Category: Books

Anthony Bourdain’s death from suicide on 8th June caused quite a stir and many people are talking about it on Facebook.

I have seen Anthony Bourdain on television a few times but I am not really interested in celebrities. 

Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential caught my attention when it first came out in 2000 and I was very interested in reading it but I never quite got around to that. Someone on Facebook wrote something about this book and I remembered that it is actually written by Anthony Bourdain. I promptly bought the ebook on Amazon and I finished it in less than a week. 

Besides television shows like Hell’s Kitchen and Masterchef and romanticised versions shown in Korean dramas, I have never stepped into a kitchen and seen what really happen behind those doors. Kitchen Confidential gives me a look into the real kitchen, where foul language, sex and drugs are a large part of it. It is a crazy world in there where they have their own lingo, where blistered hands filled with hideous constellations and angry red welts are a sign of pride. 

This book is part autobiography and part non-fiction, starting off with Anthony Bourdain describing how and why he got into the restaurant business and became a chef to showing how the restaurant business is really run and why many of them fail.

It is a hugely entertaining read. Anythony Bourdain is hugely entertaining with a wicked sense of humour. Just when you think you know it, he proves you wrong all over again.

Get Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain.

After reading all three books, I have declared myself a Neil Humphreys fan. He talks about topics which I have always thought to myself but never had the guts to say out. I am humbled that an ang moh who stays 10 years in Singapore knows more about Singapore than me who have stayed in Singapore for more than 20 years. I applaud Neil Humphreys for his keen sense of observation and humor, turning peculiar residents of Toa Payoh into endearing characters. 

What She Really Wants was the first ebook I bought on Amazon after my father got me my Kindle Paperwhite reader. It was free on Amazon and I was looking for a book to test out my Kindle Paperwhite so I got this book. 

It is a short story about a husband getting his wife a present for her birthday. It is only 270-pages long, but I can really feel the love this husband has for his wife through Barbara Delinsky’s words. It is a fun and easy read that you can probably finish in 1-2 hours. 

Get What She Really Wants by Barbara Delinsky.

I have seen 1984 by George Orwell be described as an example of English literature and classic many times but the title does not sound interesting at all, so I kept putting it off. One fine day, I told myself “you bought the book, you might as well read it”. I started reading it and I couldn’t put it down until I have finished the book.

I have always wondered why the most successful four companies of the twenty-first century – Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google – have that the other billions or millions of start-ups don’t. What gives them the competitive edge over other businesses? 

The Four by Scott Galloway has taught me that the reason these (he calls them) The Four Horsemen are able to penetrate and dominate the retail, smartphone, social and search sectors respectively, is because these four companies acts on our human instincts to acquire more stuff, acquire knowledge, be more god-like and have higher sex appeal and to connect with others. 

The Four has these common traits, which distinguishes them from the rest of the other companies: 

1. Product differentiation 
2. Visionary capital 
3. Global reach
4. Likability 
5. Vertical integration
6. Artificial intelligence 
7. Accelerant 
8. Geography 

Scott Galloway goes through The Four one by one, dissecting each company so that businesses from around the world can perhaps learn a thing or two and better their businesses.

Get The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google by Scott Galloway.  

I don’t like sad endings and after reading Gone with The Wind where the story ended with Rhett Butler leaving Scarlett, it left an unsatisfactory feeling in me. I decided to see if there is a sequel to Gone with The Wind and I found Rhett Butler’s People. This is the authorised sequel to Gone with The Wind. 

As the name implies, Rhett Butlet’s people tells the story from Rhett Butler’s perspective. I have always been rather curious about how Rhett Butler thinks so this book is perfect for me.

After reading the book, I adore Rhett Butler even more. He is a shrewd businessman who sees opportunity that others can’t, he can charm the pants off anyone he sets his mind to. Yet he is such a tender-hearted man who disguises his pain with cold harsh words. 

Rhett Butler’s People has given me the happy ending that I want where Scarlett finally realises that she loved Rhett and they finally start loving one another. 

Rhett Butler will, and always be, my prince charming. 

Get Rhett Butler’s People by Donald McCaig. 

Gone with The Wind has been voted to be one of the best movies ever produced for as long as I remember, but the ignorant me didn’t know that the movie was based on Magaret Mitchell’s book of the same name. It was only when I learned that Bill Gates reads 200 books a year that I decided to pick up my reading, and I found out that “Gone with The Wind” is one of the classics. 

“When Breath Becomes Air” is one of the bestsellers on New York Times and it was highly recommended by Bill Gates on his website, Gates Notes, and that roused my curiosity so I decided that this is going to be my next read.

I was on Facebook one day when I watched a video of Park Yeonmi’s speech at One Young World 2014 Summit where she told her story of her life in North Korea and how she and her mother escaped from North Korea to China, and finally settled down in South Korea.