• This brutal trick for A-types will sift out mediocrity I came across a book by writer and business consultant Greg McKeown: Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less. I’m rather a fervent fan of the “less is more” approach. Actually, to be frank, I came across a read that mentions Greg’s book. In said read, one of McKeown’s ideas is fleshed out: that the busyness of the more
• Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo I think this says it all: I thought this confronting tale of life in a Mumbai slum in the early 2000s was fiction (such was the “unrealness” of it) until I got to the end and read the epilogue where the The New Yorker poverty correspondent Katherine Boo explains that every single detail is true. And that she spent more
• The importance of a moral struggle against yourself David Brooks is one of my preferred writers. I’m currently reading his new book, The Road To Character, which chronicles his attempt to cultivate a deeper character, mostly by looking into what he calls “eulogy virtues”, the stuff you want your loved ones to say about you when you cark it, as opposed to your CV virtues. Brooks has more
• Some advice for anyone who’s recently left a relationship English poet and philosopher David Whyte was once called on to give a friend some advice. This friend was in the middle of leaving a relationship. I’ve been there – in the position of counsel. Mostly it takes me straight back, like riding down a razor blade, to the times I’ve had to leave love myself. I don’t more
• New Year idea: reading (and a list of the books I’m into right now) “I have sought rest everywhere, and have found it nowhere, save in a little corner, with a little book.” – Thomas à Kempis I’ve recently arrived at the same discovery as above. For the past month or two I’ve been coming home on a Saturday afternoon around 3pm and sitting in my cool loungeroom and more