Archive for the ‘Reading list’ Category

The Year of My First Novel

I haven’t been writing a whole lot for my blog, but I have a really good excuse: I’m working on a novel. Yes, I’m writing fiction, but it’s based on true events, which helps make it very real in my mind, even if I’m taking many liberties in inventing the characters that play out the [...]

Reading Robert Traver: a big murder in a small town

About a month ago my Dad and I sat down over a couple days, with the tape recorder, and he told me a few stories about his days as a detective in the Michigan State Police. We spent most of that time discussing one particular murder case, that he always thought would make a great [...]

A tragedy in South Asia, 1947: Part 1 of reflections on Indian Summer

I am endlessly fascinated by India. I fueled the flames in college while earning my minor in Asian studies, and my last semester in school, having finished already with my senior thesis, I relaxed by taking a double dose of India: South Asian politics and Modern India history classes, right alongside each other. It was [...]

A few commandments of happiness

For writer Gretchen Rubin’s happiness project, she started a blog as one of her work goals, to expand her identity as a writer and connect with a new community. On this blog, over the course of the project, she shared her own Twelve Commandments for Happiness, and many readers shared some of their own. A [...]

On happiness, and pleasure in failure

From Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project: One reason that challenge brings happiness is that it allows you to expand your self-definition. You become larger. Suddenly you can do yoga or make homemade beer or speak a decent amount of Spanish. Research shows that the more elements make up your identity, the less threatening it is [...]

10 books everyone should read

(in my opinion) I was excited to get a request from my friend Andres, for a list of my “10 books everyone should read,” because it forced me (non-reluctantly) back to my bookshelf to see which books have had the biggest impact on the way I view the world. That is my criteria. Because while [...]

A Drama of Medicine & Man

In another life, I could have been a doctor, a medical researcher, someone spending a lifetime in the lab finding ways, meanings, solutions to diseases and maladies. I say this because I find medical history, the progression and discovery and trials and missteps, to be wildly fascinating (but honestly, fascination doesn’t equal brilliance in that field, let [...]

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