Jiaying
My Rating System:
5⭐️: Excellent book AND influenced a change in my views
4.5⭐️: Excellent read
4⭐️: Great read, will recommend
3.5⭐️: Enjoyable read but missing something that will make it great ⬅️⬅️⬅️
3⭐️: An okay read that I didn’t regret spending time on it
2⭐️: Didn’t enjoy
1⭐️: Didn’t enjoy and had serious issues. Will suggest to avoid.
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3.5 stars. In typical fashion of the many Japanese zen-emotional (my own description for this sub-genre) fiction books that have been translated in recent years, there is a sad story to make you tear up. However, I didn't expect Tokue's background and learned something new about the institutional treatment she went through. I liked also the message about engaging with nature.
By default, this book gets a 4.5-star rating as this is a deeply personal trauma that the author has chosen to share to the world. Thanks to Caroline Darian for letting readers have a glimpse into what went on behind what was reported in the news, and I pray for healing, reconciliation, justice and truth to prevail. It makes me so mad to know how Dominic Pelicot continues to attempt to emotionally manipulate Gisele from behind bars but this is the insidious reality of relational abuse that many victims is difficult to escape from. I'm glad Caroline gets to tell her story as well, as she is also a victim that was never able to go to trial for.
Aside from the story, the author wants to advocate for awareness and structural changes to apprehend abusers of chemical submission and for this I hope more people read this book. Recommended.
My Rating System:
5⭐️: Excellent book AND influenced a change in my views
4.5⭐️: Excellent read
4⭐️: Great read, will recommend
3.5⭐️: Enjoyable read but missing something that will make it great
3⭐️: An okay read that I didn’t regret spending time on it ⬅️⬅️⬅️
2⭐️: Didn’t enjoy
1⭐️: Didn’t enjoy and had serious issues. Will suggest to avoid.
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Gave it 3 stars as while I enjoyed the insights of the tensions between what exactly qualifies a person to be Muslim in a state where such a definition has legal implications, the pacing of the book could be slower to flesh out the plot more.
2.5 stars. Plot felt like it went from point-to-point than an arc. Writing is debatable because I think that perhaps in the Japanese language, it is normal to be written like this but in translation, it feels simplistic. One of those books where I felt perhaps something was lost in translation. I also wondered if there are translation errors. There was a line where Momoko was speaking in first person, then right after, Takako thinks that Momoko is weird for talking to herself in third person?
What I liked is that the characters each had their journey to find that place, whether physical or internal, that they felt safe and belonged to. Something we can all relate.
Quote:
“No matter where I went, no matter who I was with, if I could be honest with myself, then that was where I belonged.” - Satoru
My Rating System:
5⭐️: Excellent book AND influenced a change in my views
4.5⭐️: Excellent read
4⭐️: Great read, will recommend
3.5⭐️: Enjoyable read but missing something that will make it great
3⭐️: An okay read that I didn't regret spending time on it
2.5⭐️: Enjoyed some minor parts only, but mainly forgettable ⬅️⬅️⬅️
2⭐️: Didn't enjoy
1⭐️: Didn't enjoy and had serious issues. Will suggest to avoid.
My Rating System:
5⭐️: Excellent book AND influenced a change in my views
4.5⭐️: Excellent read
4⭐️: Great read, will recommend
3.5⭐️: Enjoyable read but missing something that will make it great
3⭐️: An okay read that I didn't regret spending time on it ⬅️⬅️⬅️
2⭐️: Didn't enjoy
1⭐️: Didn't enjoy and had serious issues. Will suggest to avoid.
4.5 stars. One of the most unique and immersive reads I've had. It was very hard to get into at the beginning because it was so different. And the descriptions were difficult to wrap my head around but it mirrors the experience of the characters themselves in this strange world. Once the plot thickened, it had me at the edge of my seat.
My Rating System:
5⭐️: Excellent book AND influenced a change in my views
4.5⭐️: Excellent read ⬅️⬅️⬅️
4⭐️: Great read, will recommend
3.5⭐️: Enjoyable read but missing something that will make it great
3⭐️: An okay read that I didn't regret spending time on it
2⭐️: Didn't enjoy
1⭐️: Didn't enjoy and had serious issues. Will suggest to avoid.
4.2 stars. Possibly my first fractionated rating because I just personally loved the story and was immersed in it, even if not perfect! Its merits definitely won over its minor flaws.
Written in first-person POV of 6 different characters, and there is no explicit indication who. Yet the tone of voice lets me catch it quickly. The strength of this book is definitely the women characters who were resilient and smart. The Rumpelstiltskin inspiration is there but very loosely inspired. It's a long book but it was interesting enough for me to carry on.
The flaws would be that the explanation on how some things worked in the world, or the strategies undertaken by the characters were explained in too cryptic a manner for myself to understand, so I just glossed over it.
My Rating System:
5⭐️: Excellent book AND influenced a change in my views
4.5⭐️: Excellent read
4⭐️: Great read, will recommend ⬅️⬅️⬅️
3.5⭐️: Enjoyable read but missing something that will make it great
3⭐️: An okay read that I didn't regret spending time on it
2⭐️: Didn't enjoy
1⭐️: Didn't enjoy and had serious issues. Will suggest to avoid.
5 stars! Excellent way of telling Apollo's stories through the Muses. I especially appreciated the beautiful conclusion on why Apollo despite his glaring shortcomings is such a revered deity in the Greek pantheon. Greek mythology don't always make sense but this helps us see the relevance of it to us. This makes it more than just a compilation of stories but really an insight on Phoebus Apollo.
3.5 stars. It started off great and I love the rhymes, but somewhere in the second half, I couldn't match the description to the illustrations. Love the message about conservation though and great there is a list of the animals featured to find out more about them.
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My Rating System:
5⭐️: Excellent book AND influenced a change in my views
4.5⭐️: Excellent read
4⭐️: Great read, will recommend
3.5⭐️: Enjoyable read but missing something that will make it great ⬅️⬅️⬅️
3⭐️: An okay read that I didn't regret spending time on it
2⭐️: Didn't enjoy
1⭐️: Didn't enjoy and had serious issues. Will suggest to avoid.
You know what makes a great picture book? It makes you wonder about the world, and you want to share it with your nearest kid. Brendan Wenzel has a way with pictures and playful rhymes, and inspires observation about the world around us and its beauty in all shapes and sizes.
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My Rating System:
5⭐️: Excellent book AND influenced a change in my views ⬅️⬅️⬅️
4.5⭐️: Excellent read
4⭐️: Great read, will recommend
3.5⭐️: Enjoyable read but missing something that will make it great
3⭐️: An okay read that I didn't regret spending time on it
2⭐️: Didn't enjoy
1⭐️: Didn't enjoy and had serious issues. Will suggest to avoid.
Dark humour which I neither found funny nor related to. I do follow the webcomic and appreciated some of it from time to time, but perhaps this collection just wasn't my cup of tea. Purely my subjective opinion.
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My Rating System:
5⭐️: Excellent book AND influenced a change in my views
4.5⭐️: Excellent read
4⭐️: Great read, will recommend
3.5⭐️: Enjoyable read but missing something that will make it great
3⭐️: An okay read that I didn't regret spending time on it
2⭐️: Didn't enjoy ⬅️⬅️⬅️
1⭐️: Didn't enjoy and had serious issues. Will suggest to avoid.
It's difficult for me to rate what is essentially the daily diary of a man.
As a fellow journaller of daily life, my own takeaway was how he journalled - he showed me the true art of writing. Even the most mundane was described with such humour, wit and flair.
I wanted to see his thoughts about Harry Potter and boy, did I get them. They made me feel a little guilty that his private thoughts were being published though.
5 solid stars. This is a book I would like to buy for all children and adult friends alike to read. It's a step up from They All Saw A Cat, because this book has the same magic of conveying a simple and impactful message about perspectives, but with fantastic illustrations and rhythmic writing to match.
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My Rating System:
5⭐️: Excellent book AND influenced a change in my views ⬅️⬅️⬅️
4.5⭐️: Excellent read
4⭐️: Great read, will recommend
3.5⭐️: Enjoyable read but missing something that will make it great
3⭐️: An okay read that I didn't regret spending time on it
2⭐️: Didn't enjoy
1⭐️: Didn't enjoy and had serious issues. Will suggest to avoid.
Loved the premise of this book, the first of such I've read. So creative in conveying a simple universal truth. They all saw a cat, but the cat they all saw looked a little different because their eyes and perspectives are all different. Illustrations were on point.
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My Rating System:
5⭐️: Excellent book AND influenced a change in my views
4.5⭐️: Excellent read
4⭐️: Great read, will recommend
3.5⭐️: Enjoyable read but missing something that will make it great
3⭐️: An okay read that I didn't regret spending time on it
2⭐️: Didn't enjoy
1⭐️: Didn't enjoy and had serious issues. Will suggest to avoid.
3.5 stars - I enjoyed the story but lacked a little for what I considered a great read (see my rating system below).
Here are some areas I felt could be better:
- Quantity of description: The author provided nice descriptive sentences in almost every sentence. However, there was too little about the environment or the characters' feelings. I felt like I breezed through them and was unable to form a deeper impression. Some key turning points in the characters' feelings and thoughts could be much more fleshed out.
- Variety in structure and tempo: there was little variety in the sentence structures. Sentences were mostly in the most basic structure “he did this”, “there was that”. Sentences in general were pretty short too. I would not want to attribute it to target audience because there are many examples in books targeting elementary readers that prove otherwise. Because of this, it honestly read a little monotonously to me. It could be an intentional stylistic choice but it wasn't for me.
What I enjoyed:
- The plot was interesting, and as an East Asian I really appreciated a book based on elements I was familiar with - dragons, kirins, architecture and Sea God lores
- looking forward to what the author puts out in future still!
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My Rating System:
5⭐️: Excellent book AND influenced a change in my views
4.5⭐️: Excellent read
4⭐️: Great read, will recommend
3.5⭐️: Enjoyable read but missing something that will make it great ⬅️⬅️⬅️
3⭐️: An okay read that I didn't regret spending time on it
2⭐️: Didn't enjoy
1⭐️: Wouldn't have read it
Gorgeous illustrations! The kind I would want to read again to admire it. The story is straightforward, touching on a historical fact that animals were often taken from their homes and given to rulers.
For some reason, the text on my ebook version (borrowed from Overdrive) was totally off in the formatting. The words were all stuck together with no spacing, which is a huge bummer and prevented me from reading it with ease.
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My Rating System:
5⭐️: Excellent book AND influenced a change in my views
4.5⭐️: Excellent read
4⭐️: Great read, will recommend ⬅️⬅️⬅️
3.5⭐️: Enjoyable read but missing something that will make it great
3⭐️: An okay read that I didn't regret spending time on it
2⭐️: Didn't enjoy
1⭐️: Wouldn't have read it
2 stars - meaning I did not enjoy the book. I do have something good to say at the end though!
Don't get me wrong, I like books about life wisdom, beauty and courage in living. I am a huge fan of Winnie the Pooh and Dr Seuss! But for this book, I had to go read the introduction after finishing it, to make sure that I did not misunderstand how this book was meant to be executed.
I don't want this to be all rant and no constructive criticism, so I really thought hard to be specific about what I felt fell through.
The greatest flaw of the book is the lack of context in its delivery of its messages. There are characters in here. It's not a self-help book. The animals appear and the boy immediately interviews each of them with rather deep questions right off the bat, like what their definition of success or love is. Hmm why is the boy so pointed in his questions and his motivations behind it? The intro says he's lonely but just from the story I would not have gotten it.
And then it was life advice after life advice with little context or linking between them. In fact I think every one or two pages should be standalone pages reminiscent of motivational Instagram posts (as some other reviewers have pointed out). Perhaps we get an inkling of why, as the author has said in the intro that “You started at the beginning, which is impressive. I usually start in the middle, and never read introductions....I'd like it (the book) to be one you can dip into anywhere, anytime. Start in the middle, if you like.”
Because of this, I felt there was a lack of nuance. Wisdom are punchlines. But if delivered continuously on every page without subtlety, it loses the beauty that makes it punchy and impactful. Now, it reads more like a compendium of life truths to deliver to your friend who is feeling down. Or if you are feeling down, to randomly flip to any page in the middle and here's some instant truth to preach to yourself. There is a reason why Winnie the Pooh is still the one of the go-tos of the genre.
Nonetheless, the illustrations are truly stunning and moving, and I think they alone delivered the storytelling better than with the text. Perhaps without the text, I might have given a 4.5 or 5 star. They are that good! Still, I hope the author does not give up in polishing the delivery of the written parts! As the ending says, look how far you've come and I'm sure there'll be more.
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My Rating System:
5⭐️: Excellent book AND influenced a change in my views
4.5⭐️: Excellent read
4⭐️: Great read, will recommend
3.5⭐️: Enjoyable read but missing something that will make it great
3⭐️: An okay read that I didn't regret spending time on it
2⭐️: Didn't enjoy ⬅️⬅️⬅️
1⭐️: Didn't enjoy and had serious issues. Will suggest to avoid.
I didn't rate this book as I don't know what to rate it. It is really much more like a diary than a book. The author pens down his raw and vulnerable feelings of his health battle, and previously unpublished thoughts about his career. As such I didn't feel right to rate it as a book, because you'll be disappointed to find that it won't be a coherent prose. But it is an additional insight to the man's life, one of Singapore's most prominent lawyers.
4 stars. Don't judge a book by its cover! Or rather, by the daunting amount of text. It's a cute book with some nice pictures and shares the message of the simple joy of through the not-so-simple act of reading. It is an encouraging story giving non-picture books a try. For me, it made me reminisce my own transition to books with no pictures
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My Rating System:
5⭐️: Excellent book AND influenced a change in my views
4.5⭐️: Excellent read
4⭐️: Great read, will recommend ⬅️⬅️⬅️
3.5⭐️: Enjoyable read but missing something that will make it great
3⭐️: An okay read that I didn't regret spending time on it
2⭐️: Didn't enjoy
1⭐️: Didn't enjoy and had serious issues. Will suggest to avoid.
5 stars. An eloquent narration of the thoughts of a dying man, Chulkaturin, as he reflects on how he never seemed to belong, and how his love for a woman cemented that narrative. Turgenev fleshed out every possible emotion from Chulkaturin's thought with the most precise descriptions. Kudos to both Turgenev and Patterson, the translator. The prose read beautifully and I was enraptured.
My second Russian literature, but similar to The Death of Ivan Ilyich, the format is in a diary of a dying man. Both fictional narratives explored a particular philosophical concept. In this case, it was the superfluous man. Yet I find that in both, the dying main characters look back on their pitiable consequences, yet do not leave with bitterness and anger at others. As Chulkaturin declares in conclusion, “Live on, ye who live!”
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My Rating System:
5⭐️: Excellent book AND influenced a change in my views ⬅️⬅️⬅️
4.5⭐️: Excellent read
4⭐️: Great read, will recommend
3.5⭐️: Enjoyable read but missing something that will make it great
3⭐️: An okay read that I didn't regret spending time on it
2⭐️: Didn't enjoy
1⭐️: Didn't enjoy and had serious issues. Will suggest to avoid.
5 stars! A child bunny is being carried home by mama bunny on the street, and wonders about the lives of the various people he sees in the windows. Call it childlike wonder or innate human curiosity that kids and adults alike possess, but the ending punchline (which I shall not spoil here) nails how life is finding ordinary in the special, and the special in the ordinary. Illustrations were amazing - the charcoal drawing style really brings out that night stroll feels!
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My Rating System:
5⭐️: Excellent book AND influenced a change in my views ⬅️⬅️⬅️
4.5⭐️: Excellent read
4⭐️: Great read, will recommend
3.5⭐️: Enjoyable read but missing something that will make it great
3⭐️: An okay read that I didn't regret spending time on it
2⭐️: Didn't enjoy
1⭐️: Didn't enjoy and had serious issues. Will suggest to avoid.
5 stars, a rating I reserve only for books that have changed something in my life and this certainly did. Powerful storytelling, also powerful encouraging the readers to be bold and brave if they been given a dream. There are others but you must have to read it for yourself. Isn't it crazy though that the author's own writing career is like that of the protagonist fulfilling his Personal Legend?
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My Rating System:
5⭐️: Excellent book AND influenced a change in my views ⬅️⬅️⬅️
4.5⭐️: Excellent read
4⭐️: Great read, will recommend
3.5⭐️: Enjoyable read but missing something that will make it great
3⭐️: An okay read that I didn't regret spending time on it
2⭐️: Didn't enjoy
1⭐️: Didn't enjoy and had serious issues. Will suggest to avoid.
3.5 stars. Easy graphic novel to introduce the concept of end-of-life conversations. Would recommend to read as it is a necessary topic which is foreign or maybe even taboo to many, and this novel explored it through the lens of the doctor. The plot was nice but I didn't give 4 stars because it hadn't reached its full creative potential to be memorable.
My Rating System:
5⭐️: Excellent book AND influenced a change in my views
4.5⭐️: Excellent read
4⭐️: Great read, will recommend
3.5⭐️: Enjoyable read but missing something that will make it great ⬅️⬅️⬅️
3⭐️: An okay read that I didn't regret spending time on it
2⭐️: Didn't enjoy
1⭐️: Didn't enjoy and had serious issues. Will suggest to avoid.
4 stars. Worth a read, relevant, easy to digest.
As someone who has struggled with procrastination since I was a kid, and most recently a difficulty in resisting distraction, this book has been valuable in providing:
1. An easy and quick read
This is important because if the read is long and arduous, we have learnt in the internal triggers that it creates enough discomfort to make one seek or accept distraction.
2. A simple Indistractable framework in understanding traction/distraction and internal/external triggers
This enables easy recollection of the different dimensions for reflection and assessment of why and how we got distracted from what we originally planned.
3. Action-oriented advice
The book is geared towards people who want to immediately put things into action. App recommendations and outlook settings, of which some I already know of but there are some I don't. Some reviews said the case studies are brief but I think there really isn't more needed to make the case in point.
One consequence of my distraction is juggling multiple books and never finishing most of them. By the first few chapters, I had already made a pact to myself that my first task of putting what I learnt into action is to finish the book itself. So I did, and I'm proud of myself!
Perhaps one thing I didn't enjoy so much was the section about distractions at the workplace, but it is simply because it is much harder to execute and effect change in the workplace as compared to other external triggers. But I will try.
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My Rating System:
5⭐️: Excellent book AND influenced a change in my views
4.5⭐️: Excellent read
4⭐️: Great read, will recommend ⬅️⬅️⬅️
3.5⭐️: Enjoyable read but missing something that will make it great
3⭐️: An okay read that I didn't regret spending time on it
2⭐️: Didn't enjoy
1⭐️: Didn't enjoy and had serious issues. Will suggest to avoid.