the alchemist by paulo coelho (1988)

“It’s a book that says the same thing all other books in the world say,” continued the old man. “It describes people’s inability to choose their own Personal Legends. And it ends up saying that everyone believes the world’s greatest lie.”

“What’s the world’s greatest lie?” the boy asked, completely surprised.

“It’s this: that a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what’s happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate. That’s the world’s greatest lie.”

It is of no moment that Coelho’s been repeating himself in his later books, that his plots have worn thin, and his characters have turned predictable. For is it not sufficient that he has shown us how to discover our Personal Legends – that which we have always wanted to accomplish - and reminded us that when we want something, all the universe will conspire to help us achieve the same?

Coelho warns us that as time passes, a mysterious force will begin to convince us, however, that it will be impossible for us to realize our Personal Legend. It’s a force that appears to be negative, but actually will show us how to realize our Personal Legend. It prepares our spirit and will, because there in one great truth on this planet: Whoever we are, or whatever it is we do, when we really want something, it’s because that desire originated in the soul of the universe. It’s our mission on earth.

black dogs by ian mcewan (1992)

Bernard and June Tremain’s son-in-law, discovers that it was June’s incident with the black dogs which ultimately decided the couple’s separation five years through their marriage. But as he came to know more his wife’s parents, the question of whether the black dogs were in fact real would keep surfacing in the context of the political conflagration in Europe during second world war, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the divergent socio-political beliefs of the couple, and their debates on the impact of an individual’s actions on the general milieu, the concepts of good and evil, and the importance of religious faith.

This is June Tremain’s belief: Human nature, the human heart, the spirit, the soul, consciousness itself – call it what you like – in the end, it’s all what we’ve got to work with. It has to develop and expand, or the sum of our misery will never diminish. My own small discovery has been that this change is possible, it is within our power. Without a revolution of the inner life, however slow, all our big designs are worthless. The work we have to do is with ourselves if we’re ever going to be at peace with each other. I’m not saying it’ll happen. There’s a good chance that it won’t. I’m saying it’s our only chance. If it does, and it could take generations, the good that flows from it will shape our societies in an unprogrammed, unforeseen way, under the control of no single group of people of set of ideas…”

Bernard, her husband, however, brusquely brushes the view saying, “As for the inner life, try having one of those on an empty stomach. Or without clean water. Or when you’re sharing a room with seven others. Now, of course, when we all have second homes in France… You see, the way things are going on in this overcrowded planet, we do need a set of ideas, and bloody good ones too!”.

Were the black dogs real or were they representations of something else?

foreign affairs by alison lurie (1984)

As I walked by myself
And talked to myself,
Myself said unto me,
Look to thyself,
Take care of thyself,
For nobody cares for thee.
- Old Song


Virginia Miner, American, 54 years old, plain, divorced Ivy League college professor, and an expert in the field of children’s literature, is in London with 27 year-old Fred Turner, who is tall, dark, endowed with movie-star looks, and an associate professor in the same university. Miner is on a six-month grant and will be continuing her studies on folk rhymes of schoolchildren; Turner, on the other hand, will be writing a book on the 18th century author John Gay. Miner is a devout anglophile while Turner’s dislike of London is growing keener by the day. The two will have separate experiences which they least expect and which will prove once again the democratic character of love – it knows no age, status, nationality, nor how one measures up in the Richter scale of looks or in today’s parlance, “hotness”.

A character who manages to steal the thunder from the lead players in the book is the dog Fido, who is visible only to the imagination of Miner. She visualizes him as a “medium sized dirty-white long-haired mutt, mainly Welsh terrier: sometimes trailing her silently, at other times whining and panting and nipping her heels; when bolder, dashing round in circles trying to trip her up, or at least get her to stoop down so that me may rush at her, knock her to the ground and cover her with sloppy kisses.”

In one of those days when Miner was feeling under the weather, Fido, thumps his feathery tail on the comforter but she shoves him away. “Though she has a perfect right to be sorry for herself now, she knows how perilous it is to overindulge it. To go on feeding and petting Fido, even to acknowledge his existence too often, will fatally encourage him. He will begin to grow larger, swelling from the breadth and height of a beagle to that of a retriever – a sheepdog – a Saint Bernard. If she doesn’t watch out, one day, she will be followed everywhere by an invisible dirty white dog the size of a cow.”

One of the best metaphors I have come across.

amadeus (1984)

I never admire another's fortune so much that I became dissatisfied with my own.
- Marcus Tulius Cicero (106-43 BC)


Amadeus is a film adaptation of the stage play written in 1979 by Peter Shaffer, loosely based on the lives of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Tom Hulce) and Antonio Salieri (F. Murray Abraham), both composers in 18th century Vienna. Amadeus was inspired by Mozart and Salieri, a short play by Aleksandr Pushkin and later adapted into an opera of the same name by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakovplay of the same title.

The film is told from the point of view of Salieri, who was content as the court composer for Austrian Emperor Joseph II (Jeffrey Jones), until the arrival of Mozart, a protegé of Count Hieronymus von Colloredo, the Bishop of Salzburg (Nicholas Kepros).

Salieri would thereafter descend into a tunnel of pure hate and envy, his joy of music completely soured and which he sees has been rendered ridiculous in the light of Mozart’s magical talent. It does not help that he views Mozart as an undeserving vessel of such music genius – he would be caught in bawdy behaviour, drunken sprees, heavy debts, and inelegant manners not befitting the Viennese court. Salieri thus plots Mozart’s destruction. In the end, he manages to convince himself that it was he who caused Mozart’s early death (he died at 35).

The film is an absolutely beautiful piece from start to finish with the heady mix of European intriguing, Mozart’s resonant music reverberating throughout, and the fabulous sets for the operas. Salieri shines completely in this film and we alternate from feeling abhorrence, shame, and even a vague sense of commiseration, for who amongst has not experienced the darts of envy at seeing somebody, who we believe unworthy, skyrocket to a place we have so much desired for ourselves.

The film was nominated for 53 awards and received 40, including 8 Academy Awards (including Best Picture), 4 BAFTA Awards, 4 Golden Globes, and a DGA Award.

the undomestic goddess by sophie kinsella (2005)

I think housework is the reason most women go to the office.
- Heloise Cruse


This is how a modern fairytale sounds:

Once upon a time, in a far away kingdom called London, there lived a 29-year old lawyer who specialized in banking law, had a photographic memory, wore only black suits, worked 24x7, is not capable beyond making coffee and restructuring GBP30 million finance agreements, and whose sole heart’s desire was to become a partner in Carter Spink, one of London’s biggest law firms. Her name was Samantha Sweeting.

Because there are evil forces at work, just when she was about to be handed her prize, she was kicked out of Carter Spink and was banished to a godforsaken suburb to become a (gasp) housekeeper.

Since there is a princess, so there must be a prince and in this case, he was a gardener, but certainly not an ordinary one since he went to a university and did natural sciences. It was this prince who provided Samantha with a fairygodmother, who was actually the prince’s own mother. This fairygodmother briefed Samantha with the rudimentary techniques in cooking, cleaning, washing, and ironing and as a result thereof, Samantha’s employers were more than happy with their lawyer (of course they didn’t know she was one).

Alas, the path of true love never runs smooth and Samantha was vindicated and called back to Carter Spink where she was offered full equity partnership. There was also the matter of the Harvard-educated corporate partner in Carter Spink who might possibly be the true prince charming.

Samantha now has to resolve the issue between the law or cleaning loos – should she accept Carter Spink’s offer or go back to her 2-month life as an (un)domestic goddess? Is the high-powered like-minded attorney in Carter Spink only a toad or will he turn into a prince after true love's kiss? Was the 2-month sojourn with the gardener the real thing or only a holiday fling?

And here is I believe the seven hundred billion dollar question behind the modern fairytale: in taking either option, does “happily ever after” really follow?

the prophet by kahlil gibran (1951)

I don’t think I will ever get tired reading this book. Here’s a good site where you can check out what’s been told the People of Orphalese.



Then a lawyer said, "But what of our Laws, master?"

And he answered:

You delight in laying down laws,

Yet you delight more in breaking them.

Like children playing by the ocean who build sand-towers with constancy and then destroy them with laughter.

But while you build your sand-towers the ocean brings more sand to the shore,

And when you destroy them, the ocean laughs with you.

Verily the ocean laughs always with the innocent.

But what of those to whom life is not an ocean, and man-made laws are not sand-towers,

But to whom life is a rock, and the law a chisel with which they would carve it in their own likeness?

What of the cripple who hates dancers?

What of the ox who loves his yoke and deems the elk and deer of the forest stray and vagrant things?

What of the old serpent who cannot shed his skin, and calls all others naked and shameless?

And of him who comes early to the wedding-feast, and when over-fed and tired goes his way saying that all feasts are violation and all feasters law-breakers?

What shall I say of these save that they too stand in the sunlight, but with their backs to the sun?

They see only their shadows, and their shadows are their laws.

And what is the sun to them but a caster of shadows?

And what is it to acknowledge the laws but to stoop down and trace their shadows upon the earth?

But you who walk facing the sun, what images drawn on the earth can hold you?

You who travel with the wind, what weathervane shall direct your course?

What man's law shall bind you if you break your yoke but upon no man's prison door?

What laws shall you fear if you dance but stumble against no man's iron chains?

And who is he that shall bring you to judgment if you tear off your garment yet leave it in no man's path?

People of Orphalese, you can muffle the drum, and you can loosen the strings of the lyre, but who shall command the skylark not to sing?

dress your family in corduroy and denim by david sedaris (2004)

Like all the best families, we have our share of eccentricities, of impetuous and wayward youngsters and of family disagreements.
- Elizabeth II

This is a collection of 22 essays in which Sedaris digs into his family treasure chest of memories detailing in sharp colours the eccentricities of his family members. There is Lisa, who was made out to become the most successful of the children but who had taken a detour with her paranoia and paralyzing fears; there is Tiffany who has brought vintage several degrees beyond, fashioning herself literally as a garbage woman; there is Paul, who has zoomed financially ahead of everyone in the family, peppering his sentences with cuss words along the way; there’s the Parents, who mildly remind us of certain people we have met in our lifetimes; and of course there’s David himself with the foibles of his adolescence which was made more interestingly so with his early awareness of his homosexuality. Also figuring out in this collection is Hughes, David’s partner, and their squabbles which are not different from the everyday vexations of heterosexual couples.

Sedaris is adept at creating a balance between humor and wit on the one hand and family nostalgia and making pinpricks on the other hand. The reader ends up in stitches essay after essay in this collection and realizes that ultimately, no matter how quirky our family members may be, and no matter how they may sorely try our patience at times, we will love them unstintingly and in perpetuity.

The collection includes the following essays:
1. "Us and Them" - childhood memories of a family "who don't believe in TV"
2. "Let It Snow" - the day when Sedaris's mother locked her children out in the snow
3. "The Ship Shape" - childhood memories of the second home that his father never bought
4. "Full House" - a childhood game of strip poker gives the young Sedaris a touching moment
5. "Consider the Stars" - reflecting on the cool kid at school
6. "Monie Changes Everything" - Sedaris's rich aunt
7. "The Change in Me" - the 13-year-old Sedaris wants to act like a hippie
8. "Hejira" - Sedaris's father kicks him out of his house due to his homosexuality
9. "Slumus Lordicus" - Sedaris's father's experiences as a landlord
10. "The Girl Next Door" - Sedaris's relationship with a girl from a troubled family
11."Blood Work" - a case of mistaken identity while cleaning houses
12. "The End of the Affair" - Sedaris and Hugh's different reactions to a love story
13. "Repeat After Me" - Sedaris's visit to his sister Lisa, and his family's feelings about being the subject of his essays
14. "Six to Eight Black Men" - thoughts about the traditional Dutch Christmas story, among other cultural oddities
15. "Rooster at the Hitchin' Post" - Sedaris's younger brother is born and gets married
16. "Possession" - searching for a new apartment, and Anne Frank's house
17. "Put a Lid on It" - a visit to Sedaris's sister Tiffany's home, and their relationship
18. "A Can of Worms" - Sedaris's mind wanders as he, Hugh and a friend eat at a diner
19. "Chicken in the Henhouse" - prejudiced attitudes towards homosexuals in America
20. "Who's the Chef?" - bickering between two people in a long-term relationship
21. "Baby Einstein" - the arrival of his brother's first baby
22. "Nuit of the Living Dead" - a late night encounter at home in rural France

being happy! by andrew matthews (1988)

The mind is its own place, and in itself, can make heaven of Hell, and a hell of Heaven.
- John Milton


One of my uncles pressed me to read this book when I was about 12 years old saying that he had found it quite enlightening and helpful in his life. I dutifully perused the volume but did not find any earth-shaking revelations and found it rather disappointingly mundane. My uncle afterwards asked me how I found the book and I said, “uh, it was ok”. I am wondering now why my uncle even sought my opinion in the first place. Maybe because at that time, he still had no kids, could not recall his own childhood, or maybe have forgotten that at 12-years, one is invincible and has yet to discover the opposite pole of succeeding and is still on the world-is-mine-for-the-taking frame of mind. Worry is an alien verb at 12.

At some point, 12-year olds do discover mortality – they find out that people get sick, they die; that people enter and leave our lives; that our parents, we strongly suspect, may not be infallible but we do not want to be responsible for telling them so (or maybe we want them to remain infallible, up there with the resident in the Vatican), that the economy enters into a recession and we suddenly start worrying about the mortgage; that people figure in road mishaps no matter what precautions they take; that politics may get into the best of intentions; that sometimes fitness and merit is not all there is to nail that promotion; that people intentionally renege on their commitments; and that plans turn out to be – well, plans.

Before we decide to be not happy (according to Abraham Lincoln, a man who had more than enough reason to be unhappy but went on to become of the greatest Presidents of the United States, “most people are about as happy as they make up their mind to be”), Matthews prods to ask ourselves these questions:
1. Do you have enough air to breathe, do you have enough food for today?
2. Can you still see? Walk? Hear?
3. What is the worst thing that could happen, and if it did, would you still be alive today?
4. Are you taking yourself too seriously?
5. What are you learning from this situation?
6. If things really seem serious, will you be ok for the next five minutes?
7. What else can you do?

Matthews tells this little story to emphasize a point. “Fred might, on just having lost his job, decide that he now has the opportunity to have a new work experience, to explore new possibilities, and to exercise his independence in the workplace. His brother Bill might, under the same circumstances, decide to jump off a 20-storey building and end it all. Given the same situation, one man rejoices while the other man commits suicide! One man sees disaster and the other man sees opportunity.”

Mathhews, however, shares that “probably the greatest way to feel better about yourself is to do something for someone else. Excessive worry and self-pity grow out of self-occupation. The moment you start making other people happy, whether you are sending them flowers or digging their garden or giving them your time, you feel better. It is automatic. It is simple.”