So it turns out that How to be Bored was the book that I thought How to do Nothing was going to be. I picked it up because of its title and because one of my keywords for the year is ‘balance’ and I like I expected, it was an interesting exploration into why we… Read More Book Review: How to be Bored by Eva Hoffman
This was recommended to me and my classmates on our learning expedition to San Francisco, so I decided to give it a go. Imagine my surprise when in the introduction, Elizabeth Holmes (aka the lady behind Theranos) is mentioned approvingly as someone who has cracked the creator’s code and called “the next Steve Jobs”. Especially… Read More Book Review: The Creator’s Code by Amy Wilkinson
I haven’t read Quiet but when I heard about the idea behind Bittersweet, I was immediately intrigued. The subtitle of this book is “how sorrow and longing make us whole” and that is not really an idea that I hear about a lot. Most people, even if they are striving for contentment instead of happiness,… Read More Book Review: Bittersweet by Susan Cain
It’s been two years, but I found another book that is a better alternative to Murder by Candlelight. I previously recommended Savage Appetites, but while that was a great book, it was very narrowly focused on female fans of true crime, while A Very British Murder take a more general look at the development of… Read More Book Review: A Very British Murder by Lucy Worsley
It’s probably no surprise that I heard about this book because it’s by an NPR reporter and Planet Money and The Indicator are two of the podcasts that I listen to regularly. So when Planet Money did an episode on the book, I decided to check it out. The Bond King is the story of… Read More Book Review: The Bond King by Mary Childs
Since I was going with my family for a short weekend trip to Paris, I thought it was time to dig this book out of the TBR and give it a read! As the title says, How Paris Became Paris looks at the way the modern city (and reputation) of Paris was shaped in the… Read More Book Review: How Paris Became Paris by Joan DeJean
It’s always gratifying to see your country in a book, especially since Singapore is so small! But it also makes sense that in a book about how English as a language is changing, Singlish (Singapore English) appears as a case study (although, sadly, Abley missed the chance to talk about Phua Chu Kang, a local… Read More Book Review: The Prodigal Tongue by Mark Abley
I’ve had this book on my Overdrive wishlist for a while, but I didn’t really think about reading it until I had to prepare a talk about tea and remembered that a few farms have talked to me about the dangers of monocultural crops, and suddenly, Never Out of Season seemed really relevant. Never Out… Read More Book Review: Never Out of Season by Rob Dunn
“Journalists, as they say, write the first draft of history, and the first draft is the only one that most of the public remembers, not the more nuanced, better-informed one that comes after the dust has cleared.” This was one of the books that the library featured in Libby when I opened the app, and… Read More Book Review: The Revolution That Wasn’t by Spencer Jakab
So I impulsively borrowed this for the train ride home from Bordeaux but it turned out to have an unexpected connection to the city! Turns out that the trial (or trials) at the Center in this book were held there. The Bettencourt Affair is about Liliane Schueller Bettencourt, the daughter of the founder of L’Oreal;… Read More Book Review: The Bettencourt Affair by Tom Sancton