What books are you reading?

Lou Albano

Managing editor of Coconuts Manila

 

I’m currently reading Lena Dunham’s memoir “Not That Kind of Girl.” It’s so smart and sharp and funny and honest. I feel relieved to know that there are other people who have the same evil thoughts as me! Haha, and that they aren’t all that evil after all, haha. Well, at least, in the first two chapters; I started reading it only after receiving it as a gift this Christmas.

 

Issay Rodriguez

 

Visual artist

 

I never really had good relationships with books before, but for some reason I got into reading stuff after college when I had more will to do it.

 

I have been reading three books lately—the first one I got was “Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking,” by Susan Cain. I got drawn to it because I saw a potential ally, a handbook for us wallflowers lurking in safe spaces at the galleries during openings!

 

The next one which really speaks to the “yes-to-all girl” in me is Greg McKeown’s “Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less.” I love how it easily spells out why I have always gotten myself into heaps of workload coming from all directions by just saying yes to all. I do hope I could successfully apply its credos as an artist, daughter, friend, apprentice, errand girl and dreamer.

 

The third book I just got yesterday. I had been hoping to get my own copy since I heard bits of it playing in a friend’s car. I’m not so sure if it’s the same. But when I googled the keywords I remembered, I found “Thinking, Fast and Slow,” by Daniel Kahneman. It supplements the latter book well. Maybe understanding the dynamics of the mind’s System 1 and System 2 can go a long way to deliberate things beyond yes’s and no’s!

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