'Tuesdays with Morrie', Mitch Albom

Rating: 8/10

Important Lessons from 'Tuesdays with Morrie'

"The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning."

"You see, you closed your eyes. That was the difference. Sometimes you cannot believe what you see, you have to believe what you feel. And if you are ever going to have other people trust you, you must feel that you can trust them, too - even when you're in the dark. Even when you're falling."

"The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in."

"Don't cling to things, because everything is impermanent."

"There are a few rules I know to be true about love and marriage: If you don't respect the other person, you're gonna have a lot of trouble. If you don't know how to compromise, you're gonna have a lot of trouble. If you can't talk openly about what goes on between you, you're gonna have a lot of trouble. And if you don't have a common set of values in life, you're gonna have a lot of trouble. Your values must be alike."

"Forgive yourself before you die. Then forgive others."

"As long as we can love each other, and remember the feeling of love we had, we can die without ever really going away. All the love you created is still there. All the memories are still there. You live on - in the hearts of everyone you have touched and nurtured while you were here."

"If you hold back your emotions - if you don't allow yourself to go all the way through them - you can never get to being detached, you're too busy being afraid. You're afraid of the pain, you're afraid of the grief. You're afraid of the vulnerability that loving entails. But by throwing yourself into these emotions, by allowing yourself to dive in, all the way, over your head even, you experience them fully and completely."

'The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck', Mark Manson

Rating: 5/10

Overall Thoughts

The author takes a very different approach in writing this book, as unlike other self-help books, Manson does not sugar coat anything.  It took me a while to get comfortable with all the 'f' words being used as well as the crude and vulgar language.

In 'The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck', the author encourages readers to limit their concern over things that have little to no meaning or value in their lives.  It provides a brutally honest reality check about our personal problems, fears and expectations towards life.

Manson suggests that "Knowing yourself or finding yourself can be dangerous.  It can cement you into a strict role and saddle you with unnecessary expectations.  It can close you off to inner potential and outer opportunities."  He tells his readers to not find themselves and never know who they are, "Because that's what keeps you striving and discovering."

I do not necessarily agree with this.  And Manson seems to contradict himself a lot, as later on in the book he tells his readers to "Define yourself in the simplest and most ordinary ways possible."  Won't you need to know yourself in order to define yourself?

Further, Manson writes "Conflict is not only normal, then; it's absolutely necessary for the maintenance of a healthy relationship.  If two people who are close are not able to hash out their differences openly and vocally, then the relationship is based on manipulation and misrepresentation, and it will slowly become toxic."  Just because some couples (like me) do not argue, it does not indicate that the relationship is toxic or isn't genuine. 

Conclusion: good read but not my cup of tea.

Lessons From 'A Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck

• Self-improvement and success often occur together.  But that doesn't necessarily mean they're the same thing.

• The desire for more positive experience is itself a negative experience.  And, paradoxically, the acceptance of one's negative experience is itself a positive experience. The idea that the more you pursue feeling better all the time, the less satisfied you become, as pursuing something only reinforces the fact that you lack it in the first place.

• Finding something important and meaningful in your life is perhaps the most productive use of your time and energy.  Because if you don't find that meaningful something, your f*cks will be given to meaningless and frivolous causes.

• Practical enlightenment is becoming comfortable with the idea that some suffering is always inevitable - that no matter what you do, life is comprised of failures, loss, regrets, and even death.

• Greatness is merely an illusion in our minds, a made-up destination that we obligate ourselves to pursue, our own psychological Atlantis.

• We are wired to become dissatisfied with whatever we have and satisfied by only what we do not have.

• Don't hope for a life without problems.  There's no such thing.  Instead, hope for a life full of good problems.

• Happiness comes from solving problems.  If you're avoiding your problems or feel like you don't have any problems, then you're going to make yourself miserable.  If you feel like you have problems that you can't solve, you will likewise make yourself miserable.  The secret sauce is the solving of the problems, not in not having problems in the first place.  True happiness occurs only when you find the problems you enjoy having and enjoy solving.

• An obsession and overinvestment in emotion fails us for the simple reason that emotions never last.  What makes us happy today will no longer make us happy tomorrow, because our biology always needs something more.  A fixation on happiness inevitably amounts to a never-ending pursuit of "something else".  And despite all of our sweat and strain, we end up feeling eerily similar to how we started: inadequate.

• What determines your success isn't, "What do you want to enjoy?" The relevant question is, "What pain do you want to sustain?"  Our struggles determine our successes.

• The ticket to emotional heath, like that to physical health, is, accepting the bland and mundane truths of life: truths such as "Your actions actually don't matter that much in the grand scheme of things" and "The vast majority of your life will be boring and not noteworthy, and that's okay."

• If  suffering is inevitable, if our problems in life are unavoidable, then the question we should be asking is not "How do I stop suffering?" but "Why am I suffering - for what purpose?"

• If you want to change how you see your problems, you have to change what you value and/or how you measure failure/success.

• People who base their self-worth on being right about everything prevent themselves from learning from their mistakes.  They lack the ability to take on new perspectives and empathize with others.  They close themselves off to new and important information.

• Denying negative emotions leads to experiencing deeper and more prolonged negative emotions and to emotional dysfunction.  Constant positivity is a form of avoidance, not a valid solution to life's problems.  The trick with negative emotions is to 1) express them in a socially acceptable and healthy manner and 2) express them in a way that aligns with your values.

• When we feel that we're choosing our problems, we feel empowered.  When we feel that our problems are being forced upon us against our will, we feel victimized and miserable.  We don't always control what happens to us.  But we always control how we interpret what happens to us, as well as how we respond.

• The more we choose to accept responsibility in our lives, the more power we will exercise over our lives.  Accepting responsibility for our problems is thus the first step to solving them.

• Nobody else is ever responsible for your situation but you.  Many people may be to blame for your unhappiness, but nobody is ever responsible for your unhappiness but you.  This is because you  always get to choose how you see things, how you react to things, how you value things. 

• Certainty is the enemy of growth.  Instead of striving for certainty, we should be in constant search of doubt.  Being wrong opens us up to the possibility of change.  Being wrong brings the opportunity for growth.

• The more you embrace being uncertain and not knowing, the more comfortable you will feel in knowing what you don't know.

• We can be truly successful only at something we're willing to fail at.  If we're unwilling to fail, then we're unwilling to succeed.

• We need some sort of existential crisis to take an objective look at how we've been deriving meaning in our life, and then consider changing course.

• For a relationship to be healthy, both people must be willing and able to both say no and hear no.

• Death is the only thing we can know with any certainty.  The only way to be comfortable with death is to understand and see yourself as something bigger than yourself; to choose values that stretch beyond serving yourself, that are simple and immediate and controllable and tolerant of the chaotic world around you.

'The Sun and Her Flowers', Rupi Kaur

Rating: 6/10

Overall Thoughts

'The Sun and Her Flowers' is divided into five chapters, each reflecting a floral theme, and it takes you on a journey of wilting, falling, rooting, rising and blooming.

Wilting is essentially about breakups, and it signifies a person's heart shattering.  Falling is its downfall, and is portrayed by Rupi Kaur as the process of coming into terms with yourself and the first attempt at achieving recovery.  Rooting is the process of regaining strength and self-worth.  The author's experiences as an immigrant who moved from Punjab to Canada is strongly reflected in this chapter.  Rising is about finding love and relationships.  And finally, Blooming is about self-love, self-actualisation, and feeling comfortable within one's own skin.

The author's writing has definitely grown and evolved since 'Milk and Honey', and this book felt much more personal.  In 'The Sun and Her Flowers', her poems contain controversial and difficult subject matters such as immigration, refugees, mental illness, rape, abuse and sexual empowerment, as opposed to only talking about feminism and love.  

Favourites from 'The Sun and Her Flowers'

"in order to fall asleep
i have to imagine your body
crooked behind mine
spoon ladled into spoon
till i can hear your breath
i have to recite your name
till you answer and
we have a conversation
only then
can my mind
drift off to sleep"

.....

"it isn't what we left behind
that breaks me
it's what we could've built
had we stayed"

.....

"love does not look like a person
love is our actions
love is giving all we can
even if it's just the bigger slice of cake
love is understanding
we have the power to hurt one another
but we are going to do everything in our power
to make sure we don't
love is figuring out all the kind sweetness we deserve
and when someone shows up
saying they will provide it as you do
but their actions seem to break you
rather than build you
love is knowing whom to choose"

.....

"you cannot 
walk in and out of me
like a revolving door
i have too many miracles
happening inside me
to be your convenient option"

.....

"you call to tell me you miss me
i turn to fact the front door of the house
waiting for a knock
days later you call to say you need me
but still aren't here
the dandelions on the lawn
are rolling their eyes in disappointment
the grass has declared you yesterday's news
what do i care
if you love me
or miss me
or need me
when you aren't doing anything about it
if i'm not the love of your life
i'll be the greatest loss instead"

.....

"where do we go from here my love
when it's over and i'm standing between us
whose side do i run to
when every nerve in my body is pulsing for you
when my moth waters at the thought
when you are pulling me in just by standing there
how do i turn around and choose myself"

.....

"you are waiting for someone 
who is not coming back
meaning
you are living our life
hoping that someone will realize
they can't live theirs without you"

.....

"i do not weep
because i'm unhappy
i weep because i have everything
yet i am unhappy"

.....

"you must remember it too
how the rest of the city slept
while we sat awakened for the first time
we hadn't touched yet
but we managed to travel in and out
of each other with our words
our limbs dizzying with enough electricity
to form half a sun
we drank nothing that night
but i was intoxixated
i went home and thought
are we soul mates"

.....

"why am i always running in circles
between wanting you to want me
and when you want me
deciding it is too emotionally naked
for me to live with
why do i make loving me so difficult
as if you should never have to witness
the ghosts i have tucked under my breast
i used to be more open
when it came to matters like this my love"

.....

"i say maybe this is a mistake.  maybe we need more than love
to make this work.
you place your lips on mine.  when our faces are buzzing with
the ecstasy of kissing you say tell me that isn't right.  and as
much as i'd like to think with my head.  my racing heart is all
that makes sense.  there.  right there is the answer you're
looking for.  in my loss of breath.  my lack of words.  my
silence.  my inability to speak means you've filled my
stomach with so many butterflies that even if this is a
mistake.  it could only be right to be this wrong with you."

.....

"it has been one of the greatest and most difficult years of
my life.  i learned everything is temporary.  moments.  
feelings.  people.  flowers.  i learned love is about giving.
everything.  and letting it hurt.  i learned vulnerability is
always the right choice because it is easy to be cold in a 
world that makes it so very difficult to remain soft.  i learned
all things come in twos.  life and death.  pain and joy.  salt and
sugar.  me and you.  it is the balance of the universe.  it has
been the year of hurting so bad but living so good.  making
friends out of strangers.  making strangers out of friends.
learning mint chocolate chip ice cream will fix just about
everything.  and for the pains it can't there will always be my
mother's arms.  we must learn to focus on warm energy.
always.  soak our limbs in it and become better lovers to the 
world.  for if we can't learn to be kind to each other how will
we ever learn to be kind to the most desperate parts of 
ourselves."

'The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari', Robin S. Sharma

Rating: 8/10

Overall Thoughts

This is the sort of book that will add value and essence to your life. It will give you direction when you're going through hard times and are at your lowest point.  It makes you ponder about your life and guide you to ask yourself, "am I happy with my life right now?" "what is my life purpose?" "how can I achieve happiness?"

The book essentially discusses the Seven Virtues of Enlightened Learning, which are:-

1. Master your mind
2. Follow your purpose
3. Practice kaizen
4. Live with discipline
5. Respect your time
6. Selflessly serve others
7. Embrace the present

Each of these Virtues are discussed in some detail in separate chapters, each of them with a number of concepts and habits to develop.  Though these may not be new concepts, the Virtues explained in the book are easily applicable to one's life.

'The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari' is one of the best self-help books I’ve read to date.  It’s rare to find a book that offers a story and a plethora of inspirational quotes, which actually make you think about your life. 

Lessons from 'The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari'

1. Every event has a purpose and every setback its lesson.  I have realized that failure, whether of the personal, professional or even spiritual kind, is essential to personal expansion.  It brings inner growth and a whole host of psychic rewards.  Never regret your past.  Rather, embrace it as the teacher that it is.
2. I've also come to see that success on the outside means nothing unless you also have success within.  There is a huge difference between well-being and being well-off.
3. Investing in yourself is the best investment you will ever make.  It will not only improve your life, it will improve the lives of all those around you.
4. It is only when you have mastered the art of loving yourself that you can truly love others.  It's only when you have opened your own heart that you can touch the hearts of others.  When you feel centered and alive, you are in a much better position to be a better person.
5. To live life to the fullest, you must stand guard at the gate of your garden and let only the very best information enter.  You truly cannot afford the luxury of a negative thought - not even one ... the ones who do more than just exist, the ones who fan the flames of their human potential and truly savor the magical dance of life do different things than those whose lives are ordinary.  Foremost amongst the things that they do is adopt a positive paradigm about their world and all that is in it.
6. There are no mistakes in life, only lessons.  There is no such thing as a negative experience, only opportunities to grow, learn and advance along the road of self-mastery.  From struggle comes strength.  Even pain can be a wonderful teacher.
7. Find out what you truly love to do and then direct all of your energy towards doing it ... Once you find out what your life's work is, your world will come alive.  You will wake up every morning with a limitless reservoir of energy and enthusiasm.  All your thoughts will be focused on your definite objective.
8. There is nothing noble about being superior to some other person.  True nobility lies in being superior to your former self.
9. It doesn't matter what other people say about you.  What is important is what you say to yourself.  Do not be concerned with the judgment of others so long as you know what you are doing is right.
10. The purpose of life is a life of purpose.  Those who are truly enlightened know what they want out of life, emotionally, materially, physically and spiritually.
11. The real source of happiness can be stated in a word: achievement.
12. Concentrate every ounce of your mental energy on self-discovery.  Learn what you excel at and what makes you happy.
13. When  you decide to start concentrating your mind on your life's main aims, your mind starts to filter out the unimportant and focus only on the important.
14. Have a clear vision of your outcome.  Create positive pressure to keep you inspired.  Never set a goal without attaching a timeline to it.
15. Never do anything because you have to.  The only reason to do something is because you want to and because you know it is the right thing for you to do.
16. What lies behind you and what lies in front of you is nothing when compared to what lies within you.
17. The only limits on your life are those that you set yourself.
18. Ensure that your daily schedule includes a mandatory period of peace.
19. Words affect the mind in a pronounced way.  Whether they are spoken or written, they are powerful influences.  While what you say to others is important, even more important is what you say to yourself.
20. Strengthening your character affects the way you see yourself and the actions you take.  The actions you take come together to form your habits and, this is important, your habits lead you to your destiny.
21. Focus only on your priorities, those activities which are truly meaningful.  Your life will be uncluttered, rewarding and exceptionally peaceful ... unless you reduce your needs, you will never be fulfilled.
22. Failure is not having the courage to try, nothing more and nothing less.  The only thing standing between most people and their dreams ifs the fear of failure.  Yet failure is essential to success in any endeavor.  Failure tests us and allows us to grow.  It offers us lessons and guides us along the path of enlightenment.
23. The most meaningful things in your life should never be sacrificed to those that are the least meaningful ... failing to plan is planning to fail.
24. Being engaged in a pursuit that truly challenges you is the surest route to personal satisfaction.  But the real key to remember is that happiness is a journey, not a destination.
25. Never put off happiness for the sake of achievement.  Never put off the things that are important for your well-being and satisfaction to a later time.
26. Life doesn't always give you what you ask for, but it always gives you what you need.

'Milk and Honey', Rupi Kaur

Rating: 5/10

Overall Thoughts

Split into four chapters, (i) the hurting, (ii) the loving, (iii) the breaking, and (iv) the healing, Rupi Kaur writes about experiences of love, loss, violence, abuse and femininity in 'Milk and Honey'.  However, majority of Kaur's poetry are just simple sentences broken up with spaces.  Therefore, this collection would not be to everyone's liking. 

The book is filled with beautiful illustrations/visuals and leaves readers with an important message :-

"sex takes the consent of two
if one person is lying there not doing anything
cause they are not ready
or not in the mood
or simply don't want to 
yet the other is having sex
with their body it's not love
it is rape"

Having recently worked with an independent feminist organization, I do believe that this book would be highly relatable to survivors of domestic abuse and intimate partner violence and to any women who have experienced any form of violence or discrimination. 

To survivors of rape:-

"the rape will
tear you 
in half
but it 
will not
end you"

Favourites from 'Milk and Honey'

"you have sadness

living in places

sadness shouldn't live"

.....

"you tell me to quiet down cause

my opinions make me less beautiful

but I was not made with a fire in my belly

so I could be put out

I was not made with a lightness on my tongue

so I could be easy to swallow

I was made heavy

half blade and half silk

difficult to forget and not east

for the mind to follow"

.....

"he placed his hands

on my mind

before reaching

for my waist

my hips

or my lips

he didn't call me

beautiful first

he called me

exquisite"

- how he touches me

.....

"i'd be lying if i said

you make me speechless

the truth is you make my

tongue so weak it forgets

what language to speak in"

.....

"I need someone

who knows struggle

as well as I do

someone

willing to hold my feet in their lap

on days it is too difficult to stand

the type of person who gives

exactly what I need

before I even know I need it

the type of lover who hears me

even when I do not speak

is the type of understanding

I demand"

- the type of lover I need

.....

"I always 

get myself

into this mess

I always let him

tell me I am beautiful

and half believe it

I always jump thinking

he will catch me

at the fall

I am hopelessly

a lover and

a dreamer and

that will be the 

death of me"

.....

"the next time you

have your coffee black

you'll taste the bitter

state he left you in

it will make you weep

but you'll never stop drinking

you'd rather have the

darkest parts of him

than have nothing"

.....

"I am confident I am over you. so much that some

mornings I wake up with a smile on my face and

my hands pressed together thanking the universe

for pulling you out of me. thank god I cry. thank

god you left. I would not be the empire I am today

if you had stayed.

but then.

there are some nights I imagine what I might do if

you showed up. how if you walked into the room

this very second every awful thing you've ever

done would be tossed out the closest window and 

all the love would rise up again. it would pour

through my eyes as if it never really left in the first

place. as if it's been practicing how to stay silent

so long only so it could be this loud on your arrival.

can someone explain that. how even when the love

leaves. it doesn't leave. how even when I am so

past you. I am so helplessly brought back to you."

'The God of Small Things', Arundhati Roy

Rating: 6.5/10

Overall Thoughts

Revolving around the themes of class relations and cultural tensions, forbidden love, betrayal, and social discrimination, 'The God of Small Things' is a tale set in Kerala (Southern India) about a fractured family who is unhappy in their own way, and through flashbacks and flashforwards, the author unravels the secrets of the family's unhappiness. 

It is essentially a story about the childhood experiences of fraternal twins Estha and Rahel whose lives are destroyed by the "Love Laws" that lay down "who should be loved, and how. And how much."  Even while reading the first thirty pages of the novel, you know bad things will happen, but it's not initially clear who are the perpetrators and how the story would eventually unfold.  

Definitely a thought-provoking novel.  The language used is both creative and original, but jumping back and forth in time makes it difficult to keep the characters and their timelines straight. 

Favourites from 'The God of Small Things'

"They sensed somehow that she lived in the penumbral shadows between two worlds, just beyond the grasp of their power.  That a woman they had already damned, now had little left to lose, and could therefore be dangerous."  

"'We're Prisoners of War,' Chacko said.  'Our dreams have been doctored.  We belong nowhere.  We sail unanchored on troubled seas.  We may never be allowed ashore.  Our sorrows will never be sad enough.  Our joys never happy enough.  Our dreams never big enough.  Our lives never important enough.  To matter.'"

"When you hurt people, they begin to love you less.  That's what careless words do.  They make people love you a little less."  

"If he touched her, he couldn't talk to her, if he loved her he couldn't leave, if he spoke he couldn't listen, if he fought he couldn't win."  

"Ammu shivered.  With that cold feeling on a hot afternoon that Life had been Lived.  That her cup was full of dust.  That the air, the sky, the trees, the sun, the rain, the light and darkness were all slowly turning to sand.  That sand would fill her nostrils, her lungs, her mouth.  Would pull her down, leaving on the surface a spinning swirl like crabs leave when they burrow downwards on a beach." 

"This man tonight is dangerous.  His despair complete.  This story is the safety net above which he swoops and dives like a brilliant clown in a bankrupt circus.  It's all he has to keep from crashing through the world like a falling stone.  It is his colour and his light.  It is the vessel into which he pours himself.  It gives him shape.  Structure.  It harnesses him.  It contains him.  His Love.  His Madness.  His Hope.  His Infinnate Joy."

"Change is one thing.  Acceptance is another."

"Biology designed the dance. Terror timed it.  Dictated the rhythm with which their bodies answered each other.  As though they knew already that for each tremor of pleasure they would pay with an equal measure of pain.  As though they knew that how far they went would be measured against how far they would be taken."  

'Sea of Strangers', Lang Leav

Rating: 6/10

Overall Thoughts

I've always loved Lang Leav's poetry, especially Memories.  She typically writes of love and loss, grief and healing, power and weakness.  However, unlike her previous books, Sea of Strangers takes readers through a journey of self-love and self-discovery; it highlights empowerment and being strong without the need of a relationship. 

Favourites from 'Sea of Strangers'

"There are days when the melancholy settles on you like a sudden change in weather.  The kind of sadness that is intangible.  Like the presence of an ache where you can't pinpoint exactly where it hurts, you just know it does."

***

"Men don't compare us with other women.  They compare us to an ideal." 

***

"I though of you with

my heart already broken; 

I thought of you

as it was breaking again.  

I think of you now, 

as I am healing.  

With somebody new - 

I'll think of you then."  

***

"When you don't have the whole attention of someone, 

you find yourself begging for it from everyone."

***

"If they were meant to be in your life, nothing could ever make them leave.  If they weren't, nothing in the world could make them stay."

***

"I shed my past like layers of skin.  I let them fall at my feet like discarded clothing.  

I pay my dues and make amends for the sins of my youth.  

I step out from the shadows and into the light, naked and free.  

I can hear my spirit singing.  I can feel my wings unfolding.  

And the sky is calling my name."

***

"It's possible to move on from someone even if your heart refuses to let go.  And it's not something you need to consciously do.  It will just happen gradually, over time.  The ache will always be there, but the intensity will fade, and you'll find other beautiful things to fill your days with."

***

"If there is someone else for you now, then why do you linger here?
We've said our goodbyes, but your eyes won't let me go.  
I can see it on your face, everything you have ever felt for me.  
My name is still written there, a trial in permanent ink, a transcript of your heart."

***

"I have moved so far away from you that I have become a myth; a lie you tell yourself each night.  I am the one true thing you've held in the palm of your hand, the key to everything you wanted.  

Your name smiles at me from a crumpled envelope, addressed to the past.  Unsent and unseen,  Inside I wrote you a story about the moon, how night after night the darkness carved at the pale curve of her body until she became half the woman she was.

There is a word that hurts my heart - one I don't ever say out loud.  Like the shadow that lingers in the light, I can't separate myself from your memory.  But there are some nights when I look up at the sky, and the moon is whole again."

***

"Today I feel small - looked down on and disregarded.  My thoughts are of little importance.  My words have no bearing on the weight of the world.  I am tired of being taken for granted.  If only I could get back a fraction of what I give.  But my efforts go unnoticed, and my soul keeps wishing to be noticed, to be valued; to be understood."

***

"There was a time when I felt everything there was to feel with you.  From blinding rage to bitter jealously; searing love to utter despair.  And then, the worst one of all - sweet, irrational hope - like a hypnotic melody leading me to the edge of a cliff. 

Here I am on the other side, the baptism of every human emotion.  What happens after you feel everything there is to feel?  Somehow, there is a sense of comfort in knowing nothing will ever hit me quite as hard again.  Nothing will ever be as beautiful, but neither will anything hurt as much."

'The Handmaid's Tail', Margaret Atwood

Rating: 8.5/10

Overall Thoughts

This dystopia is set in the Republic of Gilead, a totalitarian state that has replaced the United States of America.  Due to the dangerously low production rates, Handmaids are assigned to bear children for elite couples who have trouble conceiving.  Oppression is evident, as these Handmaids are assigned names that are not their own.  The protagonist is called "Offred"; she is of-Fred, essentially implying that she belongs to her Commander.  Once a month, on 'ceremonial nights', Offred must lie on her back, her head resting on the Commander's wife's lap, and have ritual sexual intercourse with the Commander. 

In the Republic of Gilead, women's freedom are restricted - women are enslaved, forbidden to read, stripped of their names and identities, and casually raped.  Further, the women are physically segregated according to the colour of their clothing - the Commander's wives are dressed in blue, Marthas (ie cooks and maids) in green, Handmaid's in red, and children in white. 

Overall, the plot is outstanding, though characterization in 'The Handmaid's Tale' is considerably weak.  I highly recommend watching the series adaptation of the book, as the expanded characters and additional sub-plots provides a better visual. 

Favourites from 'The Handmaid's Tale'

"I remember that yearning, for something that was always about to happen and was never the same as the hands that were on us there and then, in the small of the back, or out back, in the parking lot, or in the television room with the sound turned down and only the pictures flickering over lifting flesh."  

"The night is mine, my own time, to do with as I will, as long as I am quiet.  As long as I don't move.  As long as I lie still."  

"There's always someone else.  Even when there is no one."  

"We lived in the gaps between the stories."  

"My hands are shaking.  Why am I frightened?  I've crossed no boundaries, I've given no trust, taken no risk, all is safe.  It's the choice that terrifies me.  A way out, a salvation."  

"There's time to spare.  This is one of the things I wasn't prepared for - the amount of unfilled time, the long parentheses of nothing.  Time as white sound."

"I have failed once again to fulfil the expectations of others, which have become my own."  

"He too is illegal, here, with me, he can't give me away.  Nor I him; for the moment we're mirrors.  He puts his hand on my arm, pulls me against him, his mouth on mine, what else comes from such denial?"  

"...nobody dies from lack of sex.  It's lack of love we die from.  There's nobody here I can love, all the people I could love are dead or elsewhere.  Who knows where they are or what their names are now?  They might as well be nowhere, as I am for them.  I too am a missing person."  

"Sanity is a valuable possession; I hoard it the way people once hoarded money.  I save it, so I will have enough, when the time comes."  

"But who can remember pain, once it's over?  All that remains of it is a shadow, not in the mind even, in the flesh.  Pain marks you, but too deep to see.  Out of sight, out of mind."  

"But remember that forgiveness too is a power.  To beg for it is a power, and to withhold or bestow it is a power, perhaps the greatest."  

"To want is to have a weakness.  It's this weakness, whatever it is, that entices me.  It's like a small crack in a wall, before now impenetrable.  If I press my eye to it, this weakness of his, I may be able to see my way clear."  

"The more difficult it was to love the particular man beside us, the more we believed in Love, abstract and total." 

"Time has not stood still.  It has washed over me, washed me away, as if I'm nothing more than a woman of sand, left by a careless child too near the water.  I have been obliterated for her.  I am only a shadow now, far back behind the glib shiny surface of this photograph.  A shadow of a shadow, as dead mothers become.  You can see it in her eyes: I am not there."  

"I would like to be without shame.  I would like to be shameless.  I would like to be ignorant.  Then I would not know how ignorant I was."  

"I wish this story were different.  I wish it were more civilized.  I wish it showed me in a better light, if not happier, then at least more active, less hesitant, less distracted by trivia.  I wish it had more shape.  I wish it were about love, or even about sunsets, birds, rainstorms, or snow."  

"We make love each time as if we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that there will never be any more, for either of us, with anyone, ever.  And then when there is, that too is always a surprise, extra, a gift."  

'Perks of Being a Wallflower', Stephen Chbosky

Rating: 6/10

Overall Thoughts

Second time reading this book and I still don't get what the hype was about back when the book was  first released/published.  Whilst the author addresses a number of pressing issues such as suicide, rape, abortion, death, drugs, homosexuality and etc in the book, none of these were dealt with in depth. The story line's average, characters are likable but not really relatable, ending was pretty good but somewhat predictable.   The story is written in a plain and simple language, making it an easy read. 

Chbosky has written the novel in the form of letters which Charlie writes to a 'friend' whose identity remains a mystery.  The story follows Charlie through his experiences in school, in making new friends, dating for the first time, his first kiss, his first love, his experiments with alcohol and drugs, and him remembering a family secret which he has repressed. 

Overall, the movie was definitely better than the book.  And that says a lot..

Favourites from 'Perks of Being a Wallflower'

"... I am both happy and sad and I'm still trying to figure out how that could be."

"... we accept the love we think we deserve."  

"I feel infinite."  

"You see things.  You keep quiet about them.  And you understand."  

"I don't know if  you've ever felt like that.  That you wanted to sleep for a thousand years.  Or just not exist.  Or just not be aware that you do exist."

"Something really is wrong with me.  And I don't know what it is."  

"I don't know how much longer I can keep going without a friend.  I used to be able to do it very easily, but that was before I knew what having a friend was like.  It's much easier not to know things sometimes."  

"I would die for you.  But I won't live for you."  

'"I couldn't really tell if she was happy or sad, but it was enough just to see her and know that she was there."  

"She held me a little closer.  I held her a little closer.  And we kept dancing.  It was the one time all day that I really wanted the clock to stop.  And just be there for a long time."  

"If somebody likes me, I want them to like the real me, not what they think I am.  And I don't want them to carry it around inside.  I want them to show me, so I can feel it, too.  I want them to be able to do whatever they want around me."  

"... even if we don't have the power to choose where we come from, we can still choose where we go from there.  We can still do things.  And we can try to feel okay about them."  

'The First 90 Days', Michael Watkins

Rating: 7/10

Overall Thoughts

Leaders, regardless of their level, are most vulnerable in their first few months in a new position because they lack detailed knowledge of the challenges they will face and what it will take to succeed in meeting them.  They also have not yet developed a network of relationships to sustain them.

This book is suitable for individuals who are in their critical career transition periods.  I personally do not think that this book introduces groundbreaking new ideas, but it does lay out useful strategies and tactics for successful leadership.  'The First 90 Days' affords some clarity on how to secure early wins, align goals up and down the chain, anticipate surprises, build coalitions, stay balanced, and avoid vicious downward spirals.

Summary of 'The First 90 Days'

1. Promote Yourself

• Prepare yourself mentally to move into your new role by letting go of the past and embracing the imperatives of the new situation to give yourself a running start.  A related mistake is to believe that you will be successful in your new job by continuing to do what you did in your previous job, only more so.  
• Because you may not get a clean transition in terms of job responsibilities, it is essential to discipline yourself to make the transition mentally.  Do whatever it takes to get into the transition state of mind.  
• Your transition begins the moment you learn you are being considered for a new job.  It ends roughly 90 days after you begin the job.  Regardless of how much preparation time you get, start planning what you hope to accomplish by specific milestones.  
• Your weaknesses can make you vulnerable, but so can your strengths.  The qualities that have made you successful so far can prove to be weaknesses in your new role.  
• As you are progressively promoted, it becomes increasingly important to get good political counsel and personal advice.  Political counselors help you understand the politics of the organization, which is especially important when you plan to implement change.  Personal advisers help you keep perspective and equilibrium in times of stress.  
• Watch out for people who want to hold you back.  Be realistic about what you can accomplish.  There is always more that you could do, so keep in mind that time to learn and plan before you enter a new job is a very precious commodity.  
• Friends may not want their relationships with you to change.  But change they must, and the sooner you accept that (and help others to accept it too), the better.  Others in your organization will be looking for signs of favoritism and will judge you accordingly.  If you don't establish limits early, you will live to regret it.  Getting others to accept your promotion is an essential part of promoting yourself.  

2. Accelerate Your Learning

• It is essential to figure out what you need to know about your new organization and then to learn it as rapidly as you can.  Why?  Because efficient and effective learning reduces your window of vulnerability: You can identify potential problems that might erupt and take you off track.  It equips you to begin making good business decisions earlier.  
• Effective learning calls for figuring out what you need to learn so you can focus your efforts.  Devote some time to defining your learning agenda as early as possible, and return to it periodically to refine and supplement it.  
• Efficient learning means identifying the best available sources of insight and then figuring out how to extract maximum insight with the least possible outlay of your precious time.  
• Define your learning agenda, ideally before you even formally enter the organization.  A learning agenda crystallizes your learning priorities: What do you most need to learn?  Start by generating questions about the past, questions about the present, and questions about the future.  Why are things done the way they are?  Are the reasons why something was done still valid today?  Are conditions changing such that something different should be done in the future?  
• Identify the best sources of insight.  To make effective decisions, you also need "soft" information about the organization's strategy, technical capabilities, culture. and politics.  You need to listen to key people both inside and outside the organization.  
• Adopt structured learning methods.  When diagnosing a new organization, start by meeting with your direct reports one-to-one.  Ask them essentially the same five questions: (1) What are the biggest challenges the organization is facing (or will face) in the near future?  (2) Why is the organization facing (or going to face) these challenges?  (3) What are the most promising unexploited opportunities for growth?  (4) What would need to happen for the organization to exploit the potential of these opportunities?  (5) If you were me, what would you focus attention on?  By asking everyone the same set of questions, you can identify prevalent and divergent views, and thus avoid being swayed by the first or most forceful or articulate person you talk to.   How people answer can also tell you a lot about your new tea, and its politics: Who answers directly and who is evasive or prone to going on tangents?  Who takes responsibility and who points fingers?  Who has a broad view of the business and who seems stuck in a silo?  
• Create a learning plan.  Learning should be a primary focus of your plan for your first 30 days on the job.  
• Learn about culture.  Because cultural habits and norms operate powerfully to reinforce the status quo, it is vital to diagnose problems in the existing culture and to figure out how to begin to address them.  Do people seem most concerned with individual accomplishment and reward, or are they more focused on group accomplishment?  Does the group seem more casual, or more formal?  More aggressive and hard-driving, or more laid-back?  

3. Match Strategy to Situation

• The four types of business situations that new leaders must contend with are start-up, turn around, realignment, and sustaining success (STARS model).  
• Identify challenges and opportunities.  If you are succeeding the leader of a high-performing business, the challenge will be to take charge in your own way while preserving what is good about the organization.  If you are in a start-up situation, you will be responsible for creating the organization.  If you are in a  realignment situation, you will have to build awareness of the need for change.  Each situation also presents characteristic opportunities that you can leverage to build momentum.  
• Transform organizational psychology.  In start-ups, the prevailing mood is often of excited confusion, and your job is to channel that energy into productive directions, in part by deciding what not to do.  In turnarounds, you may be dealing with a group of people who are close to despair; it is your job to provide a light at the end of the tunnel.  In realignments, you will likely have to pierce through the veil of denial that is preventing people from confronting the need to reinvent the business.  In sustaining success situations, you have to "invent the challenge" by finding ways to keep people motivated, to combat complacency, and to find new direction for growth - both organizational and personal.  
• Focus your energy.  Clarity about the type of situation you are confronting helps you make three fundamental early choices: (1) How much emphasis will you place on learning as opposed to doing?  (2) How much emphasis will you place on offense as opposed to defense?  (3) What should you do to get some early wins?  

4. Secure Early Wins

• Avoid common traps: (1) failing to focus, (2) not taking the business situation into account, (3) not adjusting for the culture, (4) failing to get wins that matter to your boss, (5) letting your means undermine your ends.  
• Plan to make successive waves of change.  The goal of the first wave of change is to secure early wins: the new leader tailors each early initiatives to build personal credibility, establish key relationships, and identify and harvest low-hanging fruit - the highest potential opportunities for short term improvements in organization performance.  The second wave of change addresses more fundamental issues of strategy, structure, systems, and skills to reshape the organization.  
• Establish long term goals.  Plan your early wins so they help you build credibility in the short run and lay a foundation for your longer-term goals.  Your efforts to secure early wins should (1) be consistent with your A-item business priorities, and (2) introduce the new patterns of behavior you want to instill in the organization.  
• Focus on business priorities and behavioral changes.  Your longer term goals should consist of A-item business priorities and desired changes in the behavior of people in your organization.  A-item priorities constitute the destination you are striving to reach in terms of measurable business objectives.  
• Build personal credibility.  When you arrive, people will rapidly begin to assess you and your capabilities.  Your early actions, good and bad, will shape perceptions.  Once opinions about you has begun to harden, it is difficult to change.  In general, new leaders are perceived as more credible when they are: demanding but able to be satisfied, accessible but not too familiar, decisive but judicious, focused but flexible, active without casing commotion, willing to make tough calls but humane.  
• Secure tangible results.  Identify two or three key areas, at most, where you will seek to achieve rapid improvement.  If you take on too many initiatives, you risk losing focus.  But don't put all your eggs in one basket.  
• To translate your goals into specific initiatives to secure early wins, work through the following guidelines: (1) keep your long term goals in mind, (2) identify a few promising focal points, (3) concentrate on the most promising focal points, (4) launch pilot projects, (5) elevate change agents, (6) leverage the pilot projects to introduce new behaviors.  
• Avoid predictable surprises.  

5. Negotiate Success

• Proactively engage by negotiating with your boss to establish realistic expectations, reach consensus on the situation, and secure enough resources.  
• Focus on the fundamentals: (1) Don't trash the past; (2) Don't stay away from your boss; (3) Don't approach your boss only with problems; (4) Don't try to change the boss; (5) Take 100% responsibility for making the relationship work; (6) Clarify mutual expectations early and often; (7) Negotiate timelines for diagnosis and action planning; (8) Aim for early wins in areas important to the boss; (9) Pursue good marks from those whose opinions your boss respects.  
• Educate your boss.  Shape your boss's perception of what you can and should achieve.  You may find your boss's expectations unrealistic, or simply at odds with your own beliefs about what needs to be done.  If so, you will have to work hard to make your views converge.  
• Underpromise and overdeliver.  Whether you and your boss agree on expectations, try to bias yourself somewhat toward underpromising achievements and overdelivering results.  Be conservative in what you promise.  If you promise too much and fail to deliver, you risk undermining your credibility.  
• Clarify, clarify, clarify.  Even if you are sure you know that your boss expects, you should go back regularly to confirm and clarify.  Try asking the same questions in different ways to gain more insight.  Work at reading between the lines accurately and developing good hypotheses about what your boss is likely to want.  Try to put yourself in your boss's shoes and understand how you fit into the larger picture.  Don't let key issues remain ambiguous; ambiguity about goals and expectations is dangerous.  
• Diagnose your boss's style of communication.  How does your boss like to communicate?  How often?  What kinds of decisions does your boss want to be involved in, and when can you make calls on your own?  Does your boss arrive at the office early and work late?  Does he or she expect others to do the same?  You may find it helpful to talk to other who have worked with your boss in the past.  Be careful not to be perceived as eliciting criticism of how the boss manages.  Listen to others' perspectives, but base your evolving strategy chiefly on your own experience.  

6. Achieve Alignment

• To equip your group to achieve its goals, 5 elements of organizational architecture all need to work together: (1) Strategy, (2) Structure, (3) Systems, (4) Skills, (5) Culture.  
• Your goal during your first 90 days should be to identify potential misalignments and then design a plan for correcting them.  
• Avoid: (1) Trying to restructure your way out of deeper problems; (2) Creating structures that are too complex; (3) Automating problem processes; (4) Making changes for change's sake; (5) Overestimating your group's capacity to absorb strategic shifts.  
• Getting started: (1) Start with strategy: take a hard look at how your unit is positioned with respect to the larger organization's goals and your A-item priorities; (2) Look at supporting structures, systems and skills; (3) Decide how and when you will introduce the new strategy; (4) Reshape structure, systems and skills simultaneously; (5) Close the loop: as you learn more about your group's structure, systems and skills, you will gain insight into the team's capabilities and its cultural capacity for change, which will in turn deepen your understanding of what changes in strategic positioning are possible over what time period.  
• Improve core processes.  Do not try to introduce radical changes in more than a couple of core processes at a time.  Your group will not be able to absorb so much change.  

7. Build Your Team

• Finding the right people is essential, but it is not enough.  Begin by assessing existing team members to decide who will stay and who will have to go.  Then devise a plan for getting new people and moving the people you retain into the right positions.  You still need to put in place goals, incentives, and performance measures that will propel your team in the desired directions.  You must establish new processes to promote teamwork.  
• Avoid: (1) Keeping the existing team too long: a good rule of thumb is that you should decide by the end of your first 90 days who will remain and who will go; (2) Not working organizational alignment and team restructuring issues in parallel; (3) Not holding onto the good people; (4) Undertaking team building before the core team is in place; (5) Making implementation-dependent decisions too early; (5) Trying to do it all yourself.  
• Assess your existing team.  During your first 30 to 60 days, you need to sort out what roles each individual plays, and how the group has worked in the past.  Consider these 6 criteria when evaluating people who report to you: (1) Competence, (2) Judgment, (3) Energy, (4) Focus, (5) Relationships, (6) Trust.  
• Assess your people.  The first test is whether any of them fail to meet your threshold requirements.  If so, begin planning to replace them.  Go on to the next step: evaluate their strengths and weaknesses.  One way to assess judgment is to work with a person for an extended time and observe whether he or she is able to (1) make sound predictions and (2) develop good strategies for avoiding problems.  
• Restructure your team.  Assign each team member to one of the following categories: (1) keep in place; (2) keep and develop; (3) move to another position; (4) observe for a while; (5) replace (low priority); (6) replace (high priority).  
• Consider alternative to outright termination.  Letting an employee go can be difficult and time-consuming.  You can work with HR to shift the person to a more suitable position.  
• Establish new team processes.  (1) Assess your team's existing processes; (2) Target processes for change; (3) Alter who participates; (4) Manage decision making.   
• You will know you have been successful in building your team when you reach the breakeven point - when the energy the team creates is greater than the energy you need to put into it.   

8. Create Coalitions

• One common mistake of new leaders is to devote too much of their transition time to the vertical dimension of influence - upward to bosses and downward to direct reports - and not enough to the horizontal dimension, namely, peers and external constituencies.  
• It is never a good idea to approach people for the first time when you need something from them.  Discipline yourself in building relationship capital with people you anticipate needing to work with later.  
• Identify the key players.  Try to identify the sources of power that give particular people influence in the organization.  If you can convince these vital individuals that your A-item priorities and other goals have merit, broader acceptance of your ideas is likely to follow.  
• Identify supporters, opponents, and convincibles.  Whatever supporters' reason for backing you, do not take their support for granted.  It is never enough merely to identify support; you have to solidify and nurture it.  When you meet resistance, try to grasp the reasons behind it before labeling people as implacable opponents.  When you have identified convincibles, look into what motivates them.  
• If you approach the right people first, you can set in motion a virtuous cycle.  Focus on approaching (1) people with whom you already have supportive relationships, (2) individuals whose interests are strongly compatible with yours, (3) people who have the critical resources you need to make your agenda succeed, and (4) people with important connections who can recruit more supporters.  
• To consolidate existing support, call on established social and political relationships and strengthen them through regular conversations.  Make sure you keep your allies up to date.  Pay attention to how they react to changing conditions.  You want to affirm the importance of existing relationships and leverage them into support for your new effort.  

9. Keep Your Balance

• If you fail to establish solid boundaries defining what you are willing and not willing to do, the people around you - bosses, peers, and direct reports - will take whatever you have to give.  The more you give, the less they will respect you and the more they will ask of you.  Eventually you will feel angry and resentful that you are being nibbled to death, but you will have no one to blame but yourself.  
• To be effective, you have to be connected to the people who make action happen and to the subterranean flow of information.  Isolation breeds uninformed decision making, which damages your credibility and further reinforces your isolation.  
• 1st pillar of self-efficacy: Adopt success strategies presented in the previous 8 chapters.  
• 2nd pillar of self-efficacy: Enforce personal disciplines.  Success or failure emerges from the accumulation of daily choices that propel you in productive directions or push you off a cliff.
• 3rd pillar of self-efficacy: Build your support systems.    

10. Expedite Everyone

• Begin by working locally; focus on the people who work for you, both new direct reports and people who have been around for a while.  Press them to create their own 90-day acceleration plan.  Help them identify and reach out to people whose support they are likely to need.  Press them on their A-item priorities and plans for securing early wins.  Once you get them up to speed, press them to use the transition acceleration framework with their own people.  
• If you are building a team, consider using the framework to accelerate the team-building process.  Push them to clarify the key challenges and opportunities.  Then move onto alignment issues - strategy, structure, systems, and skills.  Next, focus on how the team will define its A-item priorities and secure early wins.  Finally, explore the kinds of coalitions you and the team will have to marshal the support you need.