Book Review: The Moon and Sixpence

 

The Moon and Sixpence is a novel released by W. Somerset Maugham, an English playwright, novelist, and short-story writer, in 1919. The protagonist is Charles Strickland, who gives up everything of his life—perusing his dream without the bond, the pure and only dream – drawing.

I have heard this great writer W. Somerset Maugham from a film review on The Painted Veil (2006). His works have received rave reviews among many reviewers even till now about his observation of humanity. By thinking of reading his other work after being published a century later, I picked a book about pursuing a passion by sacrificing everything in life. The metaphor of ‘moon’ is the idealistic realm of Art and Beauty, while ‘sixpence’ represents human relationships and the ordinary pleasure of life.

Should we pursuit the dream?

Charles Strickland was described as someone who looked commonplace, just a suitable, dull, honest plaint. All of a sudden, the hero left his wife only with a letter after seventeen years of marriage. Then he went off to Paris, and no one could change his mind. The book did not cover how a forty-year-old stockbroker with children nearly grown-up clicks his desire for art after more than a century’s stable life that everyone thinks could never go wrong. Many Asian parents or even young adults treat prosperity as their life goal. It is easy to understand – if we do not have the wealth to survive our basics, how should we convince people we care to believe us? And if we followed the crowd, immersing ourselves into the competitive but beneficial workforce market. How many of us would be as brave as the protagonist, giving up all to fulfil the younger self’s desire?

“I want to paint.”

“But you’re forty.”

“That’s what made me think it was high time to begin.”

/

Question: Do you think it is selfish and dumb to pursue their dream if they had a settled-down relationship with a child or two and a respectable career? Do you consider that a wise decision?

 

Emotions and Actions

Dirk Stroeve is a very kind man, a substandard artist, though he possessed a keen sense of art. His simple thoughts bring Charles to his house for good care (his wife nurse Strickland in his illness), his wife refuses and rejects, but he insists. He shares his studio with Charles without noticing his wife, and his wife falls in love with the moved-in, gifted artist. He still loves his wife so deeply that when he sends Charles back to his place, Dirk’s wife state she will follow wherever Charles goes. Dirk is hurt but what he did was senseless and heinous. Dirk leaves the lovers in his studio and even gives his wife money. After her suicide, Dirk returns to the studio and finds her nude portrait. The outrageous render him to destroy the unbearable mark of love, but he can’t do so since he believes it is a marvellous piece by Charles. Dirk returns to live with his mother in Holland. At this point, Dirk still invites Charles to go with him to Holland.

I have never read any character like Dirk before – extremely raw plus no other thoughts when contacting others. He has no pride. He, again and again, shows a lack of self-love and self-esteem, which put the narrator and readers speechless (I was surprised and angry the first few times, but felt helpless and disappointed when he once again against his voice). After his wife swallowed a load of oxalic acid trying to killed herself, Dirk shows how inferior he could be to just wish to have a glimpse of her wife. Out of guilt and shame I supposed, the woman refuses to see him, making Dirk distraught. The inferior and the attitude of him causes one to have pity on him but at the same time and put them in an embarrassing position as his friends and the doctor and nurse which his wife’s healer.  

It is, to me, a new way to read throw words considering the characters’ reactions, to comprehend the needs of self-growth which manage emotions correctly helps one to deal with situations properly by not hurting themselves.

/

Question: You admire a person for his or her talent; however, he or she insults your work and despises you on your face. Now, his lack of morals is covered by his illness and poverty. Will you take care of the person dedicatedly?

Short book review - The power of regret

Author: Daniel H. Pink

Genre: Self-help book 

Why regret make us better?

Try to think of one thing that you regret lately. Is it not spending time more wisely like I did most of the time on something that doesn’t really mean much? Or the other way, we should pay more attention to the details. Let’s not discuss which behaviour is better first.

The author told us through the study by two developmental psychologists, Robert Guttentag and Jennifer Ferrell reading stories to a group of children that people without regrets often are seriously ill but aren’t paragons of psychological health. Regrets mean that we will look back on our lives and wish we had done things differently. Although this means we mostly will feel worse when we think about it, it helps us to do better tomorrow.

He stated three benefits including improving decisions, boosting performance and deepen meaning. We often decide with single consideration if we don’t have much experience. When the events process further, the effect of the decision will gradually appear. They might be difficult to resolve or improve to the ideal situation that we thought it should be. But this gives us a worthy message based on our own experience, which we will be more aware of it next time. In other words, regret, as I understand, makes us learn through our own feelings.

If the things aren’t reversible or zero chance to get over again, the most we can do is to develop the most of it while we still need to cop with it. The situation is slightly different, where we find another view or ways of the event.

The book also shows the most common regrets in 2021 between nearly 4,500 adults in the US. The proportion of relationships is the top 2 categories Americans regret the most namely families and partners. Life questions such as education and career follow up closely by only 3 per cent.

As a person who looks back on my life all the time, I didn’t find that surprising, but I also want to imagine that there might be a platform to let people in different stages share their valuable ideas to let these repent things stop looping. 

 Lastly, I’d like to share a quote from the interviewee in her mid-forty at the end of this non-regretted read book. 

‘I regret ignoring my inner voice and not heeding its plea to be more adventurous and for trying to live up to the expectations of society instead of focusing on myself.’

 

From English in the World: Global Rules, Global Roles to my lil view on Bilingual Nation 2030

Author: Rani Rubdy, Mario Saraceni

Genre: Linguistics/Journalism (Books)

Bilingual Nation 2030 promulgate in 2017. In order to enhance the nation’s competitive, this policy promoted to treat English as an official language in 2030. There are many objections and views on this policy, I will mainly explore in the English we learn under our education system along with this book I picked for log 5 – English in the world, to figure out whether turning this country to officially bilingual is needed.

First of all, English Languages. English undoubtedly is the most common language in the world, yet this is a language primitive applied only in a country. Thanks to the UK’s expansion and history of immigration, this language become a national and official language to countries in different continents. Book authors are applied linguists. They separate English into two types: English as a Native Language (ENL) and English as an International Language (EIL).

Bilingual

What type of ‘bilinguals’ do the policy wants? There are different types of bilinguals could be referring to. From those who have two mother tongues, considered native-like in two languages to considered as near-native speakers or those who are clearly not native speakers of English but use the language successfully in their own terms.

If one wants to be a ‘near-native speaker’, the next question will be how ‘near’ near-native is: in what way the near-native differ from the native speaker, and the standard of ‘good’ to be called ‘near’. There category suggested by the authors are: correct grammar; correct grammar with a large vocabulary; fluency on the level of idiomaticity same as natives as so on.

Choosing a model

Author brought out several models of English that could be used in language teaching in Outer and Expanding Circle countries as a lingua franca to consider the advantages and disadvantages of each. I would only introduce two of them, a native-speaker model and a nativized model. We might consider what suit us better for nation-wide and the purpose.

A native-speaker model            This model has been codified. There are grammars and dictionaries can refer, the norms can be evaluated and tested. This, as I quote, ‘reassures politicians and bureaucrats who fear that they will not be intelligible in the international community’. The advantageous I agreed with is that the adoption of a native-speaker standard for learners is to understand the mindset of native speakers of the language. However, from a wider view, learning cultures of particular native-speaking group isn’t the original attention our government hope for a bilingual nation. Able to communicate with fellow non-native speakers and potential commercial corporation who is a native speaker.

A nativized model                        Malaysia and Indonesia are two countries adopted regional nativized variety of English. They showed the vital of needs and purpose to learn English – to communicate within ASEAN and the region where both countries own a significant number of people from different ethnic backgrounds, religions and cultures. Multilingual and multicultural prowess is more than the accuracy of the language.

/

This book helps me to clarify as a lingua franca, what English tries to play the role in education industry and nation needs. Showing me learning this particular foreign language isn't comparable to others. It is more than the considerations on language of one country/culture. 

Thoughts on After the End

Author: Clare Mackintosh

Genres: fiction

What is your definition of life?

The book separates into two parts. What happened? And what happens after the end. It is a book everyone should read as other readers are commended on the back of the book. But to be more specific, it is a discussion on what is life which I really recommended people in their adulthood have a read on it.

Brief story: A two-year-old current resident in the PICU (Pediatric Intensive Care Unit) of the same hospital where he was born just a couple of years earlier Dylan, because of his brain tumour triggered by pneumonitis. His mother, Pip, takes a long break from her job to take care of her son in the hospital. His father, Max, is a worker frequently travelling between the US and the UK.

When your beloved one is suffering, fighting for the tremor weeks and months from every kind of treatment, a new treatment introduced to you, not that it will make them walk out of the hospital again, but to prolong their lives. Would you take it?

I have spent every day with my son since he was admitted to hospital last autumn. I’ve been there when he’s had seizures so bad they’ve had to sedate him, when they’ve given him morphine for the pain. I’ve learned how to suction his saliva, how to massage his back to lessen the secretions, how to manipulate his arms and legs so they don’t waste away.  

Life biggest question. The most compelling and vital is the decision. Max and Pip have different wishes, but they both agree the point – they do the best for their son, Dylan. What is the best? As in one of the author’s interviews, I can somehow give the view of the two main characters on life. Max hope for the quantity of life; Pip hopes for the quality of life. No right or wrong here, I have to state. Max tried his best to give life back to his son; meanwhile, he was concerned about the aftermath of the new treatment. Asked the doctor how it would the life be for his son. Pip, on the other hand, refuses to let her son live the way he’ll live if he survives.

Public's child. The other part I notice is the fundraising that Max put up on Twitter. The influence of social networks has done its job – spreading to more residents and media. Reports and stories of them shape in a way the public wants. On the flip side, titles and shorten-stories didn’t cover the whole thing. Invective to Pip, calling her the mother of the son enduring serious condition the murderer. The public is keenly aware as if he is their child. I find it so heart-wrenching but realistic.

I couldn’t cover all my thoughts here. But this book just indicates how life indeed can be. And trust me, the best part of the book is after the life ends of Dylan, which is the last one-third of the book. How we wish to stand at the fork of the road and hope that we could see the end of each route of the paths because we could know which one to take.

/

Question: How would you treat a life? Surviving/Existing with a bearable condition which could quickly be used to it. Or struggles and challenges through life without knowing when to end and if it could succeed.

Review: The Giver of Stars

Author: Jojo Moyes

Genre: Historical Fiction

What I like in this book:

The author’s writing.    It’s a history-based story in 1930 Kentucky, America. About an English woman, Alice, marrying the local man and stories around the heroine and people around her. The author, Jojo Moyes, has a fascinating sense of writing drew and sucked readers in her story. It made me feel. As I see it, the brilliant writing was mostly in the first half of the book, the storyline gets more dramatic on the second half. Her details and the description on characters have easily put me into the imaginary of novel.

Map of the South from Wiki

Glimpse of history.        Pack horse library project is a program that delivered books to remote regions in the rural area around 1940. Pack librarian are mainly women in the past as well as the story. In 1930, around a-third of Kentuckian couldn’t read, historian Donald C. Boyd notes that "Workers viewed the sudden economic changes as a threat to their survival and literacy as a means of escape from a vicious economic trap." There is always something more if novels developed based on histories and I believe it assist readers, especially me, to get some perspective to it.

Main topics it covers:

Women, marriage, society     There’re always discussions and advocation of women’s right, women’s life and development and stuff like that. The novel not only put out some image of independent women also with the marriage of two who lost their love bit by bit of husband’s father and the personality clash of the couple. Although the image of Alice’s father-in-law was, as I saw it, too purely unfavourable throughout the whole story from start to the last description of him (I understand it will be too complicated if adding more on him within the four hundred pages), we could still find somewhat resemble in the conventional marriage life in Asian families nowadays. Marriage-life and women’s career with their behaviour should control by her own as the buzzword ‘independent women’. Broader mindset among the public could also stop the pressure of a woman who decided how her way of life – staying with her beloved man in the pass ten years without marrying him, decided to raise a baby in the last fifty page of the story – will definitely show the respect and build a better society by our own actions.

Coloured and injured              The value back in 1930s admittedly were different from what we believe now in 2020s. Separate facilities were still exist but diminishing; workers were send back with little compensation after industrial accident that was not seems to recovered to the same health quality had no discussion on. Characters under Jojo’s novel hasn’t too radical about it but the helpless to those conditions lend to financial struggle, definitely gave me a firmer belief of we should thank for the state we life present and still work hard to provide more justice in our together-power for future. 

Favourite characters:

Margery O’Hare         The pillar of librarians, she once helped Alice get away from the harassment in a bar. A man slid an arm around Alice’s shoulders and flash over her chest, Margery interposes he and her fearlessly leaning forward to whispering in his ear to worn him only with words get his hand away from her and smile at him albeit anger and danger of what the man would do to herself.

/

In a few words, I personally love the ways of the writing and enjoy it with the uplifting finale very much, it would be perfect if the story could be less naïve in its ideology and more climactic plot through the middle before it ends.  

Question: If you have the choice to move and live in an unfamiliar country because of marriage where only build the relationship in long distance, will you opt to it?

Review: A week at the airport - A Heathrow Diary

Author: Alain de Botton

Genre: Travel literature

Brief on me

 Hey guys, nice to have you here reading this post. 

My name is Rachel, for anyone who wasn't around, I major in ECE, minor with AFL. I had made a few friends here and thought it's nice to interact with people who had different experiences.

ABOUT READINGS

 I love reading books, though I wouldn't call myself as a reader particularly. The problem is , I always pick up another book with one still half-way left been dumped in a corner. Then, life and works goes hectic, and not really have the time of me and the book sadly. By a point that I have no idea where the story went and the reminder of renewing the borrowed books from the library pops up on my mailbox, I know that it is time to abandon the struggle and return it to the library are the left option. 

Having said that, books of science about myth of mind or some back stories of business or simply any book title intrigued me will be the choice of my reading. I vastly obsessed with aviation, airport and that sort of things. So including them to my reading list is a must thing right? Speaking of novels, I like stories without a doubt, however, I consider that I could easily got stuck in a bunch of characters. Classic examples are Dream of the Red Chamber (紅樓夢) and Water Margin (水滸傳), the two Chinese prominent novels. On the other hand, Sherlock Holmes is my teenage favourite. I can remember vividly that I just couldn't stop a second to have my dinner with family because the fearful and excited plot that Sherlock and Dr. Watson experiencing. 

I know this might be a little bit off topic, but if anyone who had weep for a book, you're not alone. Huo zhe (活著) from Yu Hua (余華) paint lively characters lived tragically in the giant era worth the tears. 

ABOUT HOBBIES

I quite enjoy playing tennis, although I didn't got much experience nor am I an regular player. But I think it will be fantastic if there are some players around us, and hoping for a play sometime. 

ABOUT THIS COURSE

When academic term starts, the busy life will be on. There's always a tiny wish of mine that I could read more throughout the year, but time always flies till I recognise that I haven't touch any off-curriculum book list. This is a good opportunity for me to pick up the books, reading through lines and luckily might somehow find the joy of it. Lack of reading admittedly limited the richness of word choice when comes to writing. I hope that I could be more easily to express myself as I go through the training of it, as I believe practices will make improvements. 

Catch you on the flip side.