Recent Reads

I read this shortly before Abid was born. Got this book from the library. The author is Naomi Alderman, and this is her first novel. This novel won the Orange Award for New Writers 2007 and she won the Sunday Times Young Writer of the year 2007.
I borrowed this book because the story took place in an orthodox Jewish community (in Hendon, north of London)- just want to know about their lifestyle (the author lives in that community). The story is about Ronit, daughter of the Rav (religious leader-higher than a rabbi) who is a lesbian, and the dilemmas that she faces in the rigid community she lives in.

For a first novel, I think the author did a good job.

Each chapter is started with a verse from the Torah, followed by the author's thoughts/ramblings- dont know what to call it- based on the verse.

Some similarities with Islam.

They spend a lot of time in their synagogue, not just one day a week. There they listen to preachers by the Rav or rabbi, pray or just reciting the Torah.

There was a description of the bathing and dressing/wrapping of the dead, which has a lot of similarities with Islam. The procedure is called taharah, in which the deceased is bathed with clean water and then dressed in white outfits.

The ladies also has to perform a bathing ritual after each menses, although in Judaism it is only for married women and you can not do it at home. There is a special place in every community specially built for this purpose, called mikvah (big pool with natural water ie rainwater, river or sea).

And they only eat kosher food, which is not just no pork, but they also cannot mix milk/dairy products and meat, which they have to cook using completely different sets of pots/pans (then I realize why I found a lot of pots and pans in different sets of colours here- unlike Malaysia where all pots are almost always steel or black).

The author said something about happiness...

Happiness is not the sensation of ease and comfort. happiness is the deeper satisfaction we find when we create. when we construct a physical object, or compose a work of art,or raised a child. We experience happiness when we have touched the world and left it different/better.

Too complicated eh, I think.. we should be happy even for small things in life.. (tanda bersyukur).


NINETEEN MINUTES-Jodi Picoult

Read this in the postnatal ward :) . Recommended by Mynie in one of her book reviews, so grabbed the book from the library.

It is about a boy who was bullied all through his school years, and one day he snapped, appearing at his school with 4 guns and shot 10 people, while injuring 19 others.

This book introduced me to battered woman syndrome, which I never heard in medical school before (but, I only did 12 weeks of psychiatry).It is a form of dissociative disorder, in which the defense attorney in this book used in analogy to defend the boy in court. Clever.

And this book left me asking, which is worse: burying your dead son, caring for your paraplegic son, visiting your son in prison or hearing your son's trial? I dont know.


THE LAST LECTURE-Randy Pausch

Found the book review in Afi's blog, so again, I borrowed it from the library.

The author was a computer science lecturer at Carnegie Mellon Univ and was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He was given the opportunity to give his last lecture, and this book is the content of the lecture.

He chose to speak about 'Really achieving your childhood dreams'.

Very motivating.

I particularly like the concept of 'head fake' that he mentioned a lot in this book. Head fake means when you teach something to someone, you are also actually teaching him how to live his life-eg if you teach kids how to play football, you are also teaching him about teamwork, about practice makes perfect, about punctuality etc.

The author succumbed to metastatic pancreatic cancer after a fierce optimistic battle on 25th July 2008.