Phuong Anh
21 thg 10, 2021
Let's put an end to the chaos by immersing ourselves in interesting books.
Many people find the most serene place to be in good books. The three works below will help you comprehend aspects of your life, or simply provide you with a wide-open space on a weekend evening.
The Shadow Thief - Marc Levy Suggested by Thanh Thanh
The book tells the story of a boy who grows up with a special gift: He can steal other people's shadows - and the shadows confide secrets in him, revealing hidden insights into the person to whom they belong. The characters are not necessarily sympathetically described at first, but their shadow reveals their truest form, with all the weaknesses, fears, and insecurities.
As the narrator grows older, he learns to use his gift to help others fulfill their dreams. Through the mistakes he makes trying to improve other people's lives, he comes to realize that it's not too late to seek out his own childhood dreams.
This is a touching yet powerful story about love. It depicts a mother's love for her son, a boy's first love for a girl, and a son's love for his missing father. As in earlier works by Marc Levy, the story is well written with a gentle, sincere, and loving style of writing, complemented by a touch of super-natural components, so the readers are easily drawn along.
The Happy Brain - Dean Burnett Suggested by Phuong Anh
Have you ever wondered, what makes us happy? Depending on one's point of view, this might be interpreted in a variety of ways. So what can a neuroscientist tell us?
The Happy Brain is the effort of neuroscientist Dean Burnett to figure out what makes humans happy. In this funny, stimulating, and enlightening book, he combines a chatty style with hundreds of cutting-edge theories and scientific endnotes, fascinating interviews of individuals -- from relationship coaches, stand-up comedians to celebrated millionaires -- on the happiness scale with personal stories.
Burnett noticed that what makes people happy varies hugely from person to person. Some of the explanations are evolutionary, while others are societal, and many are yet unknown. Our brains are incredibly complex, and it's impossible to simplify them to a single activity or thing that would always make us happy.
This book will not provide you with all the answers but ask you many questions and make you ponder. Burnett himself is reluctant to offer simple answers. “What makes an adult brain happy? That can’t be answered in any succinct way, sorry”, he writes.
Walking in a sunny town - Kiet Tan Suggested by Tuyet Nhi
The book is a collection of Kiet Tan's anecdotes on living in the Mekong River Delta. Aside from the natural narrative manner, the book also draws readers in with the author's strong dialectal writing style, which demonstrates the generous spirit of the people in the Southwest of Vietnam. Each story captures the first stirring feelings of life, such as the first deaths when the West was at war, the author's first love, or the passing of the golden duck.
For those born and raised in the Western region, specifically, and the South in general, Walking in a sunny town is like a journal recording the changes of a whole land. "An elderly mother with a bandana," "My Tho daughter with white rice and pure water"... are some of the pictures brought up by the author.
The interesting thing is that, despite having lived in France for a long time, Kiet Tan's Vietnamese characteristic remains in every word of his work and in the way he thinks.