Freedom

Worthy is written by the American entrepeneur Jamie Kern Lima who aims to build self-worth in girls and women.

You don't rise to what you believe is possible, you fall to what you believe you're worthy of.

The sentence summarises Jamie's answer to the question if you were smart enough, or if you were enough. A lot of us could get lost in our setbacks. Jamie Kern Lima had her setbacks too. She wrote this book after she had been rescued from hardship and low


Courage

Many of us use the word bravery with romantic promiscuity. Even more young people think of themselves as brave heroes, flying the way Icarus did. And then, too often, they fell and plunged into the sea, drowned.

Fear need not be shameful, nor bravery praiseworthy. But the difference between bravery and courage is crucial to us. Taylor Reid, the author of her ninth novel Atmosphere , tells a wonderful story about these two words.

Instead of flying to the sun, the characters in this novel are female


Pleaser

If I had to sum up, in one sentence, the key message in The High 5 Habit written by Mel Robbins, it would be something like as follows (call it the first law for an adult).

There is only one person's opinion that matters: your own.

If you're growing up in a community with social code – and who isn't? – it's hard to get out of the habit of looking around for approval. There is nothing stopping me from pleasing other


Memories

A few days ago, I finished The Paper Palace , an irresistible read with heavy theme. In this gripping novel, Miranda Cowley Heller describes a 50-year-old mother who grows up with dysfunctional family dynamic, sexual assault, and an unspeakable story of murder.

Consider this quote from the story: "We drag our past behind us like a weight, still shackled, but far enough back that we never have to see, never have to openly acknowledge who we once were." This quote comes from


Dad

If there were a pie chart that divided up my time over one week, the exploded spice that emphasizes the best moment would be watching movie with my wife.

We watched the British drama film The Thing with Feathers this Friday, before I read the original novella Grief Is the Thing with Feathers during weekend. That's a story of a newly widowed father of two boys. A heavy story of grief.

Regardless of how you feel about the author Max Porter's writing, he does certainly know how to evoke


Learning

If you told me cheating is not easy during online examination, I most certainly would not have believed you. This is simply impossible to prevent cheating, after the move to virtual class and examination in front of a computer screen.

In the old days, we assessed students' grades according to midterm and final examination results, all of which were administered in persons. After months of lockdown three years ago, educators and students are getting used to online class.

Should we or should we not allow students to take examination in


Iron

Armed with encyclopaedic knowledge on genetics and what appears to be a magnetic attraction to storytelling, Sharon Moalem has written a book called Survival of the Sickest , in which he muses on such intriguing questions as the battery life of Apple products.

As always, a mind clear enough to think of the theory of relativity – like Albert Einstein – would be able to explain the theory to anyone. Sharon Moalem has managed to explain evolutionary advantages of "sick" genes in a way layperson can understand.

We might not comprehend the reason


Frog

Few things symbolise tough task as much as swallowing an ugly animal. Isn't it gross to think that the first thing you do each morning is to eat a live frog?

That's exactly what Brian Tracy, a consultant on personal effectiveness, taught us to do. His first rule of frog eating is this: If you have to eat two frogs, eat the ugliest one first. That means tackling the hardest and most important task, a discipline we all wish to master when we open the page of

Let Them

There is never enough time to read every book we wish.

Choosing books is easy and it is hard. It is easy because we're literally swamped with book choice, as much as light and air. And it is hard because we have limited time and energy. We will never get far enough ahead to be able to finish all books.

To get around the never-ending choices, I make a wish to come across ten good books each year. And at least one life-changing book every few


Conservation

On my way flying to Australia, I was watching the BBC documentary about Asia. Sir David Attenborough told us the staggering amount of conservation efforts required to save wild Asian animals such as sun bear in Borneo and the Javan green magpie. I didn't know where the conservation would end, but I had no trouble guessing where it should begin. There are plenty of examples from the newsletters I received from Greenpeace.

But (I hear you saying) can't we please learn some lessons from Australia where conservation is