Books: 这几个月草草读的书

Blink : The Power of Thinking Without Thinking
by Malcolm Gladwell

My favorite read this far. Refreshing and entirely unconventional yet convincing backed with scientific research and enticing with fascinating anecdotes that were too far removed from one’s menial life.
Keywords: fast and frugal, thin slicing, speed dating

My Antonia
By Willa Cather

It is not so much about first generation immigrants’ hard life as they shed blood and sweat for their American dream, although this is what the novel is branded since the first day of its publication. I grew a strong liking and attachment to Antonia, her tough, unyielding spirits in the cold and harsh Nebraska winter and her amiable, contagious personality that were so at odds yet struck a balance with the people in Black Hawk.

Although Jim had profusely loved Antonia when they were in their early teens, this is not a love story by no means. Yet to Jim, Antonia was a permanent mark to his life, as well captured by the narrator’s confession to Antonia 22 years later:

"Do you know, Antonia, since I've been away, I think of you more often than of anyone else in this part of the world. I'd have liked to have you for a sweetheart, or a wife, or my mother or my sister--anything that a woman can be to a man. The idea of you is a part of my mind; you influence my likes and dislikes, all my tastes, hundreds of times when I don't realize it. You really are a part of me."

Pride and Prejudice
By Jane Austen

I remember the time when I first picked it up and couldn’t get pass the first 50 pages. Austen to the 17-year-old me, was too tedious, too involved in her own wits to develop an engaging story. Such feeling gradually disappeared as I finally plunged through the unknown and finished reading Pride and Prejudice in several sittings. Elizabeth Bennet has finally become lively to me. Maybe it’s because I had over the years, fallen head over heels with Collin Firth as he manifested in various other media, as Mr. Mark Darcy in Bridget Jones’s Diary (both the first book and the first movie), and Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy in BBC’s classic Pride and Prejudice. I was amazed to see how closely Helen Fielding wrote the first Bridget Jones’s Diary novel in an astonishingly similar plotline. Mr. Darcy was this high-born, formidable and proud lawyer in the opening chapters. Daniel Cleaver, in the character of George Wickham attacking Darcy with false accusations, initially gained Bridget’s affection, and broke her heart as his true self revealed. Darcy, in both books, comes out as the hero of the day by saving the Bennet’s family grace or seeing through Bridget’s klutzy mom got back to her Dad safe and sound.

I found reading Austen greatly refreshes all the English grammar I had learned in school. I would from now on recommend anyone to read and re-read, and dictate (if at times necessary) passages of Austen’s books because she has an amazing ability to make trivial domestic incidents sound refreshingly diversified.

The secret life of bees
By Sue Monk Kidd

Love the bits and pieces about bees, honey and local cuisines

Eats, shoots and leaves
by Lynn Truss

I had dreaded this one for months simply because I thought it’s going to be the “Little Brown Handbook” variety on the proper use of punctuations. How wrong I was! Delightful and refreshing, and I can say I learned quite a bit about semicolons without even trying.

Good to Great
By Jim Collins

One relatively tolerable business book I’ve read in a long while. While the big ideas are impressive, I was mostly interested in the research method Mr. Collins and his colleagues conducted.

Into the Woods
By Bill Bryson

I was gripped for the first part, when Bryson and Stephen Katz hiked the Appalachian Trail together for three months in an attempt to hike the entire 2100 miles from Georgia to Maine. It was both hilarious and heart-wrenching at times because of the personality clashes. However when Bryson got off the AT trail and started exploring the backcountry on his own in later chapters, I was disappointed. The rest of the text reads like a segment on natural history in the East U.S. in the past 50 years, while illusionary and highly relevant, it was not fun any more.

Shopaholic ties the knot


Can you keep a secret
Both by Sophia Kinsela

Too domestic… at times too petty, the male characters sound like they were cut out of the wood. But if I were stuck at a train station or airport, I would undoubtedly give them more merits as they go down quickly and easily

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Read a couple of books on Six Sigma and personal enrichment in the business world, but they don't stick at all. My mind works like a filter, and these bits are unfortunately drained out, probably a reflection of my indifference to things that might be important to my career growth.

Book I just cannot finish no matter what…

Jack, straight from the gut
by Jack Welch
How I simply cannot finish this one, and it's so freakin' long... I know Welch is a brilliant business giant that no one shall surpass in the next 100 years, but did he really have to account for EVERY business decisions he’s ever made?

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