April 14, 2019 Leave a Comment
Matthew Siegel recommended Inventing the Truth to us. More specifically, two chapters, “Introduction” by William Zinsser & “Life With Mother” by Russell Baker were part of last week’s assignment for his course on Writing Creative Nonfiction: Fearless and Authentic Narratives. I ordered a second-hand copy. It arrived in the post on Friday evening. Brown, beautifully […]
April 7, 2019 Leave a Comment
This weekend, I attended the Women Leaders: Mastering Organisational Strategy workshop given by Dikla Camel Hurwitz at Stanford Graduate School of Business. In short, my summary is: attend it if you have a chance, regardless of your gender. I personally think many discussions and practices we had would be very useful for male professionals as […]
March 30, 2019 Leave a Comment
This book, the Seven Levels of Communication by Michael J. Maher, arrived in the post. Very excitedly, I opened the package. After a quick glance at its cover with the subtitle “Go from Relationships to Referrals”. My heart sank to the deep dark valley in King’s Canyon. “Relationships to Referrals” those words immediately projected to […]
March 10, 2019 Leave a Comment
I wish I had come across Oxford Guide to Effective Argument and Critical Thinking by Colin Swatridge when I started reading ferociously and writing to a lesser extent in the 1990s. Unfortunately, Swatridge only wrote and published it in 2014. I suppose that having not found and read it for the last five years is […]
March 3, 2019 Leave a Comment
It has been nearly six years since Margaret Thatcher passed away. I was on my way to board an aeroplane from London to California. By the entrance door to the plane, there were dozens of newspapers on the shelf, with their front pages announcing her death. Looking at the iconic images of her, my heart […]
February 24, 2019 Leave a Comment
In my early teens, I read the Chinese translation of the Old Man and the Sea. The old man, Santiago, left a fiercely persistent and strong image in my mind. Reading Ernest Hemingway’s original English writing this week, an intense sensation of strength and survival came to me overwhelmingly, together with the beauty of the […]
February 9, 2019 Leave a Comment
Churchill – Walking with Destiny by Andrew Roberts is for people who have an exceeding amount of enthusiasm about Winston Churchill. Its 982 pages (excluding extra notes) are certainly not for the faint hearted. Some time during last winter, this book was gifted to me by a very generous soul who truly understands and tolerates […]
February 2, 2019 Leave a Comment
Metaphorically speaking, it has taken me a couple of “life after life” to read this book. I started reading it in the Spring of 2018, went through multiple iterations of “pause, resume”. I hit obstacles (elsewhere), fell over and picked myself up, occasionally with bruises. Being clumsy or graceful, either has its beauty. Who cares […]
January 18, 2019 Leave a Comment
Last Autumn, I attended Building Interpersonal Skills: An Experiential Workshop, organised by Susan Neville, Campbell Frank and a couple of other instructors, at Stanford. After this intensive program, one poem and one word repeatedly come back to me: compassion. To begin the program, the instructors read us Miller Williams’s poem. Sue was very kind to […]
January 12, 2019 Leave a Comment
How to Win an Argument – An Ancient Guide to the Art of Persuasion is by far the best book I have read on oratory. James May translated Cicero’s words into enlightening and pleasing writings. Thanks to May, the rhetorical wisdom of Cicero is comfortably accessible to us all. The rest lies in “师父领进门，修行靠个人”. The […]