Honolulu
Staying in Honolulu for five days, mostly for conference as what I do this week, won't cover much for first-timers to O‘ahu.
Mark Twain spent four months in Hawaii for the newspaper Sacramento Union. Paul Theroux, a prolific travel writer and novelist, stayed there for three decades.
To make up for my short stay, I borrowed Paul Theroux's fiction, Hotel Honolulu . Paul Theroux strings together dozens of guests staying in a tumble-down hotel. That's how I know
Wit
Almost everyone gets an impression after reading the opening lines of a book. And every author wants to write an opening hook to keep readers coming back.
Trust me, this is getting more important. Now that our attention span is shrinking, readership is losing the battleground from competitors like Instagram, YouTube, and Pinterest.
Fredrik Backman, the Swedish author of My Friends , is one of the best qualified. His book starts with the statement that teenager is the best kind of human. Why is this so? The answer
Taylor
If Taylor Jenkins Reid's novel were a pill, it should come with a warning label about addiction. In other words, you'd be expected to keep turning pages. Then you finish one and start another book of hers.
The point is that you can never have enough of stories crafted by Taylor Jenkins Reid.
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo set in the sixties. Daisy Jones & The Six about seventies rock and roll. Malibu Rising in the eighties.
When it comes to Malibu Rising , we are
Bookshelf
Whale
Summer is always my favourite time to read and this is also the season for our family vacation.
A useful guide for book choice is the theme of our trip. An essential read after a sea turtle island stay, as what we experienced last month, would be a book written by marine biologist.
This week, we traveled to Andenes located in the Vesterålen in Northern Norway. Long a popular whale safaris excursion destination, Andenes is the prime location for meeting humpbacks and sperm whales. Once you have seen them
Henningsvær
If you run long enough and rack up enough birthdays, you'll find your watch registering a slower and slower pace. Even that's the case, older runners aren't at higher risk of walking away. One simple trick for me to keep the motivation is to follow a mix of playful plans.
So when I got a chance to travel to Lofoten's tiny village of Henningsvær , I knew I should head for the famous football pitch. Located just within a few feet of cliffs,
Doppler
Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm had been collecting fairy tales and folklore for years in Germany. The Brothers Grimm didn't travel to Norway, otherwise they should have picked up the novella Doppler from Erlend Loe, one of Norway's bestselling novelists. Or else, those from Roald Dahl, born to Norwegian parents and named after polar explorer Roald Amundsen.
I've been thinking about the choice of novels to bring on my Norway trip. The Kafkaesque story of Doppler , a captivating blend of humour and absurdity, offers a
Expedition
Ask any geologist about their worst nightmare in fieldwork and it will likely be that they have lost the compass. Or else, the aerial photographs. Pretty interesting, huh? I know.
That's a story even before we have Google Maps. I borrowed the novel Beyond Sleep for my Norwegian trip. Think about an insomniac expedition of a young geologist to the mountains of Norway's Arctic north. That can be freezing. He had never been able to procure his set of aerial photographs for his research and route
Backyard
Mention Amy Tan and most of us will think of the Joy Luck Club at the First Chinese Baptist Church. Little do we know the backyard of hers, a menagerie of fledglings – baby juncos, flinches, and chickadees – drawn to the bird feeders.
Through reading The Backyard Bird Chronicles by Amy Tan, I have been fascinated by her personal observations of birds in backyard. A paradise for birds.
Our lodging in Norway this week, it turns out, is as colourful as Amy Tan's. We visited Nordland
Sense
Gretchen Rubin is a byword for happiness. One afternoon, this author of The Happiness Project discovered her eyes turning gummy and pink. That's the moment she could see what was missing. She sat in front of bulky eye-examination equipment. Never before had she experienced the world with sharper intensity.
She walked home and learned to connect with her "big five" senses. Seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching. These five senses link us to our past, tie us to the present,