Reading Finds

“Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps that explain everything about the World”.A book by Tim MarshallScribner, 2015. Maps have always intrigued me. From the ones we used as boy scouts to make our way around obstacle courses to maps used when driving cross-country in the U.S. and Canada, and in planning family trips to other countries.

READING FINDS

The Cat who saved books A novel by Sosuke Natsukawa Translated from the Japanese by Louise Heal Kawai 198 pages HarperVia, HarperCollins Publishers, 2017 My daughter, the literature major and komiket lover, often chides me about my “fixed” reading habits.  “Why don’t you try reading more fiction,” she would say, “to balance the non-fiction and

READING FINDS

“Far From my Hospital Bed: Reflections on the Pandemic and Society”By Teresita del RosarioPenguin Books, Penguin Random House, 2022. Reading Tess del Rosario’s COVID story is like reading a meandering memoire. I don’t mean “meandering” to be a pejorative term. I use that word to mean a wide-ranging walk through many thoughts in the author’s

READING FINDS

The Future is Asian (Global Order in the Twenty-First Century By Parag Khanna Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 2019 I read the book, The Future is Asian, by Parag Khanna and it is a master class in Asian history, geopolitics, social anthropology, technology trends, politics and political dynamics, and more. All skillfully told in a 422-page book

READING FINDS

EDUCATED: A Memoir Tara Westover                                                                                                                    Random House, New York, 2018 The simple outline of this story is that of a woman rising above the constraints posed by a childhood of no education or schooling who through her effort and sheer will, gets an education and more at some of the world’s greatest universities. But that

READING FINDS

Atul Gawande, “Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End”.  Picador, Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt and Company, New York, 2014. “Modern scientific capability has profoundly altered the course of human life. People live longer and better than at any other time in history. But scientific advances have turned the processes of aging and dying

Reading Finds

Homer-Dixon, Thomas.  The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity, and the Renewal of Civilization.  Toronto: Vintage Canada, 2006 If there is one bright side to the current quarantine/lockdown period of this pandemic, it is that working from home frees up a lot of commute time.  All of a sudden, we aren’t so rushed to be anywhere

READING FINDS

Proust and the Squid:  The Story and Science of the Reading Mind By Maryanne Wolf Icon Books Ltd., 2008 Previously published by HarperCollins, 2007 You can’t tell a book by its cover, the saying goes.  But a cover with an intriguing title will draw attention to it.  And for me, any title with Proust’s name