Can you recall the joys or spirits before school field trip?

You're too excited to fall asleep. Your dreams are brilliant bursts of colour, rather than monochrome. And yet. Next morning, you're up early ahead of the alarm clock.

Don't think this beautiful experience is for kindergarten students only. Whether you're five years old or fifty years old, field trip often makes us feel good.

Believe me, I just have had one such happy moment. Imagine my enthusiasm when I

Mention tennis or backgammon, and the term "zero-sum game" will come to our mind. That means a situation when I win, you lose; if you win, I lose.

But that's not the rule in the novel The Wishing Game , in which four contestants compete against each other in a one-of-a-kind competition on a fantastical island. They are working hard to win the only copy of a new book written by a reclusive bestselling author. To win the book that

Fiction becomes autobiography. Fiction is true. Confusing at first. Then powerful.

Julian Barnes finished his last fiction Departure(s) at the age of 80. That's a story within a story. Around fifteen years ago, he wrote about death in Nothing to be Frightened Of . The new book – the last one – explicitly talks about a man who lost his wife to brain tumour and is living with an incurable yet manageable form of blood cancer. And by "manageable", his doctor meant "

Japan has a reputation of owning unique words, often untranslatable and with deep meaning.

Among them, the older and beautiful ones include shinrinyoku (literally forest bathing) and komorebi (reminding us the picture of sunlight filtering through the trees, dappling the forest floor). Fast forward to modern era and you'll find buzzwords like insuta-bae , referring to something that look good on Instagram.

What about hanafubuki ? I learn this magical word about flower snowstorm during my Fukuoka trip. Picture it: the cherry blossom or

Why are millennials called the "new lost generation"? One reason is the need to navigate a uniquely volatile era of radical uncertainty. They include three major economic recessions including the Great Depression, once-in-a-lifetime global pandemic – you name it.

A look back at older generation, on the other hand, seems to give u s d éjà vu and a long history of recurrent uncertainty. I recently borrowed a beautiful book Air-Borne , in which Carl Zimmer chronicles a gripping account of

Teaching physics to someone who doesn't know mathematics, according to the Nobel Prize winner Richard P. Feynman, is like explaining music to someone who is deaf.

Unlike Feynman, I have forgotten most of what I'd learnt about the laws of thermodynamics, SUVAT equations, or African drums. Well, I don't really know whether I've ever understood any one of them at all.

We all know that physicists are one of the cleverest humans. Think about Feynman who gathered with physicists from other

Life decisions are hard.

Book decisions are easier.

Browsing staff picks or front table near the entrance of a bookstore is often what I do. A new release showcased in many bookstores is Why We Suffer and How We Heal , written by a psychiatrist Suzan Song.

One reason that we should all learn to bounce back from grief or depression is that there are so many stumbling blocks in life. And, if I can add this to-be-read list, this book would be at the very top.

Does

Recently, I read about the way to navigate life's twists. As Susan David wrote in her book Emotional Agility , life's beauty is inseparable from its fragility.

We're young, until we're not.

We're healthy, until we're not.

We're with those we love, until we're not.

Simply by going over these sentences, I could feel my heart seize. I bet yours did too. Changes are no fun.

The way we grow old

One year ago, my dad suffered from a broken back after an accidental fall. Think about our vertebrae like a stack of rectangular sardine tins. These cans are durable and valued for their long shelf life. Yes, they're perfectly fine until we hit the age of 40, when the cans begin to lose up to 5 percent of density each decade. It turns out the sardine gets stolen with time, and the cans get less strength.

Imagine stepping on an empty can as hard as you can and

Books about migrant workers and racism are nothing new, but what Amanda Peters has told us in her debut novel The Berry Pickers is colourful.

The Indigenous Mi'kmaq people, native to Canada's region near Nova Scotia, are primarily having skin colour from light to deep brown. The novel casts light on a Mikmaq family who arrives to Maine every midsummer. Together with a caravan of dark-skinned workers, they work hard picking berries till sunset for white landowners. This family work harder than most workers. They