Gathering is peculiar, because you see nothing but what you’re looking for. If you’re picking raspberries, you see only what’s red, and if you’re looking for bones you see only the white. If only she were a little bigger, Grandmother thought. Preferably a good deal bigger, so I could tell her that I understand how …
I don't think I ever read the Moomins, when I was a child we already had the cartoon, and this is what shaped my relationship with the Moomin world. And a very rich world it was if after almost 30 years I still reference its inhabitants when describing some people. I had The Summer Book …
In Silicon Valley, where I live, the reigning assumption is that success is a race against time and obsolescence. If you're not rich by the time you're thirty, before your skills become obsolete and you become too decrepit to work hundred-hour weeks, you never will be. This is a model that works fabulously well for …
Continue reading Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less – Alex Soojung-Kim Pang – Quotes
My end-of-year reading was quite heavy on non-fiction. This is yet another example. The title of the book is a pretty good indication of what it is about. IT explores the connection between rest and work, rejecting the dichotomy and advocating instead a deep dependency between the two. The book's thesis is that deliberate rest …
Continue reading Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less – Alex Soojung-Kim Pang
Small interruptions, ordinary intrusions. Shocking only because they happened too early, or because we see the consequence; the way they change our behaviour. At the time these play out as so trivial, so common, we learn to forget them. Nothing really happened. Like Claire, like Delilah, we make change ourselves, to what we wear, to where …
Continue reading The Right Amount of Panic: How Women Trade Freedom for Safety – F. Vera-Gray
I suppose it’s conflicting messages, isn’t it? It’s take care of yourself but then if you imagine that someone is maybe a danger you’re being a silly woman. You have to do just the right amount of panicking, don’t you? I liked this book a lot, but it’s taken me forever to review it because …
Continue reading The Right Amount of Panic: How Women Trade Freedom for Safety – F. Vera-Gray
Yes, I know it is 21st January, but between summarizing 2018 and planning for 2019 and moving house I just didn't get round to this post in time. But then, why should it mean skipping it 😉 December was not bad reading-wise, I'm sure the holiday season helped with that. I managed to read seven …
Let's start, as always, with the English translation of the title: Sleepless during Carnival. This is the last book by Głowacki, unfortunately, he died while writing it, so the text was edited by his wife Olena Leonenko-Głowacka. Głowacki was an amazing raconteur, my favorite of his books were autobiographical, full of anecdotes either about communism …
Continue reading Bezsenność w Czasie Karnawału – Janusz Głowacki
I bought this book at the Tattered Cover bookstore, during my visit to Denver, which is very fitting as its author worked there for w while. While I was there, I tried to buy books by local authors and clearly, I succeeded. It is partially a book about a bookstore, which is what caught my eye, …
Continue reading Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore – Matthew Sullivan
New Year typically means new resolutions, as it did for me, but it also meant moving into a new apartment! After seven months of looking we finally found the perfect place and last weekend the Big Move took place. And a Big Move it was indeed, maybe not distance-wise, as we only moved a few …
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