty nest: Poems for families”. 2021.

Children bring pain to affectionate parents.

Josh Larsen. “Movies are prayers: How films voice our deepest longings”. 2017.

Unanswered prayers provoke sympathy in eye-witnesses.

Kahlil Gibran. “The Prophet”. 1926

Eloquent insights on life, as fiction.

Edited by Neil Douglas-Klotz. “Kahlil Gibran's little book of wisdom”.

Scholar arranges delightful nuggets of wisdom.

Alva Huang. “Get up and go: A Christian testimony of Mr. Wong Hui Chew”. 2021.

Illiterate man writes story through friends.

Mark Twain. Edited by M. Thomas Inge. “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's court”. 1889.

Arrogant and ignorant, his life fades.

Jai Pausch. “Dream new dreams: Reimagining my life after loss”. 2012.

Wife experiences nightmares when husband dies.

Lewis Hyde. “The gift: How the creative spirit transforms the world”. 1983.

Art works through generosity, not selfishness.

Pope Francis. Translated by Oonagh Stransky. “The name of God is mercy: A conversation with Andrea Tornielli”. 2016

“I am a sinner, forgive me!”

Michelle Min Sterling. “Camp Zero”. 2023.

Some women exploit men. Old story.

Nick Vujicic. “Life without limits: How to live a ridiculously good life”. 2010

God helps limb-less man smile again.

Alvin Pang. “What gives us our names”. 2011.

People love you in your imperfection.

James Joyce. “Dubliners”. 1914.

Men gorge on painful violence, tragically.

Edited by Priya Hemenway. “Ninety-nine names of love: Expressions of the heart”. 2003

Mystics sing myriad melodies in harmony.

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You're stronger than I thought. I have been delusional and ignorant to think you were weak. Forgive me for that.

You took a great risk to love me the way you did. I'm grateful for that.

Why is it that boys leave their mothers in trying to become men? But you wonder if I would take a different path from other men.

I am foolish but I have wise friends. We're so close, my friends say, “I'm your sister”, and then nag me to prove it. I can't go too far off the right path if I take their advice. Assuming I take their advice. Just kidding.

Will I ever understand you, and you me? But what is this love that transcends language?

I know you love me.

I know you'll give me your blessing, if I ask you for it.

I want to emulate my father. We're a happy family, just the three of us.

I'm your son, I can't help but become like you. And it is your strength and wisdom that I wish to inherit.

I got to go now, can't talk more. See you again in Paradise of God, where no one can separate us.

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(Formerly known as “The gift: The erotic life of property).

It uses insights from anthropology to analyse a creative performance as both a gift – which is exchanged, consumed, and circulated within the society that surrounds the artist – and a commodity, which is bought and sold in the marketplace.

What is the conflict between the commodity and the gift? How should I look at my art? These are some questions I think about, just from reading the first few pages.

What an interesting book!

P. S.: First published in 1983, it seems to describe the chaos surrounding NFTs today: too much like a commodity, and too little like a gift.

P. P. S.: the author hypothesises that “the commodity market will collapse when gift exchange collapses, but gift exchange can still continue on, even when the commodity market collapses”. Or something like that.

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1. “Twilight of democracy: The failure of politics and the parting of friends”. Anne Applebaum. (2020).

I feel like the author is sobbing on my shoulder. She's sad that she's lost her friends.

1. “Why communism failed”. Jasper Becker. (2022).

Seems to portray historical attempts at utopia as a great big lie. (“The statistics are fake, and everybody got duped, and central planning failed!”) The blurb quotes a certain Head of Political Economy, who conveniently divides the world's population into two camps: pro-capitalism and pro-communism. That dude seems to believe that the two camps shall remain eternal enemies. I wonder how much this book resembles propaganda: pro-capitalism, anti-communism, propaganda.

1. “Resistances: Between theories and the field”. Editors: Murru and Polese. (2020).

Argues that tenants engage in acts of resistance, every time they negotiate rent with their landlord. Seems to be concerned with academic analysis rather than edification.

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For example, in Angela Carter's twist on fairy tales, titled “The Bloody Chamber, and other stories”. (1979).

Or, in Noelle Q. de Jesus's collection of short stories, titled “Blood”. (2015).

Or, in Loung Ung's autobiographical trilogy of books, of which the first is titled “First they killed my father”, and the second is titled “Lucky child”. (2005).

How do I feel about it? I feel out of my element, and somewhat uncomfortable, as if I am not supposed to be here, together with the narrator who is discovering menstrual blood for the first time.

But I imagine that if I were a female reader, I might feel more connected to the storyteller.

That reminds me, I have made a note to read Anita Diamant's book, titled “The red tent”. It is about a group of women – ostracised by society because they themselves menstruate – who gather together with other menstruating women.

But of course, there are lots of other books waiting for me to read... 🤔 Decisions, decisions.

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He wants to know why people, numbering in the millions, can desire the mass murder of other people. He cannot understand why educated people, members of the intelligentsia, in Japan, Germany and China – and elsewhere – can indulge in this butchering of human beings.

Kuo Pao Kun is not a psychiatrist, so he doesn't have the answer. But Elisabeth Kübler-Ross is one, and she has the answer to Kuo Pao Kun's question.

Kübler-Ross calls it the inner Hitler: inside each person, there is the potential to become a Hitler, as well as the potential to become a Mother Teresa.

A girl in Poland – who has lost all her immediate family to murder, during the Holocaust – once asked Kübler-Ross: “don't you think that there is a Hitler inside all of us?” (Source: a book of lectures of Kübler-Ross, edited by Göran Grip: “The tunnel and the light: Essential insights on living and dying”.)

Kübler-Ross gently asks: have you the courage to recognise the Hitler in yourself?

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That means I can safely disregard the words of many people who impose their opinions on me. Although they may think themselves qualified to tell me what to do with my life, they themselves may be reclining in a place of comfort and privilege, instead of fighting for a noble cause “in the trenches”.

And many people of similar ilk – some may call them “armchair critics” – provide endless punditry through social media. I can disregard their words as well.

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Published in 2002, this book highlights an obvious phenomenon in 2022:

No king of this world knew about Covid before it happened.

And no king of this world knows how to stop Covid.

For all mankind's boasts about having subjugated, tamed and exploited the natural world to serve human beings' appetite for material comfort, once again mankind has encountered the harshness of natural elements in this era of Covid.

As the contemporary Italian intellectual, Donatella Di Cesare, wrote in her book, “Immunodemocracy: Capitalist asphyxia”, (translated by David Broder), the crown-shaped coronavirus has an evocative appearance: it is sovereign.

Now we – the inhabitants of this planet – are witnessing the dying gasps of kings who have lived under the illusion that mankind is The Ruler of The Universe. (One may even compare this to the withdrawal symptoms of a nicotine-addict who has been forced to quit smoking cigarettes.)

Yes, these kings know they are dying.

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Just a few examples:

I read in the news that Twitter wants to double the size of its engineering team, at its regional office in Singapore.

And a popular bakery is hiring a baker.

And a photography-focused organisation is hiring a Trainee in Arts Management, through a four-month contract.

But I read in Charles Eisenstein's (2021) book – titled “Sacred economics, revised: money, gift & society in the age of transition” – that jobs are obsolete. A person's needs are clearly finite: something to fill his stomach with, and somewhere for shelter from harsh weather. (Of course, it is important to distinguish a need from a want/desire).

Eisenstein argues that once a person's needs are met, there is no longer a need for any more money. And therefore there is no longer a need for a job.

Eisenstein suggests that such a person spends his time on caring for the sick, or other meaningful pursuits that come with no pay-check.

Something for me to ponder.

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I find an echo of my own childhood (which was spent somewhere in Singapore), in Minfong's sparkling descriptions of a young girl's life in a village in Thailand.

(But the joy of feeling mud on your bare feet must be an obscure sensation for people my age, in Singapore today (I turn 31, in the year 2021), who seem pre-occupied with careers, children, money and material possessions).

The protagonist seems stubborn in going to the city. Quite troubling was the protagonist's confrontation with the head monk, who discouraged her from going. Well, wisdom is recognised by the wise. And, “folly is bound up in the heart of a youth, but the rod drives it far from him.” (A Biblical proverb).

At my age, reading this book does raise the question: what would I do, if I were in the shoes of the protagonist's father?

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