I am not a Bible reader but of late, I have found inspiration in the I Ching which, its followers believe, is "a living, breathing oracle, a patient and all-seeing teacher who can be relied upon for flawless advice at every turning point in our lives." Reading the I Ching has gifted me with a gentler spirit, accepting with serene humility the trials and brickbats thrown my way. Through the I Ching, I would like to disengage myself from the wiles of the world - to replace hatred with kindness, jealousy with selflessness, and the thirst for material things with rugged ... Continue Reading...

One of my New Year's resolutions is to read more books and I am doing it now.There are many reasons why people resort to reading. It can be an indication of one's financial health (better to read than to shop) or it can be a distress signal of how low your social life has become (whaaaa! where are all the parties? am having a migraine here)I like the fact that reading keeps me celibate and sane at the same time.In literature, you can have all the Mr. Darcys and Robert Kincaids in the world whereas if you choose real life you probably will have to deal with a man who's ... Continue Reading...

It was a different Paulo Coelho I read in Eleven Minutes.While The Alchemist is a simple fable about following your dream, readers should not expect the same treatment from the novel which deals with the adventures of Maria, a Brazilian village girl who achieves her life's goals the hard way, through prostitution.The book is sensual and provocative and is easily one of my favorites this year.The translation from Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa is "full of poetry and beautiful images"...the words being a long, slow lap dance waiting to be devoured at every turn. ... Continue Reading...

cover, originally uploaded by ajay1. I liiiiike David Sedaris. Unfortunately, he's not profound enough to make me looooove him...yet. And that's exactly the matter: he doesn't mean to be profound, only FUNNY. Plus the fact that he's deliciously gay. I envy the fact that he's got a steady boyfriend who happens to have a house in Normandy. Reading Sedaris is all about growing up in North Carolina, living in New York, sniffing coke,learning French in France and so on. Now, that may seem ordinary but it's his gift of words, describing things and keen social observation ... Continue Reading...

The Da Vinci Code is the reason why am not eating pasta in seven years.Personal biases aside,I think the book is sooo overrated, a product of Doubleday's media hoopla, so to speak. Surely, the well-read among us have browsed through better stuff in our lifetime. While going through it, I had to actually peek through the succeeding pages to see when the insanity would end. My high school chum Lei, who maintains her own reading club at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center hit the nail on the head when she said: "It's like a watered-down Eco. Written for Hollywood, ... Continue Reading...