Tango Alpha Mama: Bookworm Tidbits

Bookworm Tidbits

Reading List

Sunday, January 10, 2016

So many books to read, so little time! My reading list just keeps getting longer.

Faith:

The Jesuit Guide to Almost Everything by James Martin S.J.
The Best Yes by Lysa Terkeurst
A Confident Heart by Renee Swope
Lead Me, Holy Spirit by Stormie Omartian
Choose Love by Stormie Omartian
Fearless by Max Lucado

People:

Everybody Matters by Bob Chapman and Raj Sisodia
Silo Effect by Gillian Tett
Weology by Peter Aceto
Why We Work by Barry Schwartz
Leadership BS by Jeffrey Pfeffer
Contagious Culture by Anese Cavanaugh

Life:

The Road to Character by David Brooks
Life is Good by Bert & John Jacobs
Beyond Happy by Beth Carrerra
Disrupt Yourself by Whitney Johnson
Life and Other Near-Death Experiences by Camille Pagan

Women:

The Best Advice I Ever Got by Katie Couric
The Woman at the Washington Zoo by Marjorie Williams
Thrive by Arianna Huffington
My Life on the Road by Gloria Steinem
Unfinished Business by Anne-Marie Slaughter
Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert
The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir
A Very Easy Death by Simone de Beauvoir
Rising Strong by Brene Brown

Parenting:

Hands Free Mama by Rachel Macy Stafford
The Whole Brain Child by Daniel Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson
Food Love Family by Maya Adam

From Mark Zuckerberg:

Portfolios of the Poor by Collins, Morduch, Rutherford and Ruthven
The Varieties of Religious Experience by Dr. William James
World Order by Henry Kissinger
The End of Power by Moises Naim
Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari
Energy by Vaclav Smil
A Beautiful Question by Frank Wilczek
Gang Leader for a Day by Sudhir Venkatesh
Rational Ritual by Michael Suk-Young Chwe
The Structures of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn
Creativity by Ed Catmull
The Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley
Why Nations Fail by Acemoglu and Robinson
On Immunity by Eula Biss
Orwell's Revenge by Peter Huber
The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch

Fiction:

Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien
Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister by Gregory McGuire
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

Others:

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal by Ayn Rand
We The Living by Ayn Rand

Bookworm Tidbits

Tiny Beautiful Things

Tuesday, July 28, 2015

There are some books which stay with you because your entire perspective, your whole heart and your vast mind are altered forever.

Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life by Dear Sugar by Cheryl Strayed is one of those books for me.

Life can be hard: your lover cheats on you; you lose a family member; you can't pay the bills - and it can be great: you've had the hottest sex of your life; you get that plum job; you muster the courage to write your novel. Sugar - the once anonymous online columnist at The Rumpus, now revealed as Cheryl Strayed, author of the bestselling memoir Wild - is the person thousands turn to for advice.

Tiny Beautiful Things brings the best of Dear Sugar in one place and includes never-before published columns and a new introduction by Steven Almond. Rich with humour, insight and compassion - and absolute honesty - this book is a balm for everything life throws our way.

I could not have encountered this masterpiece at a better time. I shed buckets of tears and learned more about life because of Cheryl's words. I let go of despair and welcomed her words brimming with love and empathy.

These are my favourite passages from the book.

On being yourself:

"Trust yourself. It's Sugar's golden rule. Trusting yourself means living out what you already know to be true."

"Do you know what that is, sweet pea? To be humble? The word comes from the Latin words humilis and humus. To be down low. To be of the earth. To be on the ground. "

"If you had a two-sided chalkboard in your living room I'd write humility on one side and surrender on the other for you."

On love:

"The best thing you can possibly do with your life is to tackle the motherfucking shit out of love."

"We are obligated to the people we care about and who we allow to care about us, whether we say we love them or not. Our main obligation is to be forthright - to elucidate the nature of our affection when such elucidation would be meaningful or clarifying."

"The story of human intimacy is one of constantly allowing ourselves to see those we love most deeply in a new, more fractured light. Look hard. Risk that."

"But compassion isn't about solutions. It's about giving all the love you've got."

On work and self-worth:

"What is a prestigious college? What did attending such a school allow you to believe about yourself? What assumptions do you have about the colleges that you would not describe as prestigious? What sorts of people go to prestigious colleges and not prestigious colleges? Do you believe that you had a right to a free "first-rate" education? What do you make of the people who received educations that you would not characterise as first-rate?"

"The only way you'll find out if you "have it in you" is to get to work and see if you do. The only way to override your "limitations, insecurities, jealousies, and ineptitude" is to produce. You have limitations. You are in some ways inept. This is true of every writer, and it's especially true of writers who are twenty-six. You will feel insecure and jealous. How much power you give those feelings is entirely up to you."

"You don't have to get a job that makes others feel comfortable about what they perceive as your success. You don't have to explain what you plan to do with your life. You don't have to justify your education by demonstrating its financial rewards. You don't have to maintain an impeccable credit score. Anyone who expects you to do any of those things has no sense of history or economics or science or the arts. You have to pay your own electric bill. You have to be kind. You have it give it all you got. You have to find people who love you truly and love them back with the same truth. But that's all."

"Don't lament so much about how your career is going to turn out. You don't have a career. You have a life. Do the work. Keep the faith. Be true blue."

On moving forward:

"The unifying theme is resilience and faith. The unifying theme is being a warrior and a motherfucker. It is not fragility. It's strength. It's nerve. And "if your Nerve deny you -," as Emily Dickinson wrote, "go above your Nerve."

"When it comes to our children, we do not have the luxury of despair. If we rise, they will rise with us every time, no matter how many times we've fallen before. I hope you will remember that the next time you fail. I hope I will too. Remembering that is the most important work as parents we can possibly do."

On life:

"Your assumptions about the lives of others are in direct relation to your naive pomposity."

"The most terrible and beautiful and interesting things happen in a life. For some of you, those things have already happened. Whatever happens belongs to you. Make it yours. Feed it to yourself even if it feels impossible to swallow. Let it nurture you, because it will."

"You get no points for living, I tell my students. It isn't enough to have had an interesting or hilarious or tragic life. Art isn't anecdote. It's the consciousness we bring to bear on our lives. For what happened in the story to transcend the limits of the personal, it must be driven by the engine of that the story means. This is also true in life. Or at least it's true when one wishes to live an ever-evolving life, such as you and I do, sweet pea. What this requires of us is that we don't get tangled up in the living, even when we in fact feel woefully tangled up. It demands that we focus not only on what's happening in our stories, but also what our stories are about."

Thank you, Sugar. Thank you, Cheryl.

Bookworm Tidbits

Choices

Friday, April 03, 2015

"What would you give for your art, David?"

"I'd give my life."

"When the sun comes up, you'll get your wish. After that, if you like what I've given you, you'll have 200 days to use it - before you die."

On a sunny Sunday morning, my husband and I came across Scott McCloud's The Sculptor on the bestsellers' shelf at our favourite bookstore. Neil Gaiman is quoted on the cover, saying it is "the best graphic novel I've read in years." No dispute there.

The plot seems simple enough - hopeless boy is visited by long-dead uncle who grants his wish of having the power to become an unprecedented artist on the condition that after 200 days he dies. Boy struggles with his art, meets girl through unconventional circumstances, falls in love, and realizes what matters most in this life. It is the beauty of the artwork and the wit in the dialogue that makes this seemingly simple story such a riveting and heartwarming read. I finished it in one afternoon but interpreted the lines and scenes so many ways over a period of so many days.

"Tell me a secret. Something you've never told anyone. Tell me softly even that moth can't hear. After you're gone, I'll carry it inside of me. I'll think of it every day. But when I'm gone, the secret goes with me. Together, we'll let it die, just you and me. Not 'cause we're helpless in the face of time, but because we're giving ourselves to time with all our hearts."

We spend most of our time chasing the things we think matter - money, fame, career, recognition, legacy. We tend to forget how limited our time on this Earth is. We struggle with our choices. We tell ourselves tomorrow will be better, that we can catch up with life someday. Then, we wake up and realize that that someday was yesterday and that today is almost over. We get to the point of no return and scramble to make up for lost time. And just like that, they're gone. We're gone. Time is up.

We must choose. When we do not choose, we still choose.

I ask myself this question when choosing becomes difficult - if Death is at my doorstep ready to collect my soul, can I tell myself that I am ready to go? Have I made choices that leave me with a sense of contentment and peace, or am I filled with regret and remorse?

Bookworm Tidbits

On Parenting

Saturday, January 31, 2015

I never planned on becoming a parent. In fact, I once believed that I could never settle down given my Type-A personality and lofty ambitions. I thought that I could set off and rule the world with a high-profile career and rockstar lifestyle.

When I first suspected that I was pregnant, I thought the confirmation of such would shatter my world (pardon the melodramatics). Instead, I felt shock, awe and elation. I felt blessed and powerful beyond belief. I suddenly realised the miracle of being able to carry life. Even with my second pregnancy, though the timing greatly concerned me, I knew I would not trade it for a better career or different lifestyle.

However, I did not and still do not know the first thing about parenting! When my first child came into the world, I realised just how clueless I was on raising and educating a child. Heck, changing his diaper and recording descriptions of his poop were like procedures in a science experiment. Sure, they tell you that all children need is love, but they don't give you a manual on how to go about loving them. Nobody really tells a new mother right away how to deal with a frail infant, irate toddler, rebellious teenager and distant adult.

It was sheer luck that I came across these wonderful books about an American woman's parenting journey as she raises her children in France and the lessons she learned along the way. She challenges the conventional thinking around parenting - how you lose sleep during the first years, how parents hover over their children, how marriages fall apart with a child in the equation, etc. etc. - and presents the French's no-nonsense approach as an alternative.

First and foremost, I love these books because I love my sleep and my sanity and they tell me exactly how to keep those intact. Second, I admire the simplicity and practicality of her tips. Lastly, I like the art and science of French parenting; I am truly a fan and convert.

These are my top 5 favourite lessons from the books:

Pregnancy is not an independent research project. Eat for one (and a bit). Don't panic about sushi. Don't borrow your husband's shirts.
Baby formula isn't poison. Observe your baby. Don't stimulate him/her all the time.
Understand the science of sleep for babies. Do the "pause" because sleeping well is better for the baby (and the entire family).
Give kids lots of chances to practice waiting. Treat kids as if they can control themselves. Don't let your child interrupt you.
Don't rush the developmental stages. Back off at the playground. It's not just about outcomes.

I am in no way advertising these books, but I am encouraging fellow parents to read them and explore another perspective on parenting. I did, and I have enjoyed my role as a mother so far (though the challenge is still on!).

Bookworm Tidbits

Courage

Monday, January 05, 2015

"But there's another way, and I'll leave you with this. This is what I have found: to let ourselves be seen, deeply seen, vulnerably seen; to love with our whole hearts, even though there's no guarantee -- and that's really hard, and I can tell you as a parent, that's excruciatingly difficult -- to practice gratitude and joy in those moments of terror, when we're wondering, "Can I love you this much? Can I believe in this this passionately? Can I be this fierce about this?" just to be able to stop and, instead of catastrophizing what might happen, to say, "I'm just so grateful, because to feel this vulnerable means I'm alive." And the last, which I think is probably the most important, is to believe that we're enough. Because when we work from a place, I believe, that says, "I'm enough," then we stop screaming and start listening, we're kinder and gentler to the people around us, and we're kinder and gentler to ourselves.

Courage, the original definition of courage, when it first came into the English language -- it's from the Latin word cor, meaning heart -- and the original definition was to tell the story of who you are with your whole heart. And so these folks had, very simply, the courage to be imperfect. They had the compassion to be kind to themselves first and then to others, because, as it turns out, we can't practice compassion with other people if we can't treat ourselves kindly. And the last was they had connection, and -- this was the hard part -- as a result of authenticity, they were willing to let go of who they thought they should be in order to be who they were, which you have to absolutely do that for connection."

- Brene Brown

This is my personal struggle and goal. To be courageous enough to tell my story, to be imperfect, to be kind and to be authentic in order to forge necessary human connections in the pursuit of real happiness. To accept vulnerability instead of trying to numb it. To really be me, and not an aloof girl feigning strength and invincibility. To accept that I am enough. To forgive and reach out in the face of rejection, to be human enough to practice real compassion and empathy, and to be big enough to be light in the world. To embrace vulnerability and be truly human.

Reading List

Tiny Beautiful Things

Choices

On Parenting

Courage

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