Category: Book Reviews

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Book Reviews Fiction

Day of the Dragon By Richard A. Knaak

Richard Knaak is one of the few resident Warcraft series writers.  His storytelling style is visibly different from others, more so towards the traditional fantasy genre.  Written in 2001, Day of the Dragon is considered as the first book of the Warcraft series.  It is also the first book of the Warcraft: Archive four-book series.  Warcraft is a fantasy universe I am fond of, dearly.  Hence, I read Day of the Dragon with a high anticipation over my holiday in Bandung, devouring every bit of the lore within.

For those who are familiar with the recent lore development, reading Day of the Dragon is real treat.  Never have we been so close to some of the key figures in recent days.  Imagine reading Deathwing in human form, the Old Horde corrupted by demonic power, and the general mistrust of the use of magic – just to name a few.

Back to the era whereby the day of the dragon has passed, dragonqueen Alexstrasza – one of the five great Aspects of the dragon flights – is captured by the orcs from the Dragonmaw clan and is imprisoned within the caves of Khaz Modan.  Deeply weakened by an artifact called Demon Soul, she resigns to her fate of birthing red dragons only to be trained by the orcs to do evil deeds.

Her consort, Korialstrasz also known as Krasus in his human form, must find a way to free his beloved queen.  And it is no easy task.  Uniting the rest of the weakened dragon Aspects seems impossible.  Malygos has gone mad; Nozdormu is obsessed with collecting artifacts throughout the timeline; and Ysera is lost in her dream world.  Only Deathwing the Destroyer – the black dragon flight Aspect – is not weakened by the Demon Soul.  And he is plotting his sinister moves in bringing the world to an end (you could say again, but this event happens before Cataclysm).

Hope is now placed upon a human mage Rhonin from Kirin Tor of Dalaran.  Krasus sends Rhonin on an observatory mission to Khaz Modan escorted by an elvan ranger Vereesa Windrunner.  During their journey, they have recruited the help of the human paladins as well as the dwarves and their quest has changed.  But is it enough to face the adversities of the orcs, trolls, and goblins?  With the Horde losing ground and the Alliance gathering its forces under a mysterious character called Lord Prestor, how would this ultimate battle play out?

Day of the Dragon answers a lot of questions I used to have.  Locations and characters such as island kingdom of Tol Barad, Gemm Greymane, and Gilneas are not featured in World of Warcraft until 2011.  It appears to me that Day of the Dragon was well ahead of time.  Lore development these days are tightly coupled with the game development.  Deep inside, I am wishing that Blizzard would release new lore that will not be seen in the game till, say, a decade later.  This will give the fans something to look forward to, something beyond what we have anticipated today.

Categories
Book Reviews Fiction

I’ve Got Your Number By Sophie Kinsella – You Know What To Expect, Don’t You?

Chick-lit can be extremely entertaining, even for guys.  None of my guy friends seems to believe me though.  Oh, whatever.  When I saw Kinsella’s new book selling at the airport during my Malaysia business trip, I almost impulsively grabbed a copy.  Almost.  I resisted and reserved a copy at my library online instead.  My patience has been handsomely rewarded and I’ve Got Your Number arrived right before my trip to Bandung, Indonesia.  Hooray!

Note: As you can see, this entry has been written quite some time ago.

At times I wonder: how many different plots one can spin out of women crisis, wedding and engagement, issues with guys and guys’ family, and falling in and out of love.  Surprisingly, the Sophie Kinsella formula still sells.

Poppy, a physiotherapist, loses her engagement ring at a charity party.  To make things worse, she loses her phone too.  How can one live without a phone these days?  Out of nowhere, she has found a phone in a bin, still in working condition.  She then shares this new number with the hotel staff, in case someone finds her ring.  Just when Poppy thinks that she can now focus on recovering her ring, the phone rings.  The phone belongs to the PA of a businessman called Sam and he wants it back.

Poppy does not want to return the phone, yet.  And she makes a bargain to forward any corporate emails and messages to Sam as soon as they arrive.  On several counts, Poppy has proven to be quite a helpful assistant and Sam tolerates this temporary arrangement until Poppy’s ring is found.  Needless to say, this situation turns out to be quite a mess with Poppy’s personal messages mixed with Sam’s corporate messages and the correspondence between the two.  How far can one resist not reading into other people’s messages?  (Not far)  How much can one know about a person by reading others responses about him or her?  (Not much in fact)

I’ve Got Your Number is a fun and light read.  There is a contrast between Poppy’s warm and helpful character to Sam’s curt and business-like character.  Sophie Kinsella’s secret recipe, I believe, is her ability to create an intelligent plot and characters and yet bring it down to a level whereby everyone can relate and laugh about.  This book is slightly different from her previous standalone books in a way that it is full of emails and messages going to and fro between the characters.  It is certainly relevant to our current mode of communication.  I wonder how the readers in the future – say 100 years from now – would react when texts and emails are no longer the norm of communication.  Sophie Kinsella has not fully embraced social networking in her stories yet.  It is going to be a matter of time, I reckon, now that she is pretty active in Facebook.  One of my previous comments about Kinsella’s works is that there is hardly any character development on the male characters.  This book seems to have done a better job in that regard.

While the bulk of I’ve Got Your Number is fun and light, I must admit there is a high dosage of melodramatic moments that only girls can fully appreciate, especially towards the end.  My brain was literally fried with an overwhelming amount of sweetness.  Knowing what genre I am getting myself into, I am not going to complain, not even the slightest.  If you like any of her previous books, especially the standalone ones, this one is not to be missed.  As always, I am looking forward to reading her next book.

PS. What’s up with the footnotes appearing everywhere in the book?  I actually quite like it. Cynthia is having a headache reading them though.  Ha ha ha.

Categories
Book Reviews Non-Fiction

The End Of Cheap China By Shaun Rein – An Insightful Look Into China From The Inside

Before End of Cheap China is released to the Asia market, it is already banned in China.  Why would a subject on economic and cultural trends that may disrupt the world received such treatment?  My contact at Wiley is intrigued.  And she is keen to hear my view.  I too am intrigued.  The author Rein is a mixed heritage of Chinese and Jewish.  He married the granddaughter of 50 most important Chinese Communist party members in history.  Because of his business background, he gets to converse with China’s leading entrepreneurs on a regular basis.  The author practically lives and breathes in China.  End of Cheap China is largely a collection of Rein’s social, economical, and political opinions of China written in a journal style.  Because this is a still business book, at the end of each chapter, there is a short appendix catered for the business readers.  While I may not have a definite answer to why China deems the book unsuitable for her people, let’s take a look at what this book offers.

1998, Rein was in Changchun, a city at the northeast China.  Back in those days, everything in China was cheap.  For US$20, according to his observation during that trip, you could have some ‘fun’ with a girl in your hotel room.  A girl with a physical outlook that could qualify to be on the cover of Teen Vogue magazine.  Such scene is now unseen of in China.  Why so?  Here is his view on this matter.

China’s economy and job market have seen dramatic changes in the past decade and a half.  As more attractive, better-paying job opportunities increased, pretty young girls took advantage of better options, and the pool of prostitutes got uglier as a result.  The uglification of China prostitutes is part of a boarder trend that is the subject of this book, The End of Cheap China.

It is hard to understand China without an appreciation of Chinese modern history.  Through his personal interaction with his mother-in-law, the author recounts the events and impact of Cultural Revolution (66-76).  Many in China still remember the pain and suffering.  Yes, to the Chinese people, free speech is great but not if it threatens stability.  According to Rein, Chinese people support the central government.  What they often protest against are the local officials who are given the flexibility to implement the policies set by the central government.  In this complex political landscape, the author examines the root of corruption that is often found at the local level.  Local officials in China are poorly paid, not allowed to travel or retire to the private sector once they have reached a certain rank.  This leads to local officials being more susceptible to accepting bribes.

Officially, prostitution is illegal in mainland China.  But why is it practiced openly?  Again, this points to the political makeup of the country.

For ordinary Chinese people, vices like drugs and violence are intolerable due to the immediate impact on their every lives, but often they will tolerate prostitution as long as it is kept behind closed doors and distant.  Here we see the divide in thinking between levels of government: Local officials and people confront prostitution pragmatically, whereas the central government upholds a more morality-based approach.

To examine the economic trends, Rein visited Laura furniture factory in Shanghai.  There are 10,000 workers on the working floor and the environment appears decent.  Because of the high demand in Chinese skilled workers, the factory (and many others) is facing the challenge of keeping the workers.  This drives up workers’ salary and in turn drives up business cost.  The factory could pass the cost back to American consumers and Laura may have to consider moving the factory to countries such as Vietnam or Indonesia in order to cut cost.  However, this is not desirable because the skill of Chinese workers and infrastructure of China cannot be met by these countries today.  What should Laura do?  Rein’s advice to the factory’s manager is that instead of exporting all the furniture to America, create a market share in China.  Leverage on China’s domestic market to sustain or even grow the business.  In fact, that is what the current trend is: Market the products back to China consumers.  Branding then becomes the next challenge because these foreign brands are going to compete with the local household brands.

You may have heard that because of China’s one-child policy and Chinese’s desire to have sons, this leads to an imbalance to the gender ratio.  In the past, for practical reasons, when many were farmers, sons were preferred.  In the past decade and a half, the role of Chinese women has changed.  Take Laura furniture factory as an example, women are paid more because of the skill involved in, say, sewing the sofas.  Men are paid lesser comparatively because labor type of work is less valued.  Moving away from the factory and into the cities, the same pattern is observed.  Women are flavored in the service industry, especially on the consumer sales.  More often than not, wives earn much more than husbands.  This has an implication to the social trend within China.

The empowerment of women is one of the great developments of modern Chinese society.  Women are becoming the key drivers of spending; they are beacons of optimism in the country, and a major force behind China’s transition towards becoming one of the biggest markets in the world.

When it comes to food, foreign brands seem to do well in China due to local food-supply problem.  The recent baby formula episode is a good example of why Chinese people are especially careful on food consumption.  Kentucky Fried Chicken is considered as ‘healthy’ because many Chinese trust that the food from these foreign brands is safe to eat.  While on the topic of food, the author observes that China import over $15b in food products from America in 2011, up from $6.7b in 2006.  This trend will continue to go up.  What is the implication to the world?

I suppose for those who are outside China, we often wonder: Is China really doing well?  The author examines the topic of real estate from various angles – the policy flaw in terms of favoring the commercial zone as it is easier to obtain construction loans compare to residential and Chinese’s preference to hold tangible asset rather than stocks.  The author also examines GDP in China and he argues that unlike Japan, China’s infrastructure spending is more efficient and it helps to jump start the economy growth in the cities.  On the education front, Shaun highlights the classroom overcrowding issue (imagine a class size of 1,500) as well as the fact that the Chinese education system is not producing enough creative thinkers.

The topic interests me most is on China’s foreign policy.  Because of the need for natural resources, China has been actively expanding the influence to countries like Africa and Pakistan.  Different cultures adopt different policies when investing overseas.  When Chinese companies financially takes over a foreign company, the existing management team is often left intact.  Yet, not all countries trust China’s non-interference approach.  Some countries do not welcome China’s money.  Some struggle to accept China’s financial help.  Now I know why as a Chinese, I bond well with Pakistanis here in Singapore.  They seem to have a good impression of Chinese people, thanks to China’s friendly investment in Pakistan.

End of Cheap China is a good read, for those who wish to learn more about China from the inside.  The journal writing style makes it easy to follow.  Because the content of this book is filled with the author’s criticisms and opinions, it could get a bit disoriented.  This book at times appears to be written for the Western businessmen who are investing in China.  In other chapters, the author seems to address to the US government, to the Chinese government, to other governments, or to the Chinese people in China, on what they should or should not do.  Each target audience – I would presume – has different agenda and potentially conflicting interests.  It is unclear if Rein’s goal is to advocate a win-win situation.  Personally I would prefer a straightforward journalistic approach such as Nothing to Envy (a book on North Korea).  Having said that, End of Cheap China is also a business book and it is packed with action items for those who are doing business in China.

I do not know how a book get banned in China.  I admire the author’s boldness in analyzing China at the ground level, talking to commoners in China as well as to the Chinese billionaires.  To be fair, some of his criticisms go beyond China and are directed towards America.  Maybe it is the book title.  Or the prologue when he was approached by a young prostitute in 1998.  Maybe it is his account of Cultural Revolution.  My question to the writer would be: If he was to know the ban, which bits would he rewrite or censor, if at all?

Hardcover: 240 pages
Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (March 27, 2012)
ISBN-10: 111817206X
ISBN-13: 978-1118172063

Categories
Book Reviews Non-Fiction

Boundless Potential By Mark S. Walton – Midlife Onwards Is Going To Get Better!

This book I received from the publisher McGraw-Hill surprised and inspired me at the same time.  Boundless Potential is a perfect book for those who are crossing or have long crossed midlife.  Even for the younger crowd, it is always good to read ahead and have an end in mind.  Before I go into the specifics, here are some questions for you.

  1. Do you feel unchallenged at work?  As in, work no longer taps onto your full potential.  You feel as though there is so much more you could do, although you are finding it hard to pinpoint what that is.
  2. Would you like to retire early so that you do not need to work but rather enjoy doing things that you like instead?
  3.  BIG question here: Do you believe that our brain, like other human organs, is fated to wear out over time?  That is, to lose its resilience and the ability to function as we get old, really old?

If your answers are yes, you and I are on the same boat.  In contrary to common beliefs, our brain works in a different way once we pass our midlife.  In fact, a better way.  The key is to reinvent ourselves in order to recognize and unlock our potential.  What is shocking to me is that I have this wonderful picture of what retirement is.  No more work.  No need to get up for work, and I can indulge in any hobbies – old or new.  Even travel around the world sounds like a good plan.  Have you dreamed about what your retirement is?

Now, what if I am to tell you that you should continue to work for as long as you can, be it as seventies, eighties, nineties, and beyond? And that retirement to pleasure alone could possibly kill you faster (curiously, my mother once told me about her concern over my dad’s retirement)?  Boundless Potential is packed with tons of real life stories on how people reinvent themselves towards the second half of their lives.  How they found a sustainable mean to pursue their dreams, and be happy ever after.  In fact, it appears to me that because these people are happy with their work and the positive contribution to the society and those around them, they live longer.  And they live a much fulfilled life possibly than those who sip beer over sunset at a farm populated by sheep (that is my dream retirement before reading this book).

Some of you may be skeptic.  How to reinvent?  What is my hidden talent?  After all, while there are pages and pages of success stories, majority of us may well have an unproductive or unfulfilled retirement.  To answer that question, the author presents a three-step approach.

First, you have to discover your fascination, your dream so as to speak.  It is not an easy task.  For some, this discovery journey may take place in a much later part of life, if at all.  A fascination is a direction that pulls you forward, regardless of the obstacles ahead of you.  It is something that both your heard and mind want.  No one can tell you what that is.  It may be something you chance upon if you open your eyes wide enough.  I am the optimistic one.  To me, finding your fascination is like finding your soul mate.  Those who are singles are often worried that they would never find that someone to spend the rest of their lives with.  But yet, many people are getting married or are living together.  Do some soul searching along the way: Where is my fascination?  I don’t know what yours is.  I am quite sure I haven’t found mine yet.  It is unlikely that I know the answer today.  But I shall keep this at the back of my head, just in case I stumble upon my answer.

Second, once you found your fascination, it is time to find your flow.  What is a flow?  It is the highest level of human happiness that is generated when fascination is translated into action.  The paragraph below best illustrates the concept.

Contrary to what we usually believe […] the best moments in our lives are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times.  The best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limit in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult or worthwhile.  Optimal experience is thus something we make happen.

With this specification, I can probably look back on my life thus far and identify a few flow moments.  When I was a consultant before my major career switch five years ago, I used to give training workshops and facilitate focused group discussions for the senior officers of my clients’ organizations.  It can be extremely stressful because while what I preached was derived from a defined framework, no two audience groups are the same.  Different corporate or team culture may require different means to unlock their enthusiasm so that they are more receptive to the training materials.  It is an art.  I have to observe on the spot and talk to people during breaks in order to understand how best to engage them.  For those highly intelligent groups, challenging questions that are new to me may come my way.  Teasing out ideas may not be easy.  Looking back, those were my happy moments.  And I reckon I did quite well because our team constantly received praises and recognition from our clients.  Could I reverse engineer my fascination knowing what my flows are?  Maybe I am fascinated by training and learning with people?  What about those moments when I played music with my band at Orchard for charity?  Could music be my calling instead?

Back to the reinvention framework the author has proposed, the third and final step to this process is to envision your structure.  A structure that is created by you for success in midlife and beyond.  Is it going to be a project, a role, a career, a business, or a nonprofit? Whatever the structure is, it is certainly required in order to sustain and grow your fascination.  It is probably something so new and different that you have to sell the idea to those around you and to establish one yourself.

Boundless Potential is written in a highly readable form.  It is not possible to summarize all the inspiring case studies in one blog entry.  Since I love reading this book (and for my future reference), here are some of my favorites.

An interview with Marion Rosen who was nearly 95 when the author conducted the session.

When we are at the height of our knowledge and the height of our lives, why should we give that up?  Why should we not use what we have gotten in 60, 70, 80, 90 years?  And hand it on to where it is wanted?  It seems ridiculous to me.

If you don’t use your potential, it hits back at you.  It strikes back, because it works on you, it wants to come out.  And in order not to come out, you have to hold it back. And that is very bad for your health, very bad for your personality, very bad for your relationships. It doesn’t work!

The second quote would take a while to explain (that can be found in the book of course).  It has something to do with our wisdom deriving from our maturity, experience, and the changes to the brain.  It does sound convincing.  I don’t need to see further but looking at my dad to know that this much is true.  My father has recently reinvented himself into someone who produces beautiful Chinese Calligraphy (previously he was giving Tai Chi lesson to the folks in Hong Kong and making training videos).

State-of-the art neuroscience has determined that the human brain was never designed for decline or retirement but for continual reinvention and success.  In fact, extraordinary powers become available to us in the second half of life that were not available in the first  […]  The mature brain, when properly maintained, has the potential to be continually transformed – to draw upon and synthesize its vast storage banks of knowledge and experience in ways that can be downright startling.

Another big question for you: What is the secret of living happily ever after?  The answer could be as simple as play hard, so that you can work hard (not the other way round!), and pay it forward.

Unlike “simpler” animals, [the Athenians] reasoned, we humans are “composite creatures” who want more than to eat and sleep our lives away.

Thus, attaining genuine happiness – eugeria – requires a full-out lifelong pursuit of worthy goals through the three components of our humanity: body, mind, and soul.

This ongoing quest, they believed, was “the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.”

Hardcover: 262 pages
Publisher: McGraw-Hill; 1 edition (March 16, 2012)
ISBN-10: 0071787852
ISBN-13: 978-0071787857

External Link: McGraw-Hill Asia

Categories
Book Reviews Fiction

A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin: Gruesome, with No Black and White

I did not choose to read this book.  Not exactly.  During my holiday in Bandung, I have finished the books I have intended to read.  I suppose I could start reading yet another Warcraft story.  Having read four in a roll, I need something more, shall I say, hardcore.  A Game of Thrones lies in Cynthia’s library.  I said to myself, why not?  HBO adapted the saga as a TV series.  It cannot be that bad.  So I dived into this mightily thick book of fantasy, without knowing what I was getting myself into.

I think, or rather I would advocate that in front of every book cover, there should be an advisory sticker like a film rating for movies or ESRB rating for video games.  This book, in my opinion, is unsuitable for the young adults.  It is bloody violent.  Children wield swords to kill (and then I watched The Hunger Games on a big screen wondering where this world is heading).  There are orgies, rapes, and prostitution.  Underage girls having sex.  Sibling having sex.  The most amazing thing is, there is no moral compass or whatsoever in A Game of Thrones.  There are no heroes, no villains.  Seldom characters are rewarded by doing the right things in life, nor they are punished to do the otherwise.  In fact, most of the time, it is the other way round.  Each chapter is filled with drama.  You could almost smell something bad, I mean really bad is going to happen.  Initially, there were surprises.  Then came the predictability.  Soon, I was numb.  I read somewhere that blood, sex, and money always sell on TV.  This book has them all.

Now, if I may accept a story that is so uniquely set up, in a fantasy world that has no black and white, a realm whereby treachery and brutality is the mean to survival, A Game of Thrones is a masterpiece.  So much details being poured into creating a world filled with a massive number of interlinked living and breathing characters.  Each character comes from a unique background.  Not only that, a history is crafted alongside with the main story.  On top of that, this first book of A Song of Ice and Fire saga to me read like a very long prologue.  In this Seven Kingdoms of Westeros, a major conflict is brewing.  This realm is slowly pushed into war from within, a war fueled by vengeance, jealousy, and ambition.  At the same time, there is subtle politics in place that shapes the events.  And, there is something strange happening beyond the realm’s wall in the north.  Creatures unfamiliar to this realm are emerging.  Myths of the dragons start to appear.  Something is brewing.  Something big.  Something mysterious.  But you won’t find the answers in this book.  Because this book is the first of a long saga that is still work in progress.  You have to keep reading to find out more.

Unique to this book, the story is told from a set of characters’ viewpoints.  Each viewpoint corresponds to one chapter.  There are three major Houses in conflict.  House Baratheon, where King Robert belongs.  House Stark, where the king’s right hand man Eddard leads.  And House Lannister, descendants of the blood of Andal adventurers.  The viewpoints are presented by Lord Eddard and his wife Lady Catelyn.  Their daughters Sansa and Arya.  Their son Bran.  Eddard’s bastard son Jon.  Tyrion Lannister, a dwarf who is the brother of the queen (who is nothing like a dwarf).  Finally, Princess Daenerys Targaryen who is the daughter of the previous king and is now in exile.  The initial chapters were a torture to me.  Because I was not used to the shear number of characters and the strange tone used that is specially tailored to suit the lore of the realm.  After I got over the hurdle, I was not able to put the book down.  Switching from viewpoint to viewpoint makes the narrative refreshing, keeps the plot in suspense.  It is a slow and satisfying buildup to the final ecstasy.  The endings are shocking.  They open up more questions than providing the readers with answers.  I am eager to take on the next volume in this series to see more blood, more violence, more sex, and more shame and glory.

When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die.

The above quote is in essence what this book is about.  After reading A Game of Thrones, I can understand its popularity.  I must admit, I have not read something quite like this before.

Categories
Book Reviews Non-Fiction

Night and Low-Light Photography by Alan Hess – Packed With Good Tips For Beginners

Normally, I prefer not to review non-fiction books on my holidays.  However, it is good to hear that Wiley publishes photography books as well.  So I grabbed a copy sent by my contact earlier on and was eager to read more on a topic so close to my heart.

For new photographers, night photography, especially under low-light condition, is likely one of the toughest challenges faced.  Our human eyes adapt to low-light well.  More often than not, as a beginner, what you see from the LCD screen at the back of your camera under these conditions seldom resembles to what your eyes see.  Many I know of struggle with flash photography so much so that they would rather not to use a flash at all.  I too have gone through that journey of frustration and experimentation.  I would say Alan Hess has done a good job in explaining the basic mechanics in Night and Low-Light Photography.

What I like about this book is that it reads more like having someone talks me through the basic, and not a book full of theories.  The author takes his time to explain the different gears required getting the job done.  Hess also in multiple instances explains the fundamental variables and their relationship such as ISO, shuttle speed, and aperture.  Other important topics such as exposure, white balance, metering, and digital noise are covered as well.  I often find myself having to explain the same set of attributes when approached by new photographers.  Hess’s explanation is clear and he uses plenty of illustrations to drive home his points.

The first three chapters of Night and Low-Light Photography talk through the basic.  The last chapter on digital postproduction is useful if you use Adobe Lightroom or Photoshop Elements.  Bear in mind that the chapter on postproduction mainly focuses on night and low-light photography.  Postproduction workflow, for instance, is not covered in this chapter.  Although I don’t use either tool for postproduction (I prefer using Nikon digital filters instead), it does read a bit too simplistic for me.  Maybe it is good for a start.  You may need another book to study the topic better.

Between the first three chapters and the last are chapters devoted to different scenarios.  Scenarios range from indoor shots (people, weddings, and concerts) to sport photography, from nighttime sky to outdoor shots (city and landscape).  For each scenario, the author shares with us many tips cumulated from – I assume – his personal experience.  He also details out the recommended settings and steps used.  Like where you should stand and what moment you should capture if you are a wedding photographer.  Like how your model should pose.  And much more.  I enjoy reading the chapter on Light Painting the most.  Perhaps because it is something I have yet to try (hence I presume the rest of the chapters may well be an enlightening read if I was a new photographer).  I am not a big fan of HDR photography.  But that is also covered briefly in this book, in case if HDR is your cup of tea.

There are a few photographs printed in this book that are inspiring.  I like the Ferris Wheel the most, and some of his concert photographs.  Most of the photographs, though, appear a bit bland to me.  Some, I wish the photographer would stand and point the camera slightly differently so as to get a more symmetric shot, or compose the picture better.  One photograph of a moon, the photographer used a setting of 1/400 second, f/8.0 and ISO 500.  Maybe he did not use a tripod.  Since the moon is pretty bright in nature, I would think that it is possible to use a different setting with a better ISO (for example, see my moon photograph here that uses the same f-stop).  Granted, perhaps the author’s intend is to illustrate his technical points, rather than articulating the art within.  There are other photography books that are full of inspiring printings (such as books by Scott Kelby).  This book does not appear to be so.  Having said that, the most important thing is for you to grasp the fundamental of night and low-light photography.  So that you can go out there and confidently create your beautiful shots.

ISBN-10: 1118138228
ISBN-13: 978-1118138229

Categories
Book Reviews Fiction

The Night Circus By Erin Morgenstern – A Truly Magical Read Like No Others

Do you dig magic?  Do you dig love?  In a circus setting?  If yes, look no further.  Grab a copy of The Night Circus and start reading.  Like now.  You won’t find anything quite like this one.  You see, I have joined millions others to Take Earth Back, writing my own galactic story based on my decisions and actions.  To be able to distract me away from the highly anticipated video game Mass Effect 3, this book has got to be good.  Real good.

Well, it is.

I will not go beyond telling you what the excerpt says.  Because I want it to be a magical read to you, as it was to me.  In 1886, a mysterious traveling circus pops out from nowhere.  Tangled within this circus are two young magicians locked in a competition.  Celia is the enchanter’s daughter and Marco is the sorcerer’s apprentice.  Where does the circus come from?  What is the competition about?  What is at stake?  Where does magic come from?  What does magic do?  In retrospect, the answers hardly matter.  Because there is so much details on the journey itself, one could easily lose oneself devouring every single image, every little scent.  Every tent in the circus, every magical moment, the author turns words into something so surreal that you feel as though you are inside those tents, experiencing the shows in a time before you were born.

Majority of the materials are narrated in present tense.  Each snippet starts with a date and a location.  And the snippets are not arranged in a chronological order.  The time dimension plays a part in the story telling.  It may seem messy and disorienting initially.  But it works amazingly well going back and forth in time, juxtaposing the snippets and bringing out the essence of cause and effect.  Underlying to the story is a simple message: everything in life has its time and place.  If I am to read this book again, I would make a catalog of time and location of each chapter.  I would then attempt to read the story in a chronological order and see how a different experience it would be, reading the story from a different perspective so as to speak.

A small part of the book is written is second person, ‘you’.  It is unusual and rare.  It works well.  If you love magic like I do, chances are, you will be drawn into the story, materializing the circus inside the boundary of your imagination.  When that happens, you know the author has done something remarkable.  The Night Circus will capture your imagination.  Be fascinated.  Go ahead and try it out today.

Categories
Book Reviews Non-Fiction

What Matters Now By Gary Hamel

“What Matters Now” calls for a deep reflection on where your organization is, and to be.  And as a leader, what you should do now.  This book is divided into five sections: value matters now, innovation matters now, adaptability matters now, passion matters now, and ideology matters now.  Each section contains five articles that offer different perspectives under the same topic.  Each article is packed with relevant case studies to illustrate where the pain points and pitfalls are, the success stories, and how organizations can do better.  Some ideas are so bold that it may require a drastic change in the entire organization in order to make it happens.  It is as though the author is challenging us to aim higher.  Perhaps Hamel is right.  In today’s world, there is no place for an average performing organization.  Our organization has to beat the market or our competitors so as to survive and thrive.

Using the bankers, legislators, and regulators as a case study and recounting the major events happened during recent financial crisis, the author highlights that when a leader sacrifices long term goals with quick payout, people would not see them as trustworthy.  The author appears to feel strongly against corporation’s erosion of moral.  Hamel uses farmers as an example to contrast these highly paid leaders.  Here is the “Farmer’s Creed” for sharing.

I believe a man’s greatest possession is his dignity and that no calling bestows this more abundantly than farming.  I believe hard work and honest sweat are the building blocks of a person’s character.  I believe that farming, despite its hardships and disappointments, is the most honest and honorable way a man can spend his days on this earth …

Would you trust your life with a company’s CEO or would you trust the nurses or the farmers instead?  The author suggests that it is a high time for leaders to regain moral high ground and to embrace what Socrates called the good, the just, and the beautiful.  In short, value matters now.

When it comes to innovation, it should come as no surprise that Apple is used as a case study.  The author examines how Apple becomes one of the most profitable companies in the world today.  Hamel makes a detail listing of Apple’s success, from design innovation to passion within the organization.  Does your company often analysis the trade-offs and compromise?  Or is your organization as unreasonable as Apple so as to transcend trade-offs?

On adaptability, are we changing as fast as the world does?  Under the section of “Adaptability Matters Now”, there is a chapter on how decline can be diagnosed and another chapter on how your company can be future-proofed.  To make a company adaptable, the author has outlined six critical factors: anticipation, intellectual flexibility, strategic variety, strategic flexibility, structural flexibility, and resilience-friendly values.  In my opinion, to achieve this is no easy feat.  It depends on how entrenched your organization are with the existing processes and policies.  The paragraph below sums up the concept.  Ask yourself one question: how close is your organization to the following dream state?

We can dream of organizations that are forever looking forward and jump at every opportunity to better the human condition.  We can dream of organizations where the enthusiasm for change is palpable and pervasive, where individuals, ennobled by a sense of mission and unencumbered by bureaucracy, rush out eagerly to meet the future.  We can dream of organizations where the fearless renegades always trump the fearful reactionaries, where the constituency for the future always outguns the constituency for the past.  We can dream of organizations where the drama of renewal occurs without the trauma of a turnaround.  And, if we’re daring and inventive and determined, we can build these organizations.  That’s what matters now.

On passion, Hamel looks inside the Facebook generation for inspiration.  On how we as a community interact in an online environment where the hierarchy does not exist.  Everyone can contribute, anyone can lead.  No one can dictate or kill a good idea.  Ideas built upon ideas and excellence usually wins.  The author also brings up Christian community as an example, that the Church’s followers are on a decline nowadays.  Lesser and lesser people visit a Church these days.  But does that mean people do not believe in God?  The question is, how to bring these people back to the rhythm of visiting a Church?  The solution lies in the ignition of passion within the community.  When left without formal control and discipline and given a freedom to pursue their goals, people do rise up to the occasion and leaders do emerge.  Smaller groups can be formed and everyone contributes in accordance to their strength.

The last section “Ideology Matters Now” is, for lack of a better word, radical.  If not for the case studies of W. L. Gore, Morning Star, and HCLT, I would not be convinced that self-management works.  Imagine a company that has a flat organization chart.  Imagine the only way to lead is to gather enough supporters around you.  Imagine there is no top down authority, and there are no defined roles.  Imagine everyone is accountable for the decisions they are empowered to make, that anyone can be a decision maker.  Can your organization escape the management tax?  This book spells out the things we should do in order to reach the goal of self-management.  While this model may have its challenges, it has made organizations successful.  I guess, that is all that matters.

What matters now, more than ever, is that you question your assumptions, surrender your conceits, rethink your principles, and raise your sights – and that your challenge others to do the same.  We know broadly what must be done to create organizations that are fit for the future.  The only question is, “Who’s going to lead and who’s going to follow?”  How you answer that question matters most of all.

ISBN-10: 1118120825
ISBN-13: 978-1118120828

Categories
Book Reviews Fiction

Lord Of The Flies By William Golding – A Hard Look At Who We Are

Let’s not dissect Lord of the Flies in an academic style.  I am sure that has been done professionally over and over for decades.  Some studied this book in school.  As for me, when I first saw the title many years ago, I mistook it to be related to Lord of the Ring.  Soon I found out that it is not.  I may have bought this 50th anniversary edition eight years ago.  But I did not have the courage to read it, until recently, when I have this crazy for old classic books.

This story prompts me to ponder upon our very own humanity, when society may one day break down, a return to the prehistorical era.  Can democracy, human rights, respect to all things and more survive when we plunge into a setting similar to the reality TV series Survivor?  Like the famous Chinese proverbs, are we born as good or are we born as evil?  How do we as a human race build our society to what we have today and what is keeping it from falling apart?  We have seen, as history has told us, the rise and fall of civilization.  What if …

Tons of questions in my head after reading Lord of the Flies.

It is a simple story.  A group of British boys not older than 13 years of age have crash landed onto an island.  It is the era of nuclear warfare.  What happens outside the island, no one can speculate.  One of the main characters Ralph – a natural born leader with charisma, good intention, and a logical mind – finds a conch by chance.  Upon blowing it, he unintentionally gathers the boys who are scattered around the incident scene.  Ralph then calls upon a meeting.  His first agenda is to determine if they are indeed on an island.  An impromptu agenda, it seems.  Like any politician who is gifted to think on his feet, he delivers a rather fluent speech.  Piggy – an overweight boy with bad eyesight and asthma – encapsulates the concept of the intellect group that is important to a society, but can be physically vulnerable.  He is a trusted adviser to Ralph, although Ralph often bullies him like everyone else.  He holds one of the most important tools in the island – a pair of glasses that can be used to make fire.

The way I see it, in this remote island, Ralph and Piggy represents the last defender of civilization trying their best to uphold democracy and to assign work to others in order to ensure their basic survivability.  The boys are tasked to create a fire big enough to signal any ship that may pass by as well.  While all are motivated by a rescue plan, most do not like to work.  Without reward and enforcement, the boys soon are doing their own things ignoring the assigned duties.  In this island where there is no such thing as law – what does law mean to the young boys anyway – how can a community get organized?

Here come the hunters.  Led by Jack, another leader in his own right, a bunch of choir boys go about hunting pigs for food.  Jack has lost the leadership position because he does not gather enough votes in the first assembly.  Back then, a sound rescue plan seemed more superior to chasing pigs in a foreign island.  But as time goes by, eating meat appears to be more satisfying than eating fruits.  Killing seems to be more superior to waiting for a rescue.  The very first kill Jack and his hunters made marks a major turning point of the story – boys losing their innocent.  The consequence is immense.  With new found confidence and the will to kill, Jack stands up against Ralph.  It is like the military against the council.  If pigs can be killed as food, why can’t humans be killed?  Especially the ones that stand against those who wield the wooden spike?

I am ahead of myself here.  There is no taking of human lives until the arrival of Lord of the Flies.  Simon is a peaceful boy.  Someone who is positive and loves the nature.  While Ralph motivates the boys with a rescue plan, Ralph terrifies with the boys with the presence of a beast – a terror born out of the nightmares of the younger ones.  Where does the beast come from?  Nobody knows.  Some say it comes from within the island.  Some say it comes from the sea.  In fact, the so-called beast is none other than the corpse of a pilot who parachuted into the island and died.  Only Simon has seen the corpse.  He is assigned by Jack to carry the pig’s head as an offering to the beast.  A head that is dripped in blood and swarmed with flies.  All of a sudden, Simon has a vision.  A terrible one.  He sees Lord of the Flies, consumed by it, and become it.  To me, Lord of the Flies personifies the Devil.  It has a message for Simon and the boys.  It is they who create the beast.  And it is they who have the beast within.

This is where the beauty of symbolism comes alive in this book.  The pig is initially described as a swine peacefully feeding her children.  Nothing ugly or foul in that sense.  Once brutally killed, its decapitated head looks gross, covered with flies.  The pig’s head is offered to the beast created by the boys that in reality is a corpse that does nothing.  The pig is transformed into Lord of the Flies that engulfed Simon.  Later that day, Simon was murdered by the boys in an animalistic ritual.  Such act then corrupts the boys into further murdering and torturing of their kind.  It is as though an element of devil that originates from the boys has spread and now lives in each of the boy.  Upon reading this, I cannot help but to ponder on the old debate on God and Devil.  If God creates all things in life, what about evilness?  What makes this story realistic is the demonstration of free will.  Unfortunately, this also makes it depressing to read.  Is there hope in humanity?  Is it an inevitable fate that we shall degenerate into such terrible stage in end time?

From the social standpoint, it is interesting to observe how Ralph and Jack split into two camps due to their differences in beliefs.  They think that it is happier that way.  Initially yes.  But sadly, separation has its issues.  It fosters hostility and insecurity, much like today’s world.  That eventually leads to violence and bloodshed.

In the end, when all hope is lost, a naval vessel has found the island.  The boys are saved, all crying for the loss of innocence.  But is this true salvation?  When the naval vessel is heading to another war – the war of the adults?  The ending is truly depressing, yet truly awakening.  Can we ever break away from this cycle of endless killing and evil deeds?  Or is this the only mean of survival?

As an afterthought, I think there is much imbalance in this novel. I cannot help but to imagine what if these are girls instead of boys.  Would it be any difference?  What if we have a mixed group of boys and girls?  Would that make the story too distractive due to an extra layer of social complexity?  This book briefly touches onto the topic of the need for a religion but stops there.  Why is there no balancing act against the presence of the Devil?  It is as though the author is screaming: Give up, there is no good, no evil, there is no God, only Devil.  My heart weeps thinking about it.

To me, this story is devoid of love.  And we know that in the absence of love and light lies hatred and evilness.  Perhaps, that is the main message.

Categories
Book Reviews Fiction

Memories of My Melancholy Whores By Gabriel García Márquez

This book, I have read twice.  After “My Cousin Rachel“, I wanted to keep up with the soul nourishing reading spree.  I ransacked my book collection, even scanned through the book list according to Harold Bloom’s Western Canon for inspiration.  I have read “Memories of My Melancholy Whores” once, possibly in the year of 2004.  I wish I had started writing book summary or introduction since the day I have started reading.  It is without a doubt one of the top-10-things-to-do-if-I-could-turn-back-time.

Gabriel García Márquez is a Colombian writer who has awarded with Nobel Price in Literature in 1982.  I have always wanted to read his books.  Both “One Hundred Years of Solitude” and “Love in the Time of Cholera” look mightily heavy.  Perhaps one day I will consume them.  For now, I am happy to have read his modern novella, especially since I enjoy reading short story format.

The topic of humanity has a wide reaching coverage.  To that extend, I shall not read this book purely from the angle of morality.  Any mature individual should be able to tackle the material with an open mind.  Those things that you may not approve of in life do not mean that they do not exist.  Nor should they be conveniently ignored.  I do not believe that the writer uses the book to endorse certain objectionable behaviors.  Rather, he uses it to bring out a facet of life that some of us rather not look at.

Because of its mature content, I would not recommend this book to the young adults (nor should you continue reading this post if you are one).  Also, this post may contains spoilers.  In case if you plan to read the book, you may wish to come back later instead.

The narrator of the story is turning ninety.  And he has an idea on what to get for his birthday.

The year I turned ninety, I wanted to give myself the gift of a night of wild love with an adolescent virgin.

This one simple, yet genuine statement kick starts the story, sets the tone of what is to come, and basically tells the book in one line.  Slowly, the author introduces the main character: his near-century long career of being a mediocre columnist, his wedding that he failed to turn up, his stumbling into the scene of prostitution when he was merely twelve, and decades of paid sex without love, without friends.  Why does not he get married?  Why frequent the prostitutes?  To that, his reply is:

Sex is the consolation you have when you can’t have love.

No, that does not justify his action of sleeping with more than five hundreds women by the age of fifty.  Nor it was his intend to boost his conquest.  It is a consolation.  For someone who has lived for decades without someone to love, it sounds melancholy to me.  As a reader, I do not despise the main character.  I sympathy him.

I do not know the era the story sets in.  There is a hint that it may be in the ’60s.  I suppose the era does not matter.  Even in today’s world, underage girls are sold into prostitution (more can be read in CNN’s The Freedom Project).  When this ‘adolescent virgin’ turns out to be a 14 years old girl, part of me frown upon the main character’s moral standard, even though he did not specify his requirement for the virgin’s age.  Part of me, however, is aware that this is a slice of reality.

I woke in the small hours, not remembering where I was.  The girl still slept in a fetal position, her back to me.  I had a vague feeling that I had sensed her getting up in the dark and had heard water running in the bathroom, but it might have been a dream.  This was something new for me.  I was ignorant of the arts of seduction and had always chosen my brides for a night a random, more for their price than their charms, and we had made love without love, half-dressed most of the time and always in the dark so we could imagine ourselves as better than we were.  That night I discovered the improbable pleasure of contemplating the body of a sleeping woman without the urgencies of desire or the obstacles of modesty.

The beauty of Márquez’s work is that he can tell something plain in such a ordinary and neutral way that when read, it is uplifting.  That honesty and so directly to the point, I can’t help but to feel for the main character.  Making love without love and hiding the true forms in the dark.  No, there is no sex between the ninety years old man and the fourteen years old girl.  In fact, for a year, they spend time with him watching her sleeps.  He names the girl Delgadina, in accordance to a Mexican folk song.  I did some research in the Internet.  The folk song tells a story of a young girl whose father proposed a marriage with her.  She refused, was locked up as punishment, and died of thirst.  The song ends with the girl going to Heaven while her father to Hell.  It is in some way fitting to this novella.  The girl is young and her client could be as old as her great grandfather.  It kept me thinking how the story would resolve itself to be.

I cannot find words to describe the relationship between this girl and the old man.  After the first night (of he watching her sleeps), the old man has fallen in love.  Most interactions between these two throughout the book are one directional.  Some are highly imaginary.  Others, I am not too sure.  It is as though this platonic love from him to her is mostly his virtual creation.  Is it how love is born?  Because of this, the old man has changed, starting with the way he writes his columns.  All of a sudden, he is happy.  His new work has gained popularity.  From then on, a twin plot surfaces.  It is a story of celebrating being ninety.  That ‘age isn’t how old you are but how old you feel’.  The main character’s transformation can be best illustrated below.

Thanks to her I confronted my inner self for the first time as my ninetieth year went by.  I discovered that my obsession for having each thing in the right place, each subject at the right time, each word in the right style, was not the well-deserved reward of an ordered mind but just the opposite: a complete system of pretense invented by me to hide the disorder of my nature.  I discovered that I am not disciplined out of virtue but as a reaction to my negligence, that I appear generous in order to conceal my meanness, that I pass myself off as prudent because I am evil-minded, that I am conciliatory in order not to succumb to my repressed rage, that I am punctual only to hide how little I care about other people’s time.  I learned, in short, that love is not a condition of the spirit but a sign of the zodiac.

Another plot is the main character’s recollection of some of the women he encountered in his life.  Each encounter is memorable.  One of them retired from prostitution and was married.  She said to him: Today I look back, I see the line of thousands of men who passed through my beds, and I’d give my soul to have stayed with even the worst of them.

Melancholy.  Isn’t it so?

I found there are quite a few take home messages upon reading “Memories of My Melancholy Whores”.  It is never to late too transform ourselves in a positive manner, as what we always envisage ourselves to be.  Celebrate the present, regardless the physical state we are in.  Love, or rather loving others is the path to happiness.