Strengths-Based Leadership - from the developers of StrengthsFinder

Years ago I discovered StrengthsFinder and shared it with the important people in my life - J, and my volunteers. Today I re-did my assessment test, to generate a new report, one that is specific to my leadership skills based on the top 5 out of 34 strengths. The site gives the option to use your previous test's results, but I opted to do it again. I reckon the 5 strengths identified now would be different, just like how my DISC profile also does, depending on my life-stage and career path.

What remained the same were my Strategic and Communication strengths. Advice for the Strategic side of me includes:

Make sure that you are involved on the front end of new initiatives or enterprises. Your innovative yet methodical approach will be critical to the genesis of a venture because it will keep its creators from developing counterproductive tunnel vision. Broaden their view and increase their chances for success.

As for my Communication strength:

You have the power to capture people’s emotions and put words to what they feel — sometimes words they cannot find themselves. This naturally draws others to you. So ask questions. Try to pinpoint the key issues people are trying to communicate, what joys or struggles they want to convey. Then give voice to those feelings. Helping people find the words to describe feelings is a powerful way to get them to express and process their own emotions, and it can support them on the way to making a plan of action.

Here are the descriptions of the other 3 strengths now on the top of the list for me:

ACTIVATOR 
By nature, you might admit that you participate in friendly rivalries for fun. Usually you are comfortable letting people know what you do and do not value. Because of your strengths, you are comfortable telling others stories about your personal habits, qualities, experiences, or background. Your forthcoming nature probably enables others to share their thoughts and feelings with you. Driven by your talents, you now and then notice that certain people feel you are a bit threatening. You may use this trait to your advantage when you are trying to influence a particular person to move into action or see things the way you do. Perhaps in your dealings with some individuals, you tone down or moderate your forcefulness. Chances are good that you empower people with your air of certitude — that is, confidence. Your very presence reassures them that they indeed are quite ready and capable of tackling assignments, spearheading projects, or playing key positions on a team. It’s very likely that you occasionally tell yourself that you can make choices with ease. Perhaps your sense of urgency compels you to produce results more swiftly than less decisive individuals can. 

INPUT 
Driven by your talents, you sometimes enjoy life a bit more when you are speaking to people who understand your complicated or technical vocabulary. Perhaps you can quickly describe theories or processes to these individuals without having to explain the meanings of most terms. Chances are good that you might equate language with power. Sometimes you intersperse complicated or difficult-to-understand words in your speech. Not content to use everyday terminology, you attempt to add sophisticated words to your vocabulary. When you translate an esoteric term — that is, a word understood by a limited group — you may discover subtle distinctions between its various meanings. Perhaps this knowledge amplifies the forceful effect some of your words have on others. By nature, you yearn to increase your knowledge by being kept in the information loop. This explains why you gravitate to people who converse about ideas at a deeper and more thoughtful level than most individuals are capable of doing. “Making small talk” — that is, engaging in idle conversation — probably seems like a waste of time to you. Because of your strengths, you notice that you choose to spend time with particularly intelligent adults. Besides enjoying their company and mature thinking, you welcome the opportunity to engage in sophisticated, knowledgeable, and thoughtful conversation. You amass numerous ideas, theories, or concepts from these encounters. Often the insights you gain have proved to be quite useful days, weeks, months, or even years later. Instinctively, you may insert intricate or theoretical words into your academic or professional conversations and writings. Your interest in language partially explains why you enjoy mastering specific types of words and their definitions. While some individuals are required to memorize new terms in classes or seminars, perhaps you automatically commit specific words to memory. Occasionally you describe this experience as pleasurable.

FUTURISTIC
Instinctively, you periodically establish performance targets for the week. Once in a while, you think about what your life could be like in the future. Some of these forward-looking images may motivate or energize you to meet your weekly goals. Perhaps you do better work when you can concentrate on your near-term objectives. Driven by your talents, you are energized by your plans for the coming months, years, or decades. Bringing your ideas to life is an exciting proposition for you. You sense you have the power to transform whatever you think is possible into tangible outcomes. Because of your strengths, you are sometimes filled with hope as you think about the good things you might accomplish in the coming months, years, or decades. Perhaps this reinforces your sense of personal well-being. When you are forced to concentrate solely on current situations, you may become less enthusiastic about life. Chances are good that you channel your mental and physical energies toward what you can accomplish in the months, years, or decades ahead. The question you must answer is this: “How far into the future can I think before my ideas start becoming vague or uninspiring?” By nature, you are a visionary thinker. Your vivid mental images of the coming months, years, or decades often impel you to move into action.


I like how this book focuses on the whats and hows of leaderships based on your natural strengths. The prequels to this book were great for understanding how it makes sense to learn and capitalise on your strengths instead of over-investing in correcting weaknesses. But the contexts were more narrow as they spoke about the impacts of these strengths on our work in general. I have always enjoyed reading books about leadership, since my first one by John C. Maxwell when I was 17 - Developing the Leader Within You. Trying to make StrengthsFinder work for me in the way I lead organisations and projects was less clear from the original books when compared to Strengths Based Leadership.

The book also helps reframe the concept of teams. Building the right team with the necessary diversity of strengths, needs to be more about architecture, than of circumstance. I have just started on Part 2 of 3 in the book - Maximizing Your Team - and I am already whirling in introspection and strategies for action.

Another thing about this book so far, is that it appreciates the people who aren't what were classically known as leadership traits. These members of an organisation who may not be great communicators, but have strengths in creating harmony in groups or meaning interactions with people, are just as important as the ones who always seem to know the right words to use to evoke response. This makes me think of J, who has Harmony as one of this top 5 strengths, and is the invisible glue that holds the organisation together.

Labels: books, me, share, state, status

worldsuponwords by avalon at 10:38 PM    [ 0 comment | ]

#avalonreads On the Theme of Escapism

The theme of escapism has bubbled to the surface in my recent readings, and may partly also account for my lack of writing - of book reviews, or blog posts on any other subject. (I would at least post on Instagram, but my camera is not working, hence some silence from me in that realm.) I keep immersing myself in reading, with some reluctant physiotherapeutic exercise as an accompaniment. Have I sunk into reading as an escape?

I'm no stranger to escapism, be it the neutral activities of watching YouTube documentaries non-stop, or playing game after game of Sudoku, or those almost socially-unacceptable addictions to alcohol and cigarettes. It is a way I dissociate; numbing myself and thereafter becoming someone else that is not me, and it means distancing myself from the pain and anguish I accumulate within every day. These activities require very little thought, and because they are mindless they seem even more dangerous as addictive means of escape.

I've been quite disciplined, focusing on, apart from the necessary chores of daily life, exercise, reading, and writing (in my journal, minimally). But sometimes I read excessively and instead of exercising and whatnot. I hardly nap anymore, which is necessary for managing the symptoms of fibromyalgia. I've noted my obsession with reading in earlier posts, but obsessions need not be addictions. I should stop clicking post after post after post on websites, or finishing one chapter after another and another, in a way that gives my day little manoeuvre for other activities.

I read this story on New Yorker, Relive Box by T. Coraghessan Boyle, which reminds me of spec-fic novels by a favourite author of mine, Margaret Atwood. The Relive Box is a console that allows you to experience in virtual reality, user-specific times in your past. The protagonist often relived till dawn, and it affected his work because he wasn't sleeping. That sounds like me when I delve into a video game. I would start at 8pm and the next time I looked at the clock, it would be 10am.

The Noonday Demon (which I'm almost halfway through) covers the correlation between depression and addiction. Andrew Solomon expounds on the nature of addiction and includes his own propensity to indulge in substance abuse. He writes:

"It gives me a kind of blissful energy and a sexual exuberance and a feeling of superhero power that are quite fantastic. I get to the point of being unable to string together a sentence and I don't care if I never string together a sentence again. I realise that the solutions to everything are simple and straightforward. Being high on cocaine breaks up your memory enough so that the past can't haunt the future. The chemical happiness of a good hit of cocaine feels completely uncircumstantial. I can remember sitting around with a numb nose, thinking that if I could freeze life in that second, I would do so and stay there forever. I almost never use the drug, but the idea that I would never want it is ridiculous. I fell in love with cocaine in those first minutes of rush. The spectre of imbalancing my brain and the devastating hangover are all that keep me away from the cocaine high."

How is substance abuse different from the high of reading and gaming, when all these activities allow us means of escape? I just finished this novel The Less Than Perfect Legend of Donna Creosote by Dan Micklethwaite, which is a light read about a woman who spends her lonely nights in the fantasies concocted by books she has read, of which there are so many that her floor is tiled with them. She has another deeper hidden addiction than reading, but the way she turned mere reading into a substitute for all else, is scary enough for me to stop and rethink my own obsession with reading.

The discipline required for activities such as exercise and personal grooming, is something I built and depended upon a lot for my recent recovery. Without it I would hardly be as ambulant as I am now. I have never been disciplined, even in childhood I didn't have a fixed bedtime. Although the symptoms of depression and fibromyalgia are often counter to what discipline requires of me, I have to fight them daily; on good days it feels like I'm canoeing against the current, on a bad day it feels like I'm pushing a boulder off of me. Sometimes I lose, then I go to bed and try again the next day. In such a climate, reading is my respite, but I have to force myself to consume it within set limits, so that I can at least brush my teeth daily.

Labels: books, pleasures, therapy, worlds

worldsuponwords by avalon at 11:09 AM    [ 0 comment | ]

my thoughts that confluence around my current #avalonreads #dailyreads

In response to Trauma Stewardship, Lipsky and Burk, and The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression, Andrew Solomon.

I want to change the world, because ever since I have had awareness of reality, I have found this world to be tangibly sad; so different from the worlds in my storybooks when I first learned to read. Whether it was because I have depression that began in childhood, altering my worldview, or because the world truly is a sad place, that has no bearing on my ambition to do good in this world in a big way. My perspective may be skewed; the lenses of my proverbial glasses definitively not rose-tinted - tea-coloured, more like. It makes for keenly-felt suffering, either my own but more pronounced than its actual proportion, or that of others, human or animal, as though it was borne by me as well. This is very painful, sometimes even more so than is usually felt during extremely depressed states; this weltschmerz may be triggered simply by current affairs. But it also empowers me; after I have reckoned with this pain I have the the unction to act upon injustice in aid of preventing this suffering, or on healing efforts after the fact.

I ask myself today, who am I apart from being God's child, apart from my parents or a string of significant others? In humility my answer used to merely be, "nothing," as it is sung, "I am a flower quickly fading, here today and gone tomorrow." But, if I need to be tethered to reality in aid of my own suffering, I need to know more facets to the truth of who am I, not in arrogant exalting of the self, but a refusal to deny looking at the mirror. Without observing my own reflection, acknowledging it, studying it, depression causes me to wholly believe I see nothing but a wraith in the mirror. I have learned to love everyone but myself, but I have failed to love my neighbour as myself, because my neighbour is God's creation and not a hollow-eyed wraith, long-dead and snuffed out. I have only known myself always as a part of another, like a moon orbiting Earth, when in fact I am greater than a star without a need to be attached to another. I must learn, that I am no longer a daughter in lack of parents' affection.

Labels: books, worlds

worldsuponwords by avalon at 5:52 PM    [ 0 comment | ]

today's #avalonreads

There are some days I don't have enough spoons to do a whole blog post on my daily reading; I will share a quote or picture on social media instead. 

I'm at the chapter of health in Today Matters, by John Maxwell, where he exhorts the reader to make a decision towards healthy habits, and be disciplined in keeping them. His example of how exercise yields no weight loss in one day, but after a period of time, if done regularly, results appear - made me think about my obsession with reading.

I'm beginning to think that reading is helping me heal. The effects are small at first - just like exercise - you won't see any results overnight; you have to keep at it regularly. I still can't articulate how exactly reading is helping me, but I probably will, soon enough.

Reading aside, I do exercise daily. Less cardio nowadays but 18 exercises for specific muscle building as physiotherapy for my injuries, every day. Sometimes I can't even complete half of them all, but then I try to get back on track within the next day or two. No, I don't enjoy it.

John Maxwell does imply - very minimally - that the chapter on health includes mental health. I guess that my daily journalling, doing visualisation and mindfulness exercises, and weekly psychotherapy sessions count as taking care of my mental health.


I am still on Trauma Stewardship by Lipsky and Burk - I highly recommend it for anyone working or volunteering in helping professions which expose you to the trauma endured by our planet, by animals, or by fellow humans.

Today's chapter is on building compassion and community, the third of five recommendations to rebuild ourselves after exposure to trauma in our work. The first way to do so is in creating a microculture. 

I feel this message of community repeating itself through what I read every day in books and online. But the truth is, right now I'm isolated. I'm not able to build a support network at the moment because I've taken a leave of absence from leading our organisations, which means isolating myself from the volunteers. Friends from the past have either moved on or are far too busy with family and work to reconnect.

People who - do - want to connect, I don't feel the same way towards them most of the time. Lack of chemistry? Perhaps I'm not ready to love a friend because I have no love to give right now. And, I've definitely tried to connect with the people I want to relate with, unfortunately they are usually very busy people. I think I will just stick to writing to an anonymous audience online for now, specifically here, Twitter and Instagram (no Facebook because I loathe that platform). Is that a microculture in itself?


Next, from The Noonday Demon, Andrew Solomon:

Labels: books, pleasures, share, therapy

worldsuponwords by avalon at 4:12 PM    [ 0 comment | ]

#avalonreads daily summary 17 October 2016 | Priorities and Reflection

From Trauma Stewardship, Lipsky and Burk
Serendipitously the part where I am working on in this book is about focus and the part I was working on in Today Matters (below) was also about focus - that prioritising helps us focus on what is important.


TIL: Where we want to put our focus, in itself illustrates that we do have a choice in what we want to focus on, what work, and our lives apart from our work.

From Today Matters, John Maxwell
Reflection is something I've been doing a lot of, prompted by the questions raised in this book, and in Trauma Stewardship. I find these questions very apt as journalling prompts. In itself this book has little value without the reflection you need to do to follow what you read.

QOTD:


From Pinball, 1973 by Haruki Murakami
In the same vein, today's QOTD: "The world awaiting him out there was just too big, too powerful; there seemed to be no place he could burrow into it." But also: "When I was in college, no one in my apartment building had a phone. Hell, I doubt any of us had an eraser."

Fiction brings to us characters we can emphatise with, describes life for us in keenly accurate ways, but also with jest sometimes.        

Labels: books, pleasures, share, therapy

worldsuponwords by avalon at 9:33 AM    [ 0 comment | ]

Obsessions: Reading and Books

When I saw this, I felt proud of myself for prioritising reading in my daily list of recovery activities: "Can Reading Make You Happier?" The answer was quite encouraging overall.

"Since the discovery of... neurons that fire in our brains both when we perform an action ourselves and when we see an action performed by someone else... A 2011 study published in the Annual Review of Psychology, based on analysis of fMRI brain scans... when people read about an experience, they display stimulation within the same neurological regions as when they go through that experience themselves. We draw on the same brain networks when we’re reading stories and when we’re trying to guess at another person’s feelings.

"Other studies published in 2006 and 2009 showed something similar—that people who read a lot of fiction tend to be better at empathizing with others... And, in 2013, an influential study published in Science found that reading literary fiction (rather than popular fiction or literary nonfiction) improved participants’ results on tests that measured social perception and empathy, which are crucial to “theory of mind”: the ability to guess with accuracy what another human being might be thinking or feeling, a skill humans only start to develop around the age of four."

So it seems that reading books, specifically literary fiction, helps us in our social intelligence. Good information, though I was digging for mental health benefits instead of empathy towards others.

But wait, there's more!

"Reading has been shown to put our brains into a pleasurable trance-like state, similar to meditation, and it brings the same health benefits of deep relaxation and inner calm. Regular readers sleep better, have lower stress levels, higher self-esteem, and lower rates of depression than non-readers."

Ah there we go. Although I sometimes stay up too late reading and it eats into my mandatory no-stimuli pre-sleep routine (for fibromyalgia symptom-prevention).

This information did nothing to alleviate my recent book-hunger. I keep on stumbling upon books that I have to have, to read. And I already have a book backlog (thankfully small for now) waiting for me.

But I earn no income from reading, or from the writing that results from the reading. Even if books help me recover, recovery doesn't pay for books either.

For now I make lists of books I would like to read, and window shop online, carrying a basket of books slowly growing, but not quite making it to the cashier yet.

The feeling of staring at the cart and yet unable to checkout really makes my heart yearn for them all the way from here in Singapore. (They are at Amazon.)

Labels: books, pleasures, state, status, therapy

worldsuponwords by avalon at 2:46 AM    [ 0 comment | ]

a daily summary of what I've read in books today #avalonreads #dailyreads

If you've read my last post you must have learned I'm now on a mission to read more books daily. I decided to post a daily summary of QOTD/TIL snippets from each book I've read daily. I hope you might enjoy it as something different from the regular book review articles online. Here is today's effort:

From Trauma Stewardship, Lipsky and Burk
I am reading this as professional development non-fiction, even though the topic is focused on personal well-being. The book presents 16 signs that exposure to trauma - in our work of helping others, animals or the planet - has negatively impacted our emotional, physical and social well-being. It then presents five ways to realign ourselves to heal these 16 effects. I didn't work on this book much today at the time of writing, so here is a cartoon pulled from the various ones that pepper the pages with some humour.
         

From Today Matters, John Maxwell
The crux of this book is that if we make 12 important decisions early, and discipline ourselves to manage them daily, we will have success every day. 

TIL: The first 1 out of 12 decisions is attitude; apply positive attitudes to tasks and towards people. But I was bothered by how antagonistic Maxwell described negative attitudes: I felt that my negative moods brought about by mental illness were disgusting. It may not have been his intent but that was what I felt.
                                                                             
From The Noonday Demon, Andrew Solomon          
This book is full of innovative ways depression can be described. It is not just a mirror of myself, it is like a "beautify" filter option on our selfie camera app. Hence why I chose this book to embark on reading the creative non-fiction genre daily - it encapsulates what creative non-fiction should be, that is, the facts presented in beautiful language which opens up more insights than an academic-toned essay would.


From Hear The Wind Sing, Haruki Murakami
Murakami endures being one of my firm favourite for over a decade now, and this is one of his early stories, published as two stories, the second being its sequel. I have read almost everything else (except 1Q84, regrettably. I still want to get back to finishing it). 

"So where are we headed?"
"The zoo."
"Sounds good to me," I said.                            

Labels: books, pleasures

worldsuponwords by avalon at 2:17 AM    [ 0 comment | ]

latest thoughts on reading

After I spent a large chunk of my time in hospital catching up on my reading, I brought the habit home and expanded it even further. I have decided that reading is going to be part of my recovery "programme" at home. Every day, besides exercises and regular daily activities, I aim to check off writing and reading in a discipline manner. Recently I've also decided to read four books at a time.

Literary fiction of course remains a firm stronghold. I try to read prizewinning books, or those by my favourite authors. I also look up book reviews on Guardian Books which is my current go-to source for book recommendations. 

I am also reading books related to my work, and that currently is about how it burnt me out. I name this category of books professional development non-fiction. I have always devoured books in this category as well, previously on fundraising and nonprofit marketing and suchlike. However I am more disciplined about it now, not only because I try to read further along in the book each day, but also by making systematic learning notes - handwritten. It really helps me internalise what I read and recalling the key concepts without referring to them, comes in a flash. And if they don't, the notes are easy to refer to.

To add to the above, I also now add personal development non-fiction. It can also be referred to as self-help books, but then it sounds flaky doesn't it. I also make notes the same way for this category.

Up and coming is the creative non-fiction genre. This is something I just decided upon. I think it sort of catches the good books that should be read, that don't fall into the above two categories.

I've also been reading at least a verse a day from the Bible - via mobile app. I make quick short notes in a note taking app on my phone.

We can't quite go without reading articles online, but the focus should be on books in my opinion. In this discipline I simply make sure I read something online every day. The articles could be via my Medium timelines, my Twitter timeline, or Twitter Lists such as topics on news or management. I sometimes expand this to include e-magazines via Zinio.

Perhaps through this disciplined manner of reading I might become more self-awareness, improve my writing skills, move further along on the no-end-in-sight recovery journey. But mostly I enjoy it, and they say reading (books) make intelligent/successful smart people, so ok then.

Labels: books, pleasures, therapy

worldsuponwords by avalon at 12:01 PM    [ 0 comment | ]

once again, time to write about -

I seldom write about politics so it wasn't hard to try and find anything on this 8 year old blog that was vaguely political in content. I found two posts. One was the post I got quoted on Today from. The other is on Marxism. Those two are all there are on the topic of politics.

I guess the Marxist post still resonates with me because re-reading it inspired me to write this post, here, now. I see Marx as a sociologist more so as than the founder of Communism so I have no qualms about publicly writing that I agree with Marx.

Where I stand exactly on this - agreement - is what I shall clarify tonight.

There are books that are Communist-angled that have truly inspired me: Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook. Che Guevera's The Motorcycle Diaries. Even Tash Aw's The Harmony Silk Factory is somewhat uplifting. I love the ideology that drives social change even if it is Marx-derived and therefore dangerous to admit so.

Recently SDA's Chiam See Tong (once again, I am not related to him) made a declaration to participate in this year's elections because even though it is hard for him at his age, he says that it is more truly difficult for the people who are suffering in today's Singapore and it is for them that he is continuing to campaign. His declaration made me shed a tear. This is what should inspire political ambition. The sight of masses of humanity in need in your own nation - or in Che Guevera's case, continent - is what should trigger the need for a revolution.

Hence I support the ideals behind Communists such as Che Guevera because of the fact that the ideology, the ambition, and the cause were all because of the masses whose lives could be made far better.

But I disagree with Communism in practice. In reality, Communism as an administrative system does not work, as we can see in so many countries today. Imagery of bespectacled citizens being executed or exiled from their countries because they are educated does not sit with me at all and conjures up tears. Capitalism is still necessary and is in my opinion not the polar opposite of Communism such that they cannot co-exist in the same system. How else will we have food to eat? I am Protestant and believe in the Protestant work-ethic too, so no way am I against capitalism because I believe in Karl Marx's theory.

A new ideology needs to come up from another mind in present times that will be as brilliant as Marx was in his time, one that will be relevant to today's social structures, today's literacy levels, and one that can co-exist with capitalism without unfair power imbalances. If you ever write a thesis on such an theory, let me know. 

Marx essentially said that the regular man (the peasant, the proletariat) will eventually 'wake up idea' and a revolution will definitely take place for a complete paradigm shift in the balance of power. But today, we are educated enough to have woken up our ideas so to speak. The problem today is not about realising that the bourgeoisie have intrinsic power over the people, because we already realise that. We have realised, and we are upset about it.

This emotional response breeds two kinds of behaviour in our society. One is nonchalance, where we admit that the ruling party simply has too much power shrouded in elitism - untouchable - then we sigh and shrug and just go on with our daily lives. The other response is to support left-centre ideology parties that have actually good plans in place to better our fellow man's welfare in this country simply because we want to fight the bourgeois elite ruling party.

As for those partisans contesting the ruling party, the real challenge is still Marxist in nature. To what extent have we woken up our ideas that the ruling party has too much power? What the opposition parties need to do is to realign the ideas that need to be 'woken up'. Ideas that will inspire them to change and want change and want your party to be the one to change the face of Singapore. Sylvia Lim of WP is doing a good job of that.

Obviously, a revolution Egyptian 2011 style is not going to take place because in Singapore, participation in anything remotely like that is going to be suicide in this country. But when the proletariat masses finally awaken and realise that, 'Hey, ruling party buys our votes with monetary gains, do I want my kids to be materialistic Singaporeans and nothing else?' a revolution of another kind will come into play. It will be slow, it will be small at first, but eventually, the tide will turn, and as it has been written - the Tipping Point will emerge to change the face of our political climate and therefore our societal power balances.

No revolution involved that involves guerrillas fighting in jungles or masses gathering with banners shouting for so-and-so to resign. But still a revolution is needed, and will happen. And that thought is Marxist is nature, because his pyramid imagery of society always turns over.

And that's that. Now you know where I stand on Marxism in relation to today's political climate in my own country. Sounds like a lot armchair-theorising about a very real and practical issue at hand, but Marxist ideology drives a lot of admirable politicians and change-makers whether they realise it or not. If you ever were moved to change something somewhere in society because you came face-to-face with a marginalised member of society in suffering - you have had a Che Guevera moment. Go buy a tee-shirt with his face on it, he looks better than Karl Marx.

Labels: books, worlds

worldsuponwords by avalon at 2:34 AM    [ 0 comment | ]

Margaret Atwood

Recently I have been chain-reading Margaret Atwood.

I first read her in Moral Disorders, a collage of short stories that centre around the same characters. It was insightful, but not extremely entertaining or inspiring.

Then I picked up Oryx and Crake, and went a little crazy about it. It reminded me of the crazy sci-fi that Murakami writes about in some of his books. Oryx and Crake is superb writing, in content and delivery alike.

I then went on to The Robber Bride, and found it amazing - the character development is excellent, so multi-facetious because the central character is a trickster who goes by many identities. By this time I realised that Atwood can write in such a wide variety, excellently. It is not easy for any writer to do such a thing, and yet she can.

Then I read Alias Grace. Also superb. Entertaining, well-written, captivating to the last paragraph. I am not usually into murder mysteries, but this one being based on a true story, and much more than just a story than it is about human behaviour.

So I went on, to Cat's Eye. Oh this book is lovely too, it is insightful like Moral Disorder, only more in-depth, and more entertaining because a novel is just so much more than short stories, which I do not like. The protagonist of Cat's Eye is an artist with my namesake; the artworks are described so perfectly I can imagine them and feel inspired as if I were walking through an art gallery.

Now I am reading The Blind Assassin, and I am not devouring it maniacally yet, but I probably will, when I can sit still enough to read it for long. I have to make this book stretch till my next shopping trip, budget allowing.

Atwood is like middle-of-the-road reading, in a good way. More entertaining than some historical fiction, more profound than most contemporary literature. She amazes with her depth and width - profound observations, genre-busting stories. If you tire of shallow books as well as difficult writing, Atwood likely has a perfect book as an in-between.

Labels: books

worldsuponwords by avalon at 2:42 PM    [ 0 comment | ]

books again!

A lot of you know I love collecting and reading books. Some of my most beloved books are outstation, meaning I have lent them out eagerly to friends, to share with them my loves. Sometimes I wonder if I should buy them again, to replace the books on my shelves, because it is hard to lend out books expecting they will eventually return.

This is a list of books that are currently outstation:

Rachel's Holiday by Marian Keyes
Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts
We Need To Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver
Bridget Jones' Diary by Helen Fielding
Prozac Nation by Elizabeth Wurtzel
Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami
A Million Little Pieces by James Frey
Sons and Lovers by D H Lawrence

These books have been lent out because they are great enough to be shared, so much, that I often press books into the arms of guests at my flat. I know some will never return, and to have a piece of me in the lives of others who I might seldom, if ever, see again, it remains like a physical evidence of our lives being shared for a part. It comforts me that I will not totally be forgotten.

At present, I am actively reading Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook, and Joyce Carol Oates' The Tattooed Girl.

I picked out Doris Lessing because this book of hers is award-winning, a must-read book of all times. I relate to it because her protagonist struggles with her intellectualism and her pro-communist affiliations. Her friend and her are also feminist, which makes it a trend before their time.

Joyce Carol Oates is a name I picked out on the back of another book I was reading, as she penned off one of those reviews other authors often do as part of the marketing of that book. The fact that we both at one time shared a common interest in the same book, endears me to her writing, that I believe I must also enjoy, since we both have something in common already.

Great way to find new authors to read, by the way: searching for names on reviews for the books you already like.

Labels: books

worldsuponwords by avalon at 11:05 AM    [ 0 comment | ]

This Charming Man by Marian Keyes

I am in the middle of reading Marian Keyes' new book, This Charming Man. I have to say its superb literature. For one, Marian has married four writing styles through the voices of four women, all linked to topics of politics and domestic violence through the same man. Four stories, yet not short stories that leave you hanging for the ending, yet one superb story. No regrets following one of my favourite authors.

Labels: books

worldsuponwords by avalon at 10:12 AM    [ 0 comment | ]

reading

I subscribe to 92 feeds on my RSS aggregator and I read them all, daily, hourly.

I read lengthy magazines like Vanity Fair and Glamour.

But I cannot seem to sustain reading the books which I chose at the bookstores, those I am intent on collecting in my trove.

I have, on hold, these few books am somewhat currently reading:
Why I Write, George Orwell
The Lizard Cage, Karen Connelly
The Night Watch, Sarah Waters
His Illegal Self, Peter Carey
Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert M. Pirsig
A Fortune-Teller Told me, Tiziano Terzani

Suddenly my favourite hobby has become difficult.

Labels: books, state

worldsuponwords by avalon at 12:13 PM    [ 0 comment | ]

no words and a crash

When I was still in my old room at home, I discovered that the hardest part of each day, as is the case with most depressives, was simply getting out of bed in the morning. if I could do that much I had a fighting chance. To get through the day, that is. I decided to try to do some writing, hoping it might afford me the same sense of release that it once had, so many years efore. But as soon as I sat down at my typewriter, I froze before the keyboard. I couldn't think of a damn thing to say. No poems, no prose, no words.

Jesus, I wondered, what do you do with pain so bad it has no redeeming value? It cannot even be alchemized into art, into words, into something you can chalk up to an interesting experience because the pain itself, its intensity, is so great that it has woven itself into your system so deeply that there is no way to objectify it or push it outside or find its beauty within. That is the pain I'm feeling now. It's so bad, it's useless. The only lesson I will ever derive from this pain is how bad pain can be.

I removed the things in my life that were not what I wanted or needed to do at this point. I made the career change, I resigned from the less-than-ideal job, I left the church that contained people whom I cannot be friends with because we are too different. Why then, am I still sad? I do not know how to get to the There which I need to go, but at least I know what I do not want or need. Surely it is supposed to help. But all that happens is that I crash again and I can only hope that C will not leave me because I am so depressed because he is all I have left that understands what I am going through. I am going to go back on my anti-depressants, and ask my doc for more. I am going to force my sleep when it should be, through Valerian root and not leave it to happen till morning when become thoroughly exhausted and awake.

Labels: books, share, worlds

worldsuponwords by avalon at 11:39 PM    [ 0 comment | ]

latest Murakami

I have never really liked short stories. Most people who love reading as much as I do, don't like short stories - they are too, short!

But really, I had felt all along that short stories were more of an effort to show off literarily, rather than to expound on life and philosophy through beautiful language. It feels like a shortcut to actual writing; much like blogging. The easy answer out. Great for speedy English improvement if you have an English examination coming up. O' Henry's shorties did it for me nearing my O level exams.

My opinion about short stories changes with the introduction to Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman.

Murakami opines in his introduction to the book, that he enjoys writing short stories. (Thanks for the book, Kel)! A short story begins with, what I call a 'traffic-light moment', what he calls 'the smallest details'. His short stories paved the way for the novels he has written. Perhaps without the short stories, there would never be any Norwegian Wood, no Murakami as he is today.

Which makes me wonder if After Dark was originally meant to be a short story, a little bit mistakenly expanded into the length of a novel.

Now I think I will pick up the shorties in his collection to read, that I haven't already.

And in fact, re-think the traffic light moments in my life, and think about the beauty of the short story in every one of them. Blogging and the like really isn't that lowly a writing activity after all.

Labels: books

worldsuponwords by avalon at 7:18 PM    [ 0 comment | ]

Lauren Willig and George Orwell

I finished this book by Lauren Willig sometime back and I have to say it is well-written and a stroke of genius. My regret is that, because this book seems to be a part in a continuing saga of fictitious spies in Napoleon's era, I have no idea whether to read ahead or backwards. I think I am going to let it remain as a stand-alone novel for me for the time being.


It has elements of mystery, comedy, romance in a chick-lit fashion, and English wittiness. Given that I seldom read mystery or crime unless masked in something else, like Ryu Murakami's In The Miso Soup for example, this serves to meet my need for non-romantic thrill in a book, without being a hard-core mystery thriller sort.


My George Orwell's Why I Write, collection of essays by the man himself, is an inspiring read. It makes you think about things, and you find a friend in him if you like writing. Unfortunately, the cat tore some pages of it, and I have yet to come around to fixing them together with scotch-tape, so, reading it came to an abrupt halt. I still find him to serious to be a novelist, though maybe I can hardly stomach very many serious writers, so it could be just me.

Labels: books

worldsuponwords by avalon at 5:10 PM    [ 0 comment | ]

book log

1. Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar is a good read, entertaining and a literary inspiration.
   
2. Again, Marian Keyes and her Walsh family sisters, particularly Anna in Anybody Out There? - superb.
   
3. Am still distilling the first few chapters of The Alchemy of Desire. Very nice, partly poetic, melancholic story telling, meaning of life etc.
   

My reading needs combined with a book collecting habit does not at all help me in my desire to save money. I need something to fund my book habit.

Labels: books

worldsuponwords by avalon at 3:19 AM    [ 0 comment | ]

is there such a thing as intelligent chick-lit?

Actually, yes. Marian Keyes, to me. Or Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones Diaries, and two-hit wonder Emma Gold.


This book I just finished, was a disappointment. The story is actually passable, but the characters' details are splayed out much more like nutritional facts and figures on a tin can or cereal box, instead of the way good writers do it: introduce them to you like these were real people, just like you are, and then you become friends with them. Definitely not easy, but I suppose one could publish when such is achieved and not before.


It has been disappointing trying to find new chick-lit authors that are actually good at what they do. Hence I continue almost completing all of Marian Keyes' collection with my next exploit.


(Don't judge me for reading chick-lit: what is an intelligent life without tireless entertainment?)

Labels: books

worldsuponwords by avalon at 11:41 PM    [ 0 comment | ]

Illywhacker by Peter Carey

Just at the end of oh-six I borrowed this from the library, but as yet am only through the first few pages. It is a bit dry for me at the moment, more like an admirable language-skills display than an entertaining story so far. Perhaps I should keep trying.


I am still a Peter Carey fan although the only reason why, is because of The True History of the Kelly Gang. Carey is a superb writer, that I cannot deny. I also read Theft, but though it was about Australia (I love reading about foreign cultures), and about art I found it a bit unsatisfying.

Labels: books

worldsuponwords by avalon at 2:41 PM    [ 0 comment | ]

All TIME 100 novels

Out of which I have read:

The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe
C.S. Lewis

The Lord of the Rings
J.R.R. Tolkien

On the Road
Jack Kerouac



I have only half-read, the following, shallow that I be:

Animal Farm
George Orwell

Gone With the Wind
Margaret Mitchell

Infinite Jest
David Foster Wallace

Invisible Man
Ralph Ellison

To Kill a Mockingbird
Harper Lee




I might probably read:

The Catcher in the Rye
J.D. Salinger

Midnight's Children
Salman Rushdie

Mrs. Dalloway
Virginia Woolf



Books I think should be in this list:

Shantaram
Gregory David Roberts

The Black Album
Hanif Kureishi



Books I know someone will say should be in this list:

The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Milan Kundera

The World According To Garp
John Irving

And...

I wouldn't know what books you think should be here unless you tell me too.

Labels: books, share

worldsuponwords by avalon at 2:13 AM    [ 9 comment | ]