Best 100 books of 2007

Editors of Amazon just picked their best 100 books of the year, and the web site listed another 100 customers’ favorite books. You know what, out of these 200 listings (some books are duplicated in both lists), I have only one – The Black Swan, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. You see, it is a good proof that I read not enough books this year and all the books I read were old books.

But still, The Black Swan is a good book worth reading. But what is a Black Swan after all ?

In Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s definition, a Black Swan event is a large-impact, hard-to-predict, and rare event beyond the realm of normal expectations. That’s why, the 9/11 attack is often referred to as a Black Swan event. In fact, I have an example of Black Swan event happened to us couple of years ago. Check out the other post …

Present and perfect moment

Finished the book Chasing Daylight for quite some weeks, but only now manage to write something about it. Not that I was busy, but just not sure whether I shall recommend this book. This is certainly a good book and I learnt a few lessons from it as well, but I felt that the author is a bit too self-focused. Anyway, you will know what I mean when you read this book.

Other than the Passion and Talent lesson, I also share another two “lessons” by the author (not two new lessons though, as I believe all of us already knew those) – those are,

  • seize the present moments, and
  • create your own perfect moments.

Essentially, instead of keep planning, dreaming and guessing – why not just try your best to focus in your present moment ? Make full use of it … don’t waste this very hour, minute and second. In addition, create a perfect moment or great time with your friend / mentor, love one, parents and everyone you meet – every single time.

Simple lessons, but when will we all learn it ?

What is a library ?

According to the book The Black Swan, a library is a collection of unread books.

How true ?! I reckon no matter how big a library is, there are always more unread books than books already read. So next question is, why a library wants to “collect” so many unread books ? I think it is because no matter how knowedgable a reader is, there are always something he or she doesn’t know, and those knowledge are recorded in the unread books. Strange reason, I suppose.

What about my mini-library at home ? It’s a collection of a lot unread books as well, and then some unfinished books, and many books I read but forgot all the content inside already. But then again, once a librarian in school days, my job is not to read book … but to collect unread books ๐Ÿ˜Ž

Shawshank Redemption

It’s on cable TV again and I simply couldn’t help but watched it, one more time. I am not sure why it’s rated 5-stars, but no doubt it is a very good movie and every time I watch it, I find / learn new things. For example, there is a very moving scene in the movie about Andy (Tim Robbins) locked himself in a room and broadcast a very beautiful song to all the prisoners. And here is it … another find from Youtube – a Mozart masterpiece by Dame Kiri Te Kanawa & Ileana Cotrubas.

“Sull’aria” from Mozart’s “Le Nozze di Figaro”

Oh, for those who has not seen this movie – the original scene from Youtube as well …

Cities my friend has visited

I admitted that I am not a fan of Facebook, but still I can learn something new from it once in a while. For example, there is one application in Facebook called “Cities I’ve visited” – you can tell (read … impress) your friends how many cities you’ve visited thru a Google Map interface. I suppose the more cities you pin down on the map, it means the more time (0r money) you have.

And here is a screen shot of one of my friend’s map – guess what … 826 cities in 92 countries … amazing !!

Peterโ€™s map