2020 is about to end: I am feeling the impulse to record this tumultuous year. Before the pandemic, there wasn’t much room for relaxation – a typical final year in a Singapore Junior College really allowed little self exploration. With fewer club activities and less demanding school work, I had the luxury to read for pleasure. Therefore, the central theme of my 2020 may be “books”. Among them, there are some that have been with me since my first arrival in 2016. The non-fictions mostly come from random conversations or podcasts.
In writing the My 2020 series, I hope to restart my blog. I would probably use the rest of December to transfer my Weibo posts here. After all, I find that there is no effective way to organise my records on Weibo. (I expect WordPress to be a better repository.)
Cheers!
Some interesting books I read this year:
杜拉斯谈杜拉斯
海边的卡夫卡，村上春树
庆祝无意义，昆德拉
我们，扎米亚京
比较的幽灵, Benedict Anderson
想象的共同体, Benedict Anderson
心是孤独的猎手，麦卡勒斯
情迷佛罗伦萨，毛姆
孤独的城市，Olivia Laing
德米安，Hermann Hesse
十一种孤独，理查德耶茨
Islamic Empires – Fifteen cities that define civilisation, Justin Marozzi
The World – A brief introduction, Richard Haas
Responsible Parties – Saving democracy from itself
Cultural Amnesia, Clive James
Anarchy, State, and Utopia, Robert Nozick
America In the World, Robert Zoellick
Nine Stories, J.D. Salinger
Mediations, Marcus Aurelius
State Capitalism, Joshua Kurlantzick
Postwar, Judt
Why Nations Fails, Acemoglu
The ASEAN Miracle, Kishore Mahbuhani
The Wolf at the Door, Ian Shapiro
The Metropolis, Ben Wilson
The Art of Avoid Being Governed, James Scott
Suci 