Tag: English

The Tenth Circle by Jodi Picoult is talking about rape and the aftermath of it. It is also talking about the bond between parents and how children change. 

I wanted to do a better job than my parents, I don’t want to make the same mistakes they did. I wanted to give my children the best childhood, to give them all the love they need and protect them. 

If you are wondering, the “tenth circle” is talking about the tenth level in hell, for those who lie to themselves. If there were really a level like this in hell, I think 99.9% of all humans will end up there. We have all lied to ourselves one way or another.

Get The Tenth Circle by Jodi Picoult. 

My girlfriend knows how much I love to travel so she got me this travel guide as a birthday present a couple of years ago. I liked the book but I did not have the time and patience to read it from cover to cover, till now. 

This travel guide is different from other travel guides. It does not focus on one country but a mash-up of different countries under 5 themes. I have renamed the different sections as “Near-Death Experiences”, “Weird Art”, “Cheap Fashion”, “Street Food Galore”, “Music and Weed” and “Getting Laid”. 

This is a one-of-kind travel guide that will give you a new way to look at travel. 

Get Off Track Planet’s Travel Guide for the Young, Sexy, and Broke.

A friend gave me this book as a birthday present a year ago but I never got around to reading it till now. 

I have never liked lawyers or lawyer as a profession. I don’t know why I have this perception, but I have always felt being a lawyer is a depressing job. Their job is so demanding and even though they earn a lot, they always look so tired. 

The cover of this book does nothing to motivate me to read it. There is just the picture of an Indian man and the words “The Best I Could”. 

This book turned out to be a pretty interesting read. As Subhas Ananda was a Singaporean, I could relate to the places and court cases mentioned in the book. 

After reading the whole book, the first part of the book where he described his childhood and schooling days. I thought lawyers like Subhas Ananda were probably very studious and model student, but Subhas Ananda was actually very mischievous. He played pranks and played truant. But he was also very bright and he took on many leadership roles in school. 

This book gave me a peek into the world of criminal lawyers and how the legal system may not be so fair all the time. 

Get The Best I Could by Subhas Anandan.

Everyone deals with one dilemma at some point in life. One of the reasons I love about Jodi Picoult’s book is because she weaves these dilemmas into her stories. She gives voice to the struggles that these people face. 

In “Handle with Care”, Jodi Picoult talks about a medical condition called osteogenesis imperfecta that is commonly known as “brittle bone disease”. People born with this condition have hundred of fractures throughout their lives. How would I feel if my child were born with this disease? Will I choose to have this baby or will I choose to abort? 

This book also tells me that “when you win some, you lose some”. Nothing in this world is perfect, you just have to know what is more important to you. 

Get Handle with Care by Jodi Picoult.

I can’t remember how I got to know about Catherine Lim, but it was probably sometime in secondary school. I think we read one of her books, A Serpent’s Tooth, for English Literature. Catherine Lim is one of the more well-known Singapore authors. 

I remember I first came across this book “Meet Me On The QE2” in the secondary school library. I liked it so much that I wanted to buy it from the school library but the library would not sell it to me. Years later, I found it at a second-hand book fair and I immediately bought it. 

I searched online and found out that Queen Elizabeth 2 (QE2 for short) is a retired ocean liner built for the Cunard Line. It took its maiden voyage on 2 May 1969 and it retired in 2008. It is now operating as a floating hotel in Dubai. 

“Meet Me On The QE2” is a hilarious story of Catherine Lim’s maiden voyage on the famous Queen Elizabeth 2 ocean liner. She devised a plan for seducing a wealthy gentleman so that she “could be settled down comfortably for the rest of your life”, quoting the Concerned Older Sister. 

After reading about her fantastic encounter, I was itching to go on the Queen Elizabeth 2 on my own until I remembered that it is no longer in service. 

Oh well, I guess I will just have to settle for the Royal Caribbean, if I can ever afford one. 

“Return to the Olive Farm” is the sequel to “The Olive Farm: A Memoir of Life, Love, and Olive Oil in the South of France” by Carol Drinkwater. There is no Kindle version available on Amazon and it is out of stock in Kinokuniya too. A friend of mine bought it for me online at Book Depository and he gifted it to me as my birthday present.

In this book, Carol Drinkwater returns to her farm, Apassionata, after 16 months of solo-travelling. She discovered that the pesticide used to kill the olive fruit fly, Bactrocera oleae, is detrimental to bees and the environment. She sets out to find an environmentally-friendly alternative and eventually they (Carol and her husband, Michael) turns their farm bio en conversion.

Carol Drinkwater reminds us that we should do our part in protecting our planet by using her real-life example. 

Get Return to the Olive Farm by Carol Drinkwater.

I chanced upon this book in my secondary school library and something about the book called out to me and I read the book. I loved the story so much that I still can remember the story after 10 years. 

“All my life, I have dreamed of acquiring a crumbling, shabby-chic house overlooking the sea, and renovating it. In my mind’s eye, I have pictured a corner of paradise where friend can gather to swim, relax, debate, talk business if they care to, eat fresh fruits picked directly from the garden, prepare great steaming plates of food served from an al fresco kitchen and dished up onto candlelit tables the length of railway sleepers. In this land of liquor and honey, guests would eat heartily, drink gallons of home-produced wine, chill out to great jazz and while away star-spangled hours till dawn. I envisage a haven where city manner and constraints can be cast off, where artists, travelers, children, lovers and extended family can intermingle and find contentment. Among all of these altruistically gregarious and bohemian activities, I’d slip away unnoticed to a cool stone room of my own, lined head to the with books, spawning maps and dictionaries, switch on my computer and settle down peacefully to write.”

I have always dreamt of something like this so this book really struck a cord with me. Carol Drinkwater takes her readers on a journey of trials and tribulations of acquiring an olive farm, restoring it and becoming “accidental olive farmers”. She tells of overcoming the heartaches of taking on a ‘new’ *French family and understanding slowly the workings and lifestyle of a vivacious Provencal community. 

Get The Olive Farm: A Memoir of Life, Love, and Olive Oil in the South of France by Carol Drinkwater. 

Dorothy Koomson is another one of my favorite authors. I especially like her book “The Cupid Effect” which is her first book but not the most famous one. It gives me hope that there really be someone out there who will love me for who I am, quirks and all.  

I bought “The Rose Petal Beach” because the name sounds so romantic. The legend of the rose petal beach is indeed very touching. This women went to a deserted island to look for her lover who went missing. As she walked on the beach, her bare feet were cut by the rocks and every drop of blood turned into rose petals till the whole beach was covered with red rose petals. 

I like the legend, but sadly, I didn’t quite like the story itself. I find it a little too slow and the climax is more like an anti-climax. 

Get The Rose Petal Beach by Dorothy Koomson.

Jodi Picoult is one of my favourite authors and I have two whole stacks of her books to prove it. Which makes it even more difficult to understand why it took me so long to finally start reading this book. It has been sitting at the bottom of my bookshelf for a few years now. I finally made it one of my new year resolutions to finish reading all the books in the “to be read” stack. 

The moment I start reading, I was hooked (that happens everytime I read Jodi Picoult books). Jodi Picoult has a way of talking about delicate subjects in the form of a novel. She explores moral dilemmas that can happen to anyone, including you and me. 

House Rules is talking about Asperger, a high-functioning form of autism. Sure, I have heard about autism but I never knew there is a type of autism called Asperger. This is something entirely new to me and it is fascinating to read about it.

Maybe every one of us has some degree of autism, be it Asperger or something else. I definitely fit into quite a few of the descriptions for Asperger. 

Get House Rules by Jodi Picoult.

I have read about this Japanese cleaning expert called Marie Kondo in a magazine some years ago. It was interesting but I wasn’t really invested because my house is pretty tidy.

I was pretty surprised when I saw Marie Kondo’s book “The Life-Changing Magic Effect of Tidying Up” on The New York Time’s Best Seller list.

Although I consider my room pretty tidy, but I do realize that it gets messy pretty quickly and I have to keep clearing. I decided to read and try the KonMari method which is supposed to lead to lasting results. Apparently, none of her clients have lapsed.

The KonMari method believes in a category-by-category and “spark joy” systems. She gives the reasoning behind them and they are pretty convincing. She also emphasizes on working in this sequence of categories – “clothes first, then books, papers, komono (mischellany), and lastly, mementos”.

I have yet to try the KonMarie method of tidying up. I will let you know if it is really as magical as everyone claims it to be.

Get The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo.