the hours by michael cunningham (1998)

“There’s just this for consolation: an hour here or there when our lives seem, against all odds and expectations, to burst open and give us everything we’ve ever imagined, though everyone but children (and perhaps even they) knows these hours will inevitably be followed by others, far darker and more difficult. Still, we cherish the city, the morning; we hope, more than anything, for more.”


This is a clever book interspersing one day the lives of three women at three different time periods – Virginia Woolf at the time she is writing Mrs. Dalloway (1923); Laura Brown, pregnant with her second child and mesmerized with her reading of Mrs. Dalloway (1949); and Clarissa Vaughan, aged 52 years old whom her close friend Richard has taken to calling “Mrs. Dalloway” (1998).

These are women going about their own ways yet, the thread of the story of Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway and Woolf’s own tragic death looms over all the characters, culminating one evening in Vaughan’s home after she has witnessed somebody jumping from a window ledge earlier that day.

This 1990 Pulitzer prize gripping story was made into a film in 2002 starring Meryl Streep (Clarissa Vaughan), Julianne Moore (Laura Brown), and Nicole Kidman (Virigina Woolf). Kidman won an Oscar for best actress in this film.

a room of one's own by virginia woolf (1929)

A woman must have money and a room of her own
if she is to write fiction.- Virginia Woolf


A Room of One’s Own is based on two papers read to the Arts Society and at Newnham and the Odtaa at Girton in October 1928.

Woolf, while seemingly in the midst of a long perambulation, discusses women; fiction; why if Shakespeare had a sister, she would not make it as her brother had; and the reasons women have yet to achieve the status of men in literature. She also makes a comparison among the published women during her time which included Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, and George Elliot. She clearly expresses her preference for Austen and explains why Charlotte Bronte, for instance, has not been able to achieve the degree of fluidity in Austen’s books.

Woolf was optimistic that women would ultimately stand at par with men in the literary world. She said that “if we live another century or so and have five hundred a year each of us and rooms of our own; if we have the habit of freedom and the courage to write exactly what we think; if we escape a little from the common sitting-room and see human beings not always not always in their relation to reality; and the sky, too, and the trees or whatever it may be in themselves; if we look past Milton’s bogey, for no human being should shut out the view; if we face the fact, for it is a fact that there is no arm to cling to, but that we go alone and that our relation to the world of reality and not only to the world of men and women, then the opportunity will come and the dead poet who was Shakespeare’s sister will put on the body which she has so often laid down”.
She gently admonishes that women cannot invent excuses for not being able to produce works at par with men pointing out that there have been at least two colleges for women in existence in England since the year 1866; that after the year 1880, a married woman was allowed by law to possess her own property; and that in 1919, she was given the right to vote. She adds that “When you reflect upon these immense privileges and the length of time during which they have been enjoyed, and that fact that there must be at this moment some two thousand women capable of earning five hundred year in one way or another, you will agree that the excuse of lack of opportunity, training, encouragement, leisure, and money no longer holds good.”

And what should women write about? Woolf says that “you would write books of history and biography, and criticism and philosophy and science. By doing so you will certainly profit the art of fiction. For books have a way of influencing each other. Fiction will be much better standing cheek by jowl with poetry and philosophy.”

the unicorn by marivi v. soliven (1992)

The thing with this mad and frenzied dashing to meet deadlines is that somewhere in between, something happens to that favourite pink-and-purple polka-dotted flannel unicorn we have neglectfully left in the toy closet. And what do we do when suddenly we find out that it has decided to grow a hard and pointed horn?


“ ‘Why should he want a soft old pink-and-purple polka dotted flannel hornless unicorn? He’s said often enough that life is tough. He’s had enough cuddling from me.’

So the unicorn thought of growing up too. She decided to grow a grown-up unicorn horn. Each night as the little-boy-grown-up dreamed his money dreams, the unicorn concentrated on growing up her horn. And as time passed, the hollow in her brow later levelled out, later grew a lump, later grew a point, still later pointed out until it had become a hard and pointed horn.

The unicorn was proud. She said aloud through the closet door one night: ‘It’d all right to let me out tonight little boy, for I’ve grown a horn as hard your own hard life.’

The boy was surprised to hear the unicorn speak. She had always been so soft and meek. But he opened the door anyway and was surprised to see his pink-and-purple polka-dotted flannel friend waving a long, hard, large white horn. The horn was too long to cuddle her close. It was far too hard to nuzzle his nose against. He continued to stare and the unicorn soon realized that the stare was not a happy one.

He had grown too old to love an old toy. And she had grown too hard to be loved by the little boy still inside of him.

Ever so slowly, her hard white horn began to shrink. Down to a lump, down to a hollow and when it was gone, the rest of her followed.

First went her fuzzy ears, and then her brown eyes, and soon the rest of her pink-and-purple polka-dotted flannel body.

Before he knew it, the little-boy-grown-up had nothing but the faintest feel of old flannel left to remind him of his childhood friend.

He never saw her again.”

the other boleyn girl (2008)

To get ahead in this world, you need more than fair looks and a kind heart.
- Sir Thomas Boleyn

 “The Other Boleyn Girl” is based on Philippa Gregory’s novel of the same title. If you think England’s Henry VIII (1491-1547) had a tad too many wives, this film is saying that outside the six legal wives in succession, there were still others in the running.

Anne (Natalie Portman) and Mary (Scarlett Johansson) are sisters trumping up each other in the contest for Henry VIII’s (Eric Bana’s) affection. This was during the period when the King was still married to Catherine of Aragon (Ana Torren) and there was no royal heir in sight. Anne was a long-term planner and it was clear to her at the outset hat she wanted the Queen of England’s thrown notwithstanding that the position was not vacant. Mary, the other Boleyn girl, however, was content at becoming the King’s mistress and bearing his child out of wedlock.

Anne seemed to be the luckier sister as she in time was crowned Queen, after much political upheaval ending with England’s severance of relations with the Catholic Church and the Pope. Someone should have told her, however, to be careful of the things wished for. A few years later, Anne would be beheaded in 1536 and wife no. 3 would take her turn in Henry VIII’s life. Mary would outlive her sister, living on until 1543.

There is much fabulous costume in this period film but it remains agonizing still. The two sisters are shrill and the viewer, exhausted at the constant bickering, starts rooting for the composed Catherine of Aragon. How was the King able to attend to the matters of the state amidst all these female chaos? And one would think that Henry VIII would have been traumatized with what happened. He, however, would only stop at wife no. 6 and only because his mortal life ended.

There is a good thing which came up with the union between Anne and Henry VIII -- Elizabeth I (1533-1603), one of the greatest monarchs of England.

the velveteen rabbit by margery williams (1975)

The Velveteen Rabbit is the journey of a fat and bunchy rabbit-toy -- whose coat was spotted brown and white, had real thread whiskers, ears lined with pink sateen and stuffed with sawdust -- into being Real.

“What is REAL?” asked the Rabbit one day. “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?”

“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”

“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.

“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”

“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit”?

“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”
Of course we do not want to be one of those mechanical toys, very superior, looking down upon every one else and full of modern ideas; or those model boats who never miss an opportunity to refer to their rigging in technical terms; or even those jointed wooden lions made by disabled soldiers who should have had broader views but put on airs and pretend they are connected with the Government.

Somewhere along the journey from being a velveteen toy to Real-dom, the Rabbit, however, asks himself, “Of what use was it to be loved and lose one’s beauty and become Real if it all ended like this?” He had just earlier been placed into a sack with old picture-books and a lot of rubbish, and carried out to the end of the garden behind the fowl-house. He was shivering a little for he had always been used to sleeping in a proper bed, and by this time his coat had worn so thin and threadbare from hugging that it was no longer any protection to him.

And a tear, a real tear, trickled down his little shabby velvet nose and fell to the ground.

But the nursery magic Fairy arrives just in time and the seasons change.


“Autumn passed and Winter, and in the Spring, when the days grew warm and sunny, the Boy went out to play in the wood behind the house. And while he was playing, two rabbits crept out from the bracken and peeped at him. One of them was brown all over, but the other had strange markings under his fur, as though long ago he had been spotted, and the spots still showed through. And about his little soft nose and his round black eyes there was something familiar, so that the Boy thought to himself: ‘Why, he looks just like my old Bunny that was lost when I had scarlet fever!’. But he never knew that it really was his own Bunny, come back to look at the child who had first helped him to be Real.”

seducing the demon by erica jong (2006)

The job of a writer is to seduce the demons of creativity
and make up stories.
- Erica Jong

The book starts innocently enough - an excerpt of Erica Jong’s speech at the graduation for the College of Staten Island of the City University of New York where she was awarded her first honorary doctorate; and her magnanimous sharing of her 21 rules for aspiring writers:

1. Have faith – not cynicism
2. Dare to dream
3.Take your mind off publication.
4. Write for joy.
5. Get the reader to turn the page.
6. Forget politics (let your real politics shine through)
7. Forget intellect
8. Forget ego
9. Be a beginner
10. Accept change
11. Don’t think your mind needs altering
12. Don’t expect approval for telling the truth
13. Use everything
14. Remember that writing is dangerous if it’s any good
15. Let sex (the body, the physical world) in!
16. Forget critics
17. Tell your truth, not the world’s
18. Remember the earthbound
19. Remember to be wild!
20. Write for the child (in yourself and others)
21. There are no rules

Jong must have taken her own suggestions to heart, especially nos. 13, 15, 17, and 19 as she thereafter goes on a spree narrating sexual encounters (Ted Hughes, husband of Sylvia Plath; a former lover named Dart; an elderly publisher she calls Wagstaff; Andy Stewart, Martha Stewart’s husband; and a poet who wrote her “the sexiest letters full of black garter belts and rosy rumps and black stockings and dirty poems and references to the Story of O”), throwing poisoned arrows at her family members, publisher, and ex-husbands (she is now on her fourth), and dropping nuggets here and there of her forays into same-gender territory.

It’s one thing to hear about the escapades of Isadora Wing (Fear of Flying) or Fanny’s (Fanny: Being the True History of the Adventures of Fanny Hackabout-Jones), characters who we have always suspected to be thinly-veiled Jong personas, but it is an entirely another thing to hear in Jong's first person voice her fantasies involving Bill Clinton.

Jong writes that, “For writer as well as other people, ‘integrity of mind’ is the most important attribute. We live in a time when the most exalted lie most blatantly and nobody seems to care. Integrity has become an old-fashioned world”.

But how much can honesty can we take? Which takes us back to Jong’s no. 12 advice: “don’t expect approval for telling the truth”.

great expectations (1998)

Great Expectations, one of the most popular novels of Charles Dickens, first appeared in All Year Round as a series from December 1860 to August 1861. It has been adapted several times over for stage and screen since then. In 1998, a film directed by Alfonso Cuaron starring Gwyneth Paltrow and Ethan Hawke, proved once again the immense popularity and timelessness of the novel.

It is, however, the soundtrack of this 1998 film which has left its indelible mark on my memory bank – the strength and poetry of the lyrics of the tracks and the friend I had who I sang these songs with while downing immeasurable vodka tonics, talking about men, quoting Christina Rossetti, reading favourite passages from books we loved and hated in equal measure, discussing films which left us breathless, she introducing me to Sting, me haranguing her with Van Gogh, and both of us with great expectations of the future ahead of us.

Artist: The Verve Pipe

Song: Her Ornament

I never really meant to volunteer

I felt the urge to stretch

After a yawn and incidentally raised my hand

I just want to be her special

Someone who will never pioneer

I prefer to watch the mud break off her heels

And turn into cement

I just want to be her ornament

Her shadow seems much cooler

Camouflage myself and plan a special entrance

I just want to be her situation pending expectation

I just want to be her ornament

I never really meant to volunteer

I felt the urge to stretch

After a yawn and accidentally lost my head

I just want to be her exploitation and abbreviation

I just want to be her ornament

Artist: Fisher

Song: Breakable

Do you always have to tell him everything

On your mind?

You know that too much honesty can be

So unkind

And every time you throw him to the floor

Why are you surprised to see he's breakable?

You always try to find what's holding him

Away from you

But do you ever see your anger standing there

Right between you?

And every time you throw him to the wall

Why are you surprised to see he's breakable?

Tell the world that he's breaking your heart

Go tell the world nothing's ever your fault

Go tell them all

And every time you throw him to the floor

Why are you surprised to see he's breakable?

And every time you push him to the wall

Why are you surprised to see he's breakable?


Artist: Pulp

Song: Like a Friend

Don't bother saying you're sorry

Why don't you come in

Smoke all my cigarettes again

Every time I get no further

How long has it been?

Come on in now, wipe your feet on my dreams

You take up my time

Like some cheap magazine

When I could have been learning something

Oh well, you know what I mean, oh

I've done this before

And I will do it again

Come on and kill me baby

While you smile like a friend

Oh and I'll come running

Just to do it again

You are the last drink

I never should have drunk

You are the body hidden in the trunk

You are the habit I can't seem to kick

You are my secrets on the front page every week

You are the car I never should have bought

You are the dream I never should have caught

You are the cut that makes me hide my face

You are the party that makes me feel my age

Like a car crash I can see but I just can't avoid

Like a plane I've been told I never should board

Like a film that's so bad but I've got to stay till the end

Let me tell you now: it's lucky for you that we're friends.


Artist: David Garza

Song: Slave

black orange white and reddresses

hanging off your bed

from now until you reach your grave

baby I will be your slave

ask for your hand to hold

you know I could never be so bold

I could never be so brave

baby I will be your slave

lying words like overflow

they'll rule your heart -

before you know

they'll cover you - from head to toe

they'll never mean a word they say

they just go

I'll bring your mother back to life

I'll bring your father back his sight

back float in a tidal wave

baby I will be your slave

I had a dream of bleeding skies

crippled legs and static eyes

open land and quiet cave

baby I will be your slave

I love you, don't you trust me?

Do you love me, like I love you?

I'm broken, lost in misery

but you don't have to worry about me

I have no more soul to save


Artist: Lauren Christy

Song: Walk This Earth Alone

You're in the doors that keep revolving

The sirens that keep screaming

You're in the flashing of the headlights

The things that I'm believing

You're in the water that I'm drinking

The sound of 911

The walls that protect me

From the damage that you've done

In this world you are with me

But I walk this earth alone

But all I've ever known

Is you are right beside me

If I love you for a day

You'll blow my life away

Could I leave you behind me

You're in the crashing of the windows

The angels 'round the ceiling

You're in the fire in my belly

The fucked up way I'm feeling

You're in the warning on the label

The pills that disappear

The whines as I'm talking

The words you'll never hear

In this world you are with me

But I walk this earth alone

But all I've ever known

Is you are right beside me

If I love you for a day

You'll blow my life away

Could I leave you behind me

Could I leave you behind me...


Artist: Reef

Song: Resignation

How will I wake tomorrow?

Can Laughter come from sorrow?

Well I've been waiting,

For a feeling, and I've waited a long time

Well I've been around the world

And I ain't seen none like you

However can I follow?

All the words that you borrow

Well I've been waiting

For a feeling,And I've waited a long time

Well I've been around the world

And I ain't seen none like you

Well I was over you

Before you told me

I was the first to feel this way

Before you chuck me out

I was the first to doubt you

I was the first to feel this way

Well I've been around the world

And I ain't seen nothing like you


Artist: Poe

Song: Today

Standing in the doorway

Of my life in this house

Trying to find a way to get out

Looking for a sign

That I should open the door

This craziness is getting me down

But today is the dayWe break free

Walking down the stairway

To the traffic below

Anything could happen

I know

But I'm sick of everybody

Telling me what to doI hear you

Hey but I already know

And today is the day

We break free

It's clear in my mind

After all of this time

What I feel my love

There are so many times

That the sun doesn't shine

But I'm here my love

And today is the day

Maybe I should wait

Just a minute or two

It's getting cold now

I feel so insecure

The future is a mistress

That is so hard to please

And the past

Is a pebble in my shoe.

an inconvenient truth (2006)

We are entering into a period of consequences.
- Winston Churchill

Al Gore was this close to becoming President of the most powerful country in the world - and then Florida happened. He stepped aside for George W. Bush after the Supreme Court made a ruling. Gore thereafter went on to gain weight, grow a beard, loll in sweat suits, and watch Bush send troops to Iraq.

Debacles happen. Gore could have chosen to perpetually stay glued in front of his plasma TV murmuring expletives at the Republicans but no, he came to the realization that he is meant for other things, that events of his life has been leading him to a purpose, that the Presidency could have helped him achieve that purpose but it was not the only avenue, and that the Presidency may even have waylaid him from such purpose given the political bargains one is constrained to enter into in the White House. And so Gore shaped up. And so we see him now in An Inconvenient Truth.

The documentary concisely shows the rapid degradation of the planet and at such an alarming speed never before seen in history. The film presents results of scientific studies, graphs, charts, and pictures to drive home the point that if we do not act now, in less than 50 years we will experience even more terrible hurricanes, flooding, droughts, extinction of species, warmer temperatures, askew seasons, food and water shortages, displacement of people, disappearance of land masses, and all other devastations which Gore equal to a walk through the pages of the bible’s Book of Revelation.

The film tackles head on two hot issues surrounding environmental efforts: (1) are scientists in agreement regarding the environmental concern? and (2) environment versus the economy.

On the first issue, the documentary shows the result of a random sample of scientific studies concerning the planet’s deterioration and not one study said otherwise. It appears that doubts on whether the impact of climate change is real and imminent have been systemically created by politicians and the media. On the second issue, results of studies showed that corporations which have adopted environmentally-friendly policies are way ahead in terms of corporate profits. Gore, for good measure, asks however the rhetorical question that even assuming that good environmental policies cut on corporate profits or slow down a country’s growth rate, what good will all these monetary gains be at the end of the day when there is no planet to speak of.

Gore has been making the rounds, giving basically the same talk on An Inconvenient Truth to heads of states, legislators, administrators, schools, lobby groups, and even small groups emphasizing that if the planet is to be saved, it will require the involvement of everyone.

Climatecrisis.net list down 10 things that we all can do which will make a tremendous impact in halting the declining state of affairs of our planet:

1. Change a light - Replacing one regular light bulb will save 150 pounds of carbon dioxide a year.
2. Drive less – Walk, bike, carpool, or take mass transit more often. You’ll save one pound of carbon dioxide for every mile you don’t drive.
3. Recycle more – You can save 2,400 pounds of carbon dioxide per year by recycling just half of your household waste.
4. Check your tires – Keep your tires inflated properly can improve a gas mileage by more than 3%. Every gallon of gasoline saved keeps 20 pounds of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.
5. Use less hot water – It takes a lot of energy to heat water. Use hot water by installing a low flow showerhead (250 pounds of CO2 saved per year) and washing your clothes in cold or warm water (500 pounds saved per year).
6. Avoid products with a lot of packaging – You can save 1,200 pounds of carbon dioixide if you cut down your garbage by 10%.
7. Adjust your thermostat – Moving your thermostat just by 2 degrees will save about 2,000 pounds of carbon dioixide a year with this simple adjustment.
8. Plant a tree – A single tree will absorb one ton of carbon dioixide over its lifetime.
9. Turn off electronic devices – Simply turning off your television, DVD player, stereo, and computer when you’re not using them will save you thousands of carbon dioxide a year.
10. Spread the word - Be a climate champion at home and at work. http://www.climatecrisis.net/takeaction/pdf/10things.pdf


As Al Gore has shown, there are cooler things in this world than being President of the most powerful country.

mama mia! (2008)

It is astounding how the creators of Mamma Mia! has been able to string together hits of the Swedish group ABBA into a semblance of a plot: Sophie Sheridan (Amanda Seyfried) is about to wed her boyfriend Sky ( Dominic Cooper) in a Greek paradise-island. Sophie, however, wants to find out her who her father is before the wedding and decides to send out three separate invitations to Bill Anderson (Stellan Skarsgard), Sam Carmichael (Pierce Brosnan), and Harry Bright (Colin Firth), three men who have figured in Donna Sheridan’s (Meryl Streep’s), her mother’s, exciting past. All three possible sperm donors arrive in paradise-island and chaos ensues.

Mamma Mia! is not only a wonderful trip down memory lane for ABBA lovers but is also a bedlam of interesting minute details: the man who she thought left her high and dry; unattended cracks on the patio floor; hinges which do not work; plastic surgery; independence versus love (are they mutually exclusive?); pursuing one’s dream; dependability of old friends; filial duty; illegitimacy issues; and the challenges of single parenting.

What is almost beyond belief in this film (which is by the way based on a stage musical), however, is hearing the man formerly known as Bond. . . James Bond, singing like his life depended upon the outcome of that song and seeing him in a shimmery, tight fitting suit and goodness, were those platform boots? (Was it possible that he regretted even for a millisecond relinquishing the Bond title in the middle of that predicament?) What is not surprising at all is seeing Meryl Streep take on another role with complete aplomb, abandon, and staggering brilliance.

the anonymous lawyer by jeremy blachman (2007)

The business of a law school is not sufficiently described when you merely say that it is to teach law or to make lawyers. It is to teach law in the grand manner and to make great lawyers.
- Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes

“Anonymous Lawyer” is not about great about lawyers or lawyers who have learned law in the grand manner.

The book, based on a popular blog (anonymouslawyer.blogspot.com), shows all the vileness and despicableness of the workings of the mind of a hiring partner of a half a billion dollar law firm who aspires to be the firm’s Chairman in due time.

In the interim, he complains about Anonymous Wife who forever sits in the house watching reruns of game shows, goes out with her friends for US$200 lunches, and strolls around department stores buying dozens of things which end up in the garage never touched.

He raves about Anonymous Niece who’s going to Yale Law School. He vows to inflict a brutal, painful, and ugly death, not covered by insurance, on The Jerk who is also aiming to be Chairman of the law firm.

He nitpicks on the Old Guy who has been forced into retirement; the Guy With the Giant Mole who quit the law firm to become a high school teacher; the Bombshell who not only wears tight suits but why whose memos are solid and work airtight; and a parade of other characters he calls The Short One, The Dumb One, The One With The Limp, The One Who’s Never Getting Married, The One Who Missed Her Kid’s Funeral, The One Who Loves His Kids, The Suck-Up, The Musician, The Foreign Dude, ad infinitum.

The book is written in a funny-painful way and shows what happens when someone is razor-focused on a goal oblivious to all the things around him and only notices certain people along the way because they either (1) pose obstructions to his dream, or (2) could help him achieve his target.

The Anonymous Lawyer is determined to propagate his world view with his recruitment principle: “The reality is that anyone who’s got something else pulling at him is not going to be a good fit here. You can’t spend a hundred and ten hours a week in the office if your heart is somewhere else. This is too all-consuming to leave room for passions. We know most of our associates don’t truly love law. We accept that. They’re here because there’s no job they can get this easily that’ll pay this much money, and there’s nothing else pulling at them to pursue something different. That’s fine. But when we’re the backup plan for someone with a creative dream, it’s trouble. They wimp out on us. They start to imagine they deserve better. There is no better. This is a good as it gets."

If you’ve wondered why lawyers spend a lot of time in the office, this book offers a possible explanation – they are blogging out there, anonymously.

the 7 habits of highly effective people by stephen r. covey (1989)

Any time is a good time to prod us not only to get back on that saddle and shoot for the supernova, but more importantly to grant a sliver of opportune time for us to resolve to be better family members, friends, colleagues, and more involved individuals in our respective spheres of influence.

Stephen R. Covey’s “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” provides the following guideposts:

1. Be proactive (Principles of Personal Vision)
- It means more than merely taking initiative. It means that as human beings, we are responsible for our own lives; that our behaviour is a function of our decisions, not our conditions; that we can subordinate feelings to values; and that we have the initiative and responsibility to make things happen. Highly proactive people do not blame circumstances, conditions or conditioning for their behaviour. Their behaviour is a product of their own conscious choice, based on values, rather than a product of their conditions, based on feeling.

2. Begin with the end in mind (Principles of Personal Leadership)
- It means to start with a clear understanding of your destination; to know where you’re going to better understand where you are now so that the steps you take are always in the right direction.

3. Put first things first (Principles of Personal Management)
- It is the ability to make decisions and choices, to act in accordance with them, and to act rather than to be acted upon. It is usually not the dramatic, the visible the once-in-a-lifetime, up-by-the-bootstraps effort that brings enduring success. Empowerment comes from learning how to use this great endowment in the decisions we make everyday.

4. Think win/win (Principles of Interpersonal Leadership)
- Win/win is a frame of mind and heart that constantly seeks mutual benefit in all human interactions. It means that agreements or solutions are mutually beneficial, mutually satisfying; that all parties feel good about the decision and feel committed to the action plan; that it sees life as a cooperative, not a competitive arena; and that it is based on the paradigm that there is plenty for everybody, that one person’s success is not achieved at the expense or exclusion of the success of others.

5. Seek first to understand, then to be understood (Principles of Emphatic Communication)
- Emphatic listening gets inside another person’s frame of reference. You look out through it, you see the world the way they see the world, you understand their paradigm, you understand how they feel.

6. Synergize (Principles of Creative Cooperation)
- It means that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Valuing the differences is the essence of synergy – the mental, emotional and psychological differences of people. The key to valuing differences is to realize that all the people see the world not as it is, but as they are.

7. Sharpen the saw (Principles of Balanced Self-Renewal)
- It means exercising all four dimensions, i.e., physical, mental, spiritual, and social/emotional, regularly and consistently in wise and balanced ways.


I first read this book in 1999 as one of the requirements in a course work but have been finding myself flipping through its pages every so often and feeling absurdly eager-beaver a few moments later.

he's not just that into you by greg behrendt and liz tuccillo (2004)

“If we wrote a book called ‘She’s Just Not That Into You, it would sell eight copies. Men don’t process heartbreak that way. We don’t run to Barnes & Noble and buy a book. We get drunk and stand on your lawn, then the cop comes and we’re fairly sure it’s over.”

- Greg Behrendt

This is a hilarious romp of a book wherein authors, Greg Behrendt and Liz Tucillo (writers of Sex and the City), depose one by one the mind-boggling excuses women concoct to explain to themselves why the man-of-the-hour has not rung the doorbell. Here’s the rundown that can rival any of David Letterman’s top items of the week:

He’s just not into you if he’s …

Not asking you out (because of he likes you he will ask you out)
- maybe he doesn’t want to ruin the friendship excuse / maybe he’s intimidated by me excuse / maybe he wants to take it slow excuse / but he gave me his number excuse / maybe he forgot to remember me excuse / maybe I don’t want to play games excuse

Not calling you (men know how to use the phone)
- but he’s been travelling a lot excuse / but he’s got a lot on his mind excuse / he just says things he doesn’t mean excuse / maybe we’re just different excuse / but he’s very important excuse

Not dating you (“hanging out” is not dating)
- he just got out of a relationship excuse / but we really are dating excuse / its better than nothing excuse / but he’s out of town a lot excuse

He’s having sex with someone else (there’s never going to be a good excuse for cheating)
- he’s got no excuse and he knows it excuse / but I’ve gotten fat excuse / he has a stronger sex drive than I excuse / but at least he knew her excuse

He only wants to see you when he’s drunk (if he likes you he’ll want to see you when his judgement isn’t impaired)
- but I like him this way excuse / at least its not the hard stuff excuse

He doesn’t want to marry you (love cures commitment phobia)
- things are really tight now excuse / he’s so terribly put upon excuse / he’s just not ready excuse / he just needs a better role model excuse

He’s breaking up with you (“I don’t want to go out with you” means just that)
- but he misses me excuse / but it really takes the pressure off us excuse / but everyone is doing it excuse / but then he wants to get back together excuse / but I’m so damn nice excuse / I do not accept his breakup excuse

He’s disappeared on you (sometimes you have to get closure all by yourself)
- maybe he’s dead excuse / but can’t I at least yell at him excuse / but I just want an answer excuse

He’s married and other insane variations of being unavailable (if you’re not able to love freely, its not really love)
- but he’s wife is such a bitch excuse / but he’s a really good person excuse / I should wait it out excuse

He’s a selfish jerk, a bully, or a really big freak (if you really love someone, you want to do things to make that person happy)
- but he’s really trying to be better excuse / its just the way he was brought up excuse / its not always going to be like this excuse / its behind closed doors that count excuse / but he’s just trying to help excuse / but now I’m playing in the big leagues excuse / he’s just finding himself excuse / maybe it’s just his little quirk excuse

The book is done in a Friday-night-easy-writing style, question-and-answer format, guaranteed not to further stress the seat of reason/passion of brain-wracked women pondering on who Behrendt calls “Stinky the Time-Waster” or “Freddy-Cant-Remember-to-Call”. The truth (the truth generally being more dreadful than a lobotomy) is that according to the authors, men would rather lose an arm out a city bus window than simply tell the Queen of Sheba that “you’re not the one”. So move on superfox, cut your losses, and don’t waste your time fabricating excuses.

Don’t waste the pretty.

yentl (1983)

“Papa, watch me fly”
- Yentl Mendel

There was a time when there were no women barristers, no women justices, no women bar topnotchers, when an almost equal male-female population in law school population was unheard of, and Ally McBeal was not even imaginable. There was a time when the study of law was limited to men, and such was the time of Yentl Mendel (Barbra Streisand).

Rebbe Mendel (Nehemiah Persoff), Yentl’s father, was a man, however, far ahead of his time. Rebbe who was a Talmud teacher, secretly taught his daughter not only the labyrinths of the Torah but more importantly the joy of learning and the belief that the acquisition of knowledge is a gift that should be shared by humankind, irrespective of gender. And then Rebbe dies, leaving Yentl all by herself.

Yentl then decides to venture out into the world. She leaves the village and managed to get herself into a Yeshiva to study Jewish law and tradition by passing herself as a boy. In the course of her life as Anshel, she falls in love with her classmate Avigdor (Mandy Patinkin), who of course thinks Yentl is a man. Life even becomes more complicated when Avigdor gets engaged to Haddas (Amy Irving), and then Haddas marries Anshel, and then Avigdor finally gets Haddas. Yentl, to extricate herself from this Anshel/Yentl persona, even had to bare her bosom to drive home a point. Yes, Virginia, a woman living life as a man in those times was truly hazardous, wearisome, and treacherous.

Barbra Streisand, in true Yentl fashion, stars and directs the film. Yentl won the 1984 Academy Awards for Best Music and Best Adaptation Score and the 1984 Golden Globe Award for Best Director.

sex and the city (2008)

You've come a long way, baby.

-Virginia Slims ad

Critics lambast Sex and the City (SATC) as, “it is not real life”. Of course it’s not real life - who can afford Manolo Blahniks on a column writer’s salary and still maintain one’s own place in Manhattan, brainstorming in cafes, and living on cosmopolitans in the evenings? And trust me, I have been wearing heels since I was 10years old and there is no way you can wear those 3-inch pumps to a picnic. But all these are beside the point. As beside the point as Mr. Big’s real name.

I first heard of SATC from a former colleague some years back who said I should watch this series (I had a feeling he was staring at my red stilettos while saying this). I looked up briefly from the monitor to say “sex wha-at?”

I watched the first three episodes and I was hooked. Yep, it was about sex and whole lots more. Lots more shoes, clothes, bags, friendships, real estate, women’s dilemmas, diamond rings, and have I said shoes?

It used to be that there were few choices available to women. They would either become wives/mothers, whores, or end up in the convent. SATC explores these choices, asks if this is all there is to it, and raises questions which we have feared at some point to give voice to: What if I divorce this someone who I thought was the perfect man of my life? What if I decide not to get married? What if I choose my career over marriage? What if I choose marriage over my career? To what extent should I compromise? Should I break off an engagement because of my fear of marriage and the possibility of marital unromanticization/stagnation? Is it evil to leave somebody who stood by me when I was at my lowest point? How will I know if he is the One? Will I ever know if he is the One? Will I still recognize myself tomorrow after I have packed my bags, my books, and my life, to go join who I think is the One to some far off country? How far can I change for somebody? Should I get a nanny? Should I adopt a baby? Can I borrow money from friends? How would it look if I borrow money from an ex-boyfriend? How much of our boyfriends’ past do we need to know? What if my prospective mother-in-law is the evil stepmother reincarnate?

SATC the movie picks up the lives of the four friends Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker), Charlotte York (Kristin Davis), Samantha Jones (Kim Cattrall), and Miranda Hobbes (Cynthia Nixon), five years after Season 6 (no one gained weight, and all four look as fabulous as ever). Similar to the series, the movie version continues to explore dilemmas faced by 21st century women. Is there forgiveness after infidelity? How much advice should we take from friends? Should we think about escape clauses even before we say our marriage vows? What about the kids if we decide to get a divorce? Should I stop doing the things that I love for the baby? Should I stop doing things I love for the man in my life? What is the perfect wedding gown? What is the wedding really all about? What if my family life starts falling at the seams because of my job? Is there such thing as a perfect life or a perfect choice?

SATC is a fantastic movie date for girlfriends especially those facing crossroads in their lives. Husbands, boyfriends, and fiancés, be forewarned, and stay out of this amazon jungle that is the theatre showing SATC. Be sure to have a very important business meeting if she asks you to watch the movie with her.

One more thing. This is a movie shot in New York and about women living in Manhattan who feel passionately about brands and their cosmopolitans and who rarely cook. If you cannot forget for 2 hours and a half about certain countries in Africa where the average lifespan of women is approximately 35 years old, please do not watch this movie. Your heart will bleed. And it will not be due to Mr. Big’s (Chris North’s) inability to muster anything more than a lopsided grin the entire movie or Jerry “Smith” Jerrod’s (Jason Lewis’s) bland blond presence.

what should i do with my life? by po bronson (2003)

“It’s about people who dared to be honest with themselves”
- Po Bronson


Is there anyone here who has not asked any of these questions at any point?

1. Should I put my faith in mystical signs of destiny, or should my sense of a “right fit” be based on logical, practical reasons?
2. When should I accept my lot, make peace with my ambition, and stop stressing out?
3. Why do I feel guilty thinking about this?
4. Should I make money first, to fund my dream?
5. How do I tell the difference between a curiosity and a passion?
6. How do I weigh making myself a better person against external achievements?
7. When do I need to change that situation, and when is it ‘me’ that needs to change?
8. What should I tell my parents, who worry about me?
9. If I have a child, will my frustration over my work go away?
10. What will I feel like when I get there? (How will I know I’m there?)

Robert Frost had it easy, he only had to choose between two roads. Now we are faced with a myriad of options - to choose either road, stand petrified at the crossroad like Lot’s wife, take one road and backpedal if we don’t like it, choose to go back where we originally came from, take the first road then jump to the second road then jump back again to the first road, and so the confusing options go.

The beauty of this book is that there are no ready answers. It does not attempt to cut through the Gordian knot of any personal dissatisfaction or exorcise devils of anxiety or discontent. It merely tells one story after another, stories of real people that may well have been that of our neighbor’s, a colleague’s, our sibling’s, or that of our own little-big selves. Stories which remind us of past sorrows and past joys, and of possible happy futures that can be ours. Then we ask more questions, and in the process a glimmer of light shine through our personal convoluted maze of dilemmas.

Po explains that the stories are organized into eight sections: In the first section, the people interviewed are struggling with the essential paradox of trying to make a “right” decision in the absence of experience. In the second section, they’re overcoming traditional class notions of where they belong. In the third, they’re learning to resist temptations that have distracted them from their true aspirations. The people in section four have found ways to resolve that inherent conflict. In the fifth section, they’re getting to know themselves as people first, then struggling with what that means for their career mission. The people in the sixth section found their right place or environment, which led in turn to greater insight. The seventh section is the longest in the book. It recognizes that we make our choices with our family in mind. The people in the final section demonstrate the virtues of patience and persistence. Po stresses that he included the said part not to admonish the young and urgent, but to respect the Big Picture.

Socrates brandished that the unexamined life is not worth living. “What Should I Do With My Life?” amplifies the point that the examination of this life is no mean feat and the journey arduous and long, but yes, the answers will make this life worth living.

1001 books you must read before you die edited by peter boxall (2006)

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to bechewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts, others to be read, but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.

- Francis Bacon

This is the first time I actually tried a book on my bathroom scale out of curiosity - the thing weighs 4.2 lbs! I leafed through the 1001 books in the list and I found to my chagrin that I have covered only 7% of the entire lot (and I have been seriously reading since I was at least 9 years old; but then no Book of Knowledge, Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, or Enid Blyton in this list). I did some calculations and arrived at the conclusion, all things being equal, that I would need to read about 3-4 books a month from the said list until the day I complete the average lifespan of a human being in order to cover the entire list.

The books are divided according to the century they were written, starting from the 1700. All fiction earlier than 1700 is classified under the heading “Pre-1700”. Among the writers included in the 21st century are Haruki Murakami, Margaret Atwood, Philip Roth, Milan Kundera, Paulo Coelho, Yann Martel, Chuck Palahniuk, Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan, J.M. Coetzee, John Banville, and Kazuo Ishiguro.

Each entry is accompanied by a synopsis of the book, the background of the writer, the date of first publication, language of first publication, and the title under which it was first published.

Towards the end of the book is an Author Index where you can check how many books of your favourite author has been included in the list as compared to another author. Herman Hesse, for example, has four to his name (The Glass Bead Game, Rosshalde, Siddhartha, and Steppenwolf) vis-à-vis McEwan’s ten (Amsterdam, Atonement, Black Dogs, The Cement Garden, The Child In Time, Comfort of Strangers, Enduring Love, First Love Last Rites, In Between the Sheets, and Saturday).

You may not agree with all the books included (I don’t) and those excluded which should have properly been in the list, but it is no debate that 1001 Books to Read before You Die is a good guidepost to good fiction that has been written throughout the ages.

the forbidden kingdom (2008)

“Do not forget to breathe”
- The Silent Monk

I have to admit now that I harboured no little amount of perturbation when I saw the movie posters with Jackie Chan’s name obviously topbilling that of Jet Li’s. It was not a good omen.

Ten minutes into the film, I breathed deeply and breathed well. For I knew that Forbidden Kingdom was intended to end the mother of all debates as to who is the kung fu master. And his name is not Jackie Chan.

Jet Li plays the Monkey King - a little uncouth immortal who has vastly entertained the Jade Emperor. The role establishes Jet Li as king, as the immortal hero, and although he is the quintessential elegant kung fu master, he could do a mean parody of the funny man and leave us no less amused as the Jade Emperor.

And then I almost forgot to breathe. Enter the Silent Monk. This is vintage Jet Li – economical of movements; swift, powerful fists; vast energy unleashed in one graceful stroke; here one second, gone in the next; light as a feather on his toes; unwavering in his sense of mission; intensely focused; unruffled even when faced with the most adverse conditions; and he keeps himself amidst all these in a state of utmost serenity.

Jacky Chan plays the Drunken Immortal, who as we see, is far from immortal. One shot from the arrow of Ni-Chang of the Long White Tresses and he would have crossed to the land of the beyond had it not been for the efforts of his friends. The Drunken Immortal needs his prop, his elixir, for him to maintain his powers. The true immortal stays free from the shackles of earthly wants or desires. Such is the Silent Monk who can remain steadily quiet and his center intact in the midst of an endless desert.

The last fight is crucial. While the Drunken Immortal is in a state of transition from coma to drunken stupor, it is the Silent Monk, a mere wisp of a mortal with a mission, who dares to do battle with the immortal Jade Warlord. This is the same heavenly general who has reduced Golden Sparrow to orphanhood at a tender young age; to have raised beheaded minions in pikes for his fiefdom to see and to quake; and to have caused the Monkey King to be cast in stone for ages until The Seeker finds him.

The Silent Monk suddenly sees the Golden Staff about to fall into the fiery cauldron. In one clean sweep, he has the Staff in his hand. He has accomplished his mission. The Monkey King is freed.

The Silent Monk slowly dies and reverts into a golden hair. Then we see that the Silent Monk and the Monkey King is one. And Jet Li is truly the One.

starbucked by taylor chuck (2007)

“We changed the way people live their lives, what they do when they get up in the morning, how they reward themselves, and where they meet”
- Orin Smith, former Starbucks CEO

This is the book for (a) anyone who entertains thoughts of opening a coffee shop; (b) loves Starbucks; (c) hates Starbucks; (d) captivated with the romance of coffee; (e) inordinately spends more time in cafes than his/her actual place of residence; (f) fascinated with statistics concerning the coffee industry; (g) steeped in coffee history and trivia; and (h) all of the above.

Taylor Clark prefaces his book like it was a dissertation. He explains: Starbucked is divided into two sections - In part one, we investigate the mystery of why Starbucks and coffee culture gripped America so tightly and so suddenly, and we examine some related curiosities along the way. Why did Seattle become the planet’s coffee epicentre? Why did Starbucks pay a firm to hypnotize its customers? Why doesn’t Starbucks have any noteworthy competitors? Part two explores the ethical issues that swirl around the company as it pursues its goal of global domination. Does Starbucks prey on independent cafes, as critics claim? Should we feel complicit in the plight of impoverished coffee farmers each time we buy a vanilla latter?

On a related note, Time Magazine has reported (21 April 2008) that Howard Schultz, self-proclaimed coffee messiah, has taken the position of CEO again in Starbucks after he relinquished the post in 2000 for a seat on the board (but did he ever leave Starbucks? Schultz’s office was right next to CEO Jim Donald). This is amidst growing complaints from customers, decrease in 40% of its stock price the past 12 months, and comparable-store sales turning negative.

Uncle Howie is already shifting gears. For starters, he has scrapped the breakfast sandwiches (they overpower the scent of coffee), reporting of comp-store sales (too much focus on numbers means less focus on customers), the verismo (the old machines gives baristas less control over the steaming of milk and blocks their view of patrons), cluttered counters (the mishmash of stuff distracts from coffee), and stores every corner (unwieldy US growth will slow, the company will still push ahead overseas).

And what’s in? Grinding beans in stores (will restore the coffee aroma). MyStarbucksIdea.com (a site invites customers’ gripes and suggestions), the mastrena (the barista can be seen over this new espresso machine), Conservation International (the group will certify where beans come from), and loyalty card (free drip refills and latte extras for repeat customers).

Why did Schultz return to Starbucks? Uncle Howie, the savior of the coffee universe, proclaims, “I came back because it’s personal. I came back because I love this company and our people and I feel a deep sense of responsibility to 200,000 people and their families.” Ahem (the decrease in Starbucks’ stockprice has resulted in the corollary decrease of about US$400 million in Schultz’s worth).

As the Starbucks mantra goes, “Onward Howard!”

bitter grounds by sandra benitez (1997)

“Listen, for all your words
you cannot know.

In Salvador, coffee is
red-roofed estates,
high walls crowned with shards of glass.
uniformed servants hurrying over marble
toward a buzzing at the door.

In Salvador, coffee is
trips abroad,
languid Miami shopping;
dewy hands
plunged between
voile and cambric and silk.

You say, but for the golden hope of coffee
few men would get ahead.
I say, when the people harvest,
all they reap is bitter grounds.

In Salvador, coffee is
filled berry baskets
tied around waists;
bloodied fingertips
wrapped with strips of rag;
sisal arms
reaching up again to pick.

In Salvador, coffee left
in tins, pottery mugs, china cups,
never grows cold.

In Salvador, coffee steams while it sits.”

Izalco, El Salvador in 1932 is a place where no savior is in sight. Coffee farmers who have been working on their small farmlands, and whose fathers and grandfathers worked on that same farmland growing coffee, woke up one day being told that the land is not theirs. And so it was in 1932 that Mercedes Prieto left her homestead with her daughter Jacinta. The evening before, Ignacio Prieto, her husband, was brutally gunned down in the finca of Don Pedro to serve as lesson to other coffee pickers who harboured thoughts of overpowering the landowners.

Mercedes would thereafter join the household of Elena Contreras of the finca La Abundancia as a domestic. This would start three generations of women bound to each other as master and servant and ties of friendship but not quite. Mercedes and her progeny knew very well that much as they were valued and loved by their masters, they were still servants in that place - servants who could not go to the exclusive schools where the children of the finca went and who were expected to schedule their child-bearing so as not to skew the activities of their masters.

Interspersed through the lives of the women are the stories of their loves, of long-running radio soap opera episodes whose plots were not much different from their own joys and tragedies, and how coffee has all held them captive in its clutch.

Bitter Grounds end in a note not any less explosive as how it opened. It would take a third generation Prieto, Maria Mercedes, to undertake an action in 1977 which her grandafather Ignacio hesitated to do 45 years before. It would also take that many years to resolve the question which haunted her grandmother and namesake Mercedes throughout her life.

The book ends with the following epilogue: “The story continues, as all stories do until life itself is done. In a country named The Savior, 1980 brought full-scale civil war. By 1992, when peace was signed, 75,000 had died; 300,000 had fled, and 5 million remained, these filled with hope on bitter grounds.”

The book won the American Book Award in 1998.

phantom of the opera (2004)

The Phantom of the Opera tells us that the ghost lurking in the shadows, who you want to dismiss as a mere figment of your imagination, is real and more fearsome than your worst nightmare; that what people try to attribute to superstition and magic can be readily explained by science, architecture, and human tenacity; and that love triumphs over hatred and revenge. The film asks where one draws the line between fervent devotion and dark obsession, and wherein the demarcation lies between love and pity.

Christine Daae (Emmy Rossum) is one of the chorus girls in the French Opera House. No one knows, however, that somebody has been giving her lessons, preparing her for her big debut onstage. The fateful day arrives. Christine is hailed as the new bright star of the opera world.

The Phantom of the Opera (Gerard Butler), who has been blissfully content to remain unseen behind his protégée’s dressing room mirror while mentoring her, has decided to detach himself from the darkness. He was prompted by the appearance of Viscount Raoul De Chagny (Patrick Wilson), who has presented himself as a serious rival to the affections of Christine.

Christine is faced with a dilemma. On the one side, there is her Angel of Music, who she believes has been sent by her deceased father to be her guide. He has coached her and has given her a chance to gain a foothold in the world of opera. There is also the matter of his long and lonely existence. Throughout his life, the Phantom’s disfigurement caused his isolation from the rest of humanity. Christine was aware that the Phantom saw her as his salvation from the bottomless pit of personal torment. On the other side, however, is Raoul who epitomizes the eternal spring of her childhood and the joy of living under bright, yellow sunshine.

Christine has to make a decision. She cannot waver, she cannot falter, as people’s lives hang in a precarious balance.

The film is based on Gaston Leroux’s Phantom of the Opera published in 1909 and music adapted from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 1986 musical of the same title. It was nominated for 3 Academy Awards and 3 Golden Globe Awards in 2005.

fiddler on the roof (1971)

If today you received yet another ticket for speeding, spilled coffee on that new shirt, missed your flight, lost your luggage at the airport, was accosted by the immigration people, had to sit in a closely watched claustrophobic-causing room for five hours while they settled your identity, and you start thinking that you are having an extraordinarily bad day, you have not yet heard of Tevye.

Tevye is a milkman in Russia in the early part of 1900 prior to the revolution. He lives in a small hut with his wife and five daughters. As if life was not difficult enough, his only horse got injured. This constrained the poor milkman to draw the cart by himself, Chinese rickshaw style, so that he will be able to deliver the milk to his customers.

Tevye is faced with the spectre of providing a dowry for his daughters, three of whom will have to be married soon. The daughters, however, took it upon themselves to choose a husband (something totally unheard of at that time) instead of allowing the village matchmaker to do the choosing. One daughter decided to marry the next-door-neighbor who is even poorer than Tevye; another daughter accepted the proposal of a revolutionary firebrand who would later on be arrested and exiled to faraway Siberia; and the third ran off with a lad from outside of Tevye’s Jewish faith.

Then the pogrom started and the possibility of leaving their home became more and more an inevitability. Where was Tevye and his family to go in the middle of the harsh Russian winter? The film provides beautiful lessons in fortitude and steadfastness of faith in the face of great adversities.

Fiddler on the Roof was nominated for eight 1971 Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Director and features the classic songs “If I Were A Rich Man” and “Sunrise, Sunset”. It also won the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture (Musical or Comedy) in 1972.

around the world in eighty days by jules verne (1873)

Phileas Fogg, was a mathematically precise Englishman of set ways. He would rise everyday at exactly 8:00am, have tea and toast at 8:23am, would require his shaving water at 9:37am, and have his toilet at 9:40am. Everything was similarly regulated from that time on until 12:00 midnight at which hour he retired. His preciseness was such that he had recently terminated from his employ James Forster, his manservant. The reason? Forster brought his master his shaving water at 84 degrees Fahrenheit instead of the required 86.

The Daily Telegraph in 1872 proposed that a trip around the world can be done in 80 days as follows:

From London to Suez via Mont Cenis and Brindisi (by rail and steamboats) – 7 days
From Suez to Bombay (by steamer) – 13 days
From Bombay to Calcutta (by rail) – 3 days
From Calcutta to Hong Kong (by steamer) – 13 days
From Hong Kong to Yokohama, Japan (by steamer) – 6 days
From Yokohama to San Francisco (by steamer) – 22 days
From San Francisco to New York (by rail) – 7 days
From New York to London (by steamer and rail) – 9 days

It was the general belief, however, that a complete journey predicated on such assumption was a folly as a mere delay of one day due to natural and manmade causes will throw the entire schedule off the mark.

Fogg thus astounded his companions at whist in the evening of 2 October 1872 when he decided to take on a bet for GBP20,000 that he can go around the world in 80 days. The party drew up a memorandum of the wager stating that Fogg had to be in the Reform Club, London, by 21 December 1872 at 8:45pm.

Fogg, together with his new French butler Jean Passepartout, would embark on an adventure that little resembled the rail-and-steamer itinerary drawn by the Daily Telegraph. The breathtaking journey would include travelling by elephant, rescuing a beautiful Parsee Indian who has been doomed to burn at a funeral pyre together with her dead rajah, taking a pilot boat from Hong Kong to Yokohama, discovering the debilitating effects of opium, getting entangled in an election for a justice of peace in San Francisco, having a lecture in Mormon history, engaging in hand combat with the Sioux, taking a ride on a sled equipped with sails from Fort Kearney to Omaha covering 200 miles, and forcibly taking over a trading vessel!

Throughout it all, Fogg remained impassive and composed and the only time he betrayed the semblance of human emotion was when he knocked down Mr. Fix, a detective who had been trailing him throughout the journey believing that Fogg was behind the robbery of GBP50,000 from the Bank of England.

The thoroughly phlegmatic Fogg brought back with him to London something totally unforeseen from his journey. Installed now in his No. 7 Saville Row, Burlington Gardens mansion, is Aouda, the Parsee woman who almost became a suttee. This happenstance, however, was not due to Fogg’s mathematical precision but because Aouda had asked him, “Mr. Fogg, do you wish at once a kinswoman and friend? Will you have me for your wife?”.

Fogg’s trip cost almost GBP19,000. Did he win the wager? The book explains, “in journeying eastward, he had gone towards the sun, and the days therefore diminished for him as many times four minutes as he crossed degrees in this direction. There are 360 degrees in this direction. There are 360 degrees on the circumference of the earth.”

The descriptions of places and peoples during Fogg’s travels reflect the bias of the English fully confident of the superiority of their civilization and culture. Afterall, it was the time when it was said that the sun never set on English territory. Monsieur Passepartout, albeit charming and devoted, is emotional, garrulous, and forever involved in one scrape after another causing innumerable delays. Aouda, “received a thoroughly English education” and “from her manners and intelligence, would be thought a European”.

It takes less than 24 hours to go around the world today by jet but what would be interesting to find out is how long it takes to go around the world, almost a century and half after Fogg’s fictional journey, using the points of embarkation and disembarkation suggested by the Daily Telegraph in 1872, but using modern transportation; how much would the entire trip cost; and what is the value today in real terms of GBP20,000.

Around the World in Eighty Days is a travelogue-suspense-comedy romp and remains Jules Verne’s most successful novel to date.

the medici seal by theresa breslin (2006)

Half the courts of Europe and most of mighty Rome itself are bastards. Our employer,
my patron for the moment, Cesare Borgia, is a bastard.

The year is 1502. A boy is fished from a river in Romagna, Italy, by the party of Leonardo da Vinci. When asked his name, the boy replies, “Matteo”.

Matteo explains that he is an orphan, that he has escaped from his employer who has treated him brutally, and that it was during this escape that he accidentally fell into the river. Matteo deliberately omitted saying that he was the son of a gypsy woman and has been in the care of his grandmother until she died, that he never knew who his father was, and that he was escaping from Sandino, a man-for-hire, who was trying to kill him when he fell into the river.

Matteo had an even bigger secret: he had with him the seal of the Medicis which the much-feared Cesare Borgia (Duke of Valentinois) and the Medici family would kill to obtain. And so Matteo came to live with da Vinci, acting as his all around errand boy and the latter’s assistant in his nocturnal activities which included cutting up of cadavers for his studies in anatomy.

He lived a happy enough life until his past started catching up with him. Friends who have cared for him have been brutally murdered, and people have been lurking in the shadows prepared to ambush.

In the midst of the struggle between the Vatican and the Italian states, the alliance of the French army with Milan, the beauty and magnificence of Lucrezia de Borgia, the transfer of power in the Vatican from Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia ( Pope Alexander VI) to Cardinal Guiliano della Rovere (Pope Julius II), the art and scientific experiments of Leonardo da Vinci, and the political treatises of Machiavelli, Matteo would find out the explosive truth of the people who were after him. And it was not primarily because he had in his possession the seal of the Medicis.

If you liked Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, you will like The Medici Seal.

eats, shoots and leaves by lynne truss (2003)

Punctuation has been defined many ways. Some grammarians use the analogy of stitching: punctuation as the basting that holds the fabric in shape. But best of all, I think, is the simple advice given by the style book of a national newspaper: that punctuation is “a courtesy designed to help readers to understand a story without stumbling.”
- Lynne Truss

There’s something which I feel strongly about and have been wondering for sometime why Time Magazine has altogether dropped it.

Kate L. Turabian (A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, 6th ed., 1996) instructs that “In a series consisting of three or more elements, the elements are separated by commas. When a conjunction joins the last two elements, a comma is used before the conjunction.”

William Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White (The Elements of Style, 6th ed., 2000) call such comma used before the conjunction as the “serial comma”. They similarly advise, “in a series of three or more terms with a single conjunction, use a comma after each term except the last”.

Thus, “Eats, Shoots and Leaves” would read as “Eats, Shoots, and Leaves” following Turabian and Strunk and White (the serial comma is the comma after “Shoots”).

Something must have happened between my last English class and today because I no longer see the serial comma except in the documents I originate and those which pass through my obsessive-compulsive hands.

Lynne Truss, thankfully, has not only provided an explanation of the seeming disappearance of the serial comma (which she calls the Oxford comma) but has likewise given me a tap-tap on the head why I should ease up. She clarifies that, “In Britain, where standard usage is to leave it out, there are those who put it in – including, interestingly, Fowler’s Modern English Usage. In America, conversely, where standard usage is to leave it in, there are those who make it a point of removing it (especially journalists)”. Truss explains that her own feeling is that “one shouldn’t be too rigid about the Oxford comma. Sometimes the sentence is improved by including it; sometimes it isn’t.”

“Eats, Shoots and Leaves” is a snazzy, witty, and stylish instruction book on punctuation elucidating, entertaining, and flabbergasting its readers in a most delightful way (oh how I love that Oxford comma).

love in the time of cholera (2007)

“Fermina”, he said, “I have waited for this opportunity for more than a half century, to repeat to you once again my vow of eternal fidelity and everlasting love.”

- Florentino Ariza

Last year, I gave Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s “Love In The Time of Cholera (1988)” a 5-star, mesmerized as I was with GGM’s storytelling and Florentino Ariza’s vow of eternal fidelity and undying love 622 affairs, 51 years, 9 months, and 4 days after he first declared his love to Fermina Daza.

I generally have a minor case of suspicion every time a movie is announced based on a book I thoroughly enjoyed (I was indifferent when it was bannered that “The Devil Wears Prada” was going to be made into a movie) as I get preternaturally agitated when the producers/screenwriters/actors leave out details which I believe are essential in the story’s development. I, however, still wait with bated breath and troop to the theatre hoping against hope that my fears remain in the realm of imagination.

And so, self-righteous reader that I am, I get this silly grin on my face when I see a movie wherein the scenes amazingly spring to life directly from the author’s pen (Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter). What I am not prepared for is when the film is faithful to the author’s narration but gives an entirely new flavour to the entire story.

Such is Ronald Harwood’s/Mike Newell’s take on Love In the Time of Cholera. Instead of GGM’s romantic and vulnerable Florentino Ariza (Javier Bardem), Bardem’s character lends it such pathetic and creepy air that we can verily well understand why Fermina Daza (Giovanna Mezzogiorno) spurned this lover in her youth and married the urbane Dr. Juvenal Urbino (Benjamin Bratt). In fact, we even wonder how Fermina could even entertain thoughts of Florentino who chose to remain in the same town where the couple lived, wearing a puppy-dog look, forever keeping tabs on Fermina’s whereabouts, and having dalliances with a myriad women like sex was going to expire from the shelves. And carrying on with a minor to whom he was related, albeit distantly? A heinous crime.

When Dr. Urbino suddenly dies and Bardem’s Florentino springs to life, we are filled with dread rather than anticipation. We actually silently cringe when Fermina Daza and Florentino Ariza sets on a cruise. When the flag is hoisted signalling that cholera has reached the ship, we mutter, “told you so”.

I am sure I do not like this version but am giving it a 4-star because it was able to imbue GGM’s work with a totally unexpected twist and it now gives me pause regarding people who have the stamina to wait 51 years, 9 months, and 4 days to be able to declare their love anew.

a million little pieces by james frey (2004)

“The Young Man came to the Old Man seeking counsel.
I broke something, Old Man.
How badly is it broken?
It’s in a million little pieces.
I’m afraid I can’t help you.
Why?
There’s nothing you can do.
Why?
It can’t be fixed.
Why?
It’s broken beyond repair.
It’s in a million little pieces.”

I am totally floored, the awesomeness of this book completely overwhelms me – sheer chutzpah, wanton recklessness and abandon, and staggering brilliance pour page after page after page. There are no chapters in this book but only doodles to allow readers to catch their breath; there are no paragraphs; there are long winded sentences going forever; there are passages reminding me of e.e. cummings; there are no quotation marks but only bold capitalized fonts stressing uncontrollable anger and frustration; and expletives are everywhere.

And then Oprah discovered James Frey; but this is getting ahead of the story.

“A Million Little Pieces” is a drug-and-alcohol laden narrative, written memoir-style, with the big part of the action happening in a rehabilitation centre in Minnesota. According to the administrators of this institution, it has the best success rate of any treatment centre in the world at 17%; and that the only thing that works in rehabilitation is the 12 steps of the Alcoholics Anonymous.

Frey does not believe this in the middle of his alcohol/drug haze and stubbornly refuses to cooperate in his rehabilitation program. The institution, however, seems to know what it is doing as Frey, albeit cussing and acting like the entire world is ganging up on him, slowly starts to reach out to his family, make new friends in the centre, proceeds to do his daily assigned tasks; and tentatively opens up himself to a waif who seems to be even far more wrecked than he is, if such is still possible.

I am startled with these bits of information: that alcoholism is a disease and is classified as such by most doctors and by organizations like the American Medical Association and the World Health Organization; that it is a disease that can be arrested, or placed into a state of remission but it is incurable; that with most diseases, the belief is that the cause is genetic; that the inability to control and the lack of it is a but a symptom of the disease; that removing as many triggers, which are environmental factors that may cause relapse, is an important part of maintaining a healthy recovery program; and that because of the progressive and chronic nature of the illness, when a state of remission is breached, the illness returns at the same level of strength it had when it remissed.

James Frey left the treatment centre in Minnesota in a shape far better than when he got in and with the commitment to prove that AA’s 12 steps is not the only road to rehabilitation. According to the book’s end-page, Frey has never remissed.

Now back to Oprah. It wasn’t long before she included “A Million Little Pieces” in her Book Club and had James Frey guest in her show. She presented him to her millions of adoring fans like a writer has no entitlement to be in the literary map unless his books bear her imprimatur. Then an investigation came out sometime in 2005 and 2006 which showed that parts of Frey’s alleged memoir were untrue. In 26 January 2006, Oprah had James Frey, together with his publisher Nan Talese, in her show again purportedly to be a part of a panel discussion on “Truth In America”. According to Talese, at the last minute, the topic was changed to “The James Frey Controversy”. I am absolutely aghast at how a host can call her guest straight to his face in front of the millions of viewers all over the world that he is a liar. Poor Frey. What must have he felt like trapped in Oprah’s coach underneath the unforgiving klieg lights? I am sure he would have rather been back at the dental chair having a root canal without anaesthesia.

I fail to understand what all this hoopla is about. So, James Frey wasn’t entirely truthful about his criminal record. So Lilly didn’t really commit suicide but only slashed her wrists. Do these details make “A Million Little Pieces become less of a fantastic book than it is? Absolutely not. I am in no small measure angered at all these self-righteousness being bandied about. Are these people demanding 100% uncontaminated unadulterated truth entirely truthful themselves 100% in their lives? Assuming for the sake of argument these people are, how pathetically gullible to believe that a memoir is an accurate record of what transpired. It is after all a memoir precisely because it involves recalling, personal thought processing, and interpretation. It is not a research paper, not a documentary, and not a statistic. Get a sample size of five from one million memoirs written across cultures and I am positive there are myriad supposed inaccuracies we can puncture these personal narratives with.

James Frey has come up this year with a new novel “Bright Shiny Morning” which has appeared in New York Times Bestseller List and is gaining acclaim. Last year, Frey signed a new three book seven figure contract with Harper Collins. A Million Little Pieces and Frey’s other book “My Friend Leonard” both became No. 1 New York Times Bestsellers.

Which just goes to show that you can’t keep a good man down. Not even if you’re publicly hammered by the most influential woman (so they say) in the planet today.

- - - -

AA’s 12 steps:
1.We admitted we were powerless over alcohol - that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them al.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

don't sweat the small stuff by richard carlson (1997)

Life is what’s happening while we’re busy making other plans.
- John Lennon

Ever had that feeling of creeping anxiety when you cannot quite put a finger at what is causing the inner tumult? Or when there are a hundred and one things pressing on your mind and you do not know where one thing begins and the other thing ends? Or when you find yourself in the middle of the day with five items on your checklist due yesterday?

I chanced upon this slim volume last weekend while waiting for my cousins at this bookstore-café. I was simply flabbergasted at how man-made complications of enormous proportions are rendered minute in this book. “Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff” posits the theory that it’s all really the small stuff which are wearying us, making us all feel like the mythological Sisyphus who had to roll the stone up a slope day after day after day.

Richard Carlson offers 100 steps by which we can avoid the traps of these little squirmy things which slowly gnaw on our insides stopping us from being the happy, serene, loving, compassionate creatures that we are meant to be. Here’s 20 of the 100 in Carlson’s list:

1. Make peace with imperfection.
2. Let go of the idea that gentle, relaxed people, can’t be superachievers.
3. Be aware of the snowball effect of your thinking.
4. Develop your compassion.
5. Remind yourself that when you die, your “in basket” won’t be empty.
6. Become more patient.
7. Allow yourself to be bored.
8. Repeat to yourself, “life isn’t an emergency”.
9. Become aware of your moods and don’t allow yourself to be fooled by the low ones.
10. Practice random acts of kindness.
11. Practice humility.
12. Avoid weatherproofing.
13. Argue for your limitations, and they’re yours.
14. Become a less aggressive driver.
15. Do one thing at a time.
16. Be happy where you are.
17. Remember you become what you practice most.
18. Think of your problems as potential teachers.
19. Become an early riser.
20. One more passing show (It’s enormously helpful to experiment with the awareness that life is just one thing after another. One present moment followed by another present moment. When something is happening that we enjoy, know that while it’s wonderful to experience the happiness it brings, it will eventually be replaced by something else, a different type of moment. If that’s okay with you, you’ll feel peace even when the moment changes. And if you’re experiencing some type of pain or displeasure, know that this too shall pass. Keeping this awareness close to your heart is a wonderful way to maintain your perspective, even in the face of adversity. It’s not always easy, but it is usually helpful.)

all i really need to know i learned in kindergarten by robert fulghum (1986)

We can do no great things; only small things
with great love.

- Mother Teresa

“All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten” is a compilation of short essays, strung in no particular order, going this way and that, partly fact, partly imagination; but with the end in view of putting an end to the whining, “it’s a crummy world”. To this Fulghum makes the retort, “what kind of talk is that?”

The book is written in an easy style, it’s almost like listening to an elderly neighbor’s story-telling of rodeo drives, comet-watching, balloon flying, zoo trips, mushroom experiences, bicycle rides for no reason at all, car mishaps, the Russians - and from where you come home feeling a lot cheerier.

Sure, we’ve got that acronym appendage to prove the Bachelor’s degree, heck we even got a string of other acronyms for those post-graduate degrees, but Fulghum posits that this world will be a much better one if we only keep in mind the things we learned way back in kindergarten:

Share everything.
Play fair.
Don’t hit people.
Put things back where you found them.
Clean up your own mess.
Don’t take things that aren’t yours.
Say sorry when you hurt somebody.
Wash your hands before you eat.
Flush.
Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
Live a balanced life – learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.
Take a nap every afternoon.
When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands, and stick together.
Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the styrofoam cup: The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.
Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the styrofoam cup - they all die. So do we.
And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned – the biggest word of all – Look!

And whoever said that, “despite the sham drudgery, and broken dreams, it still is a beautiful world” is a genius.