Category: Books
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Roget and his Thesaurus
Peter Mark Roget was born on this day, January 18, in 1779. For a man of his time, he lived to a remarkable old age. He was 90 years old when he died on September 12, 1869. His name lives to this day, in Roget’s Thesaurus. Dr Samuel Johnson is…
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Cheong Yip Seng: Inside The Straits Times
There is a tide in the affairs of menWhich, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Those lines from Julius Caesar certainly apply to Cheung Yip Seng, who loves Shakespeare. His musician father brought the family over on a ship from Penang to Singapore, where in 1963 Cheung, then…
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Joseph Conrad and Singapore newspapers
I was pleasantly surprised to see the Straits Times mentioned in Joseph Conrad’s first novel, Almayer’s Folly. It’s at the beginning of Chapter 4: That year, towards the breaking up of the south-west monsoon, disquieting rumours reached Sambir. Captain Ford, coming up to Almayer’s house for an evening’s chat, brought…
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Milton and the mind
It’s the birthday of John Milton (December 9, 1608 – November 8, 1674). I hardly read him but can’t forget these lines from Paradise Lost, Book The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n.
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The Launch Pad: The Y Combinator story
Do you use Reddit, Scribd, Disqus, Dropbox? All these popular internet services were funded by Y Combinator. Based in Mountain View, California, it provides seed money, advice and connections to start-ups.
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Chulia Kampong, Singapore
Looking at Chulia Street off Raffles Place and Boat Quay now, no one would know what it was like before. Chulia Kampong, unlike Kampong Glam, has vanished from the map of Singapore. So I was intrigued by the description given by the Indian writer Amitav Ghosh in his novel, River…
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William Blake and C.S. Lewis
Going through The Writer’s Almanac, I found yesterday happened to be the birthday of William Blake (Nov 28, 1757, London – August 12, 1827, London). So here is a poem by him I read on The Literature Network:
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Cuppa and other words first used by P.G. Wodehouse
When you think of P.G. Wodehouse, you think of pigs, aunts, potty earls and dapper younger brothers, unflappable omniscient butlers, goofy young men and irresistible young women – and a language that’s absolutely unique, peppered with words and phrases as funny and bizarre as the situations the characters get into.…
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Four Quartets on T.S. Eliot’s birthday
Today is the birthday of T.S. Eliot (September 26, 1888 – January 4, 1965). I dipped into The Four Quartets and was immediately captivated by the opening lines of the first poem, Burnt Norton: Time present and time pastAre both perhaps present in time futureAnd time future contained in time…
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The Great Gatsby and the American dream
The Writer’s Almanac reminded me that yesterday was the birth anniversary of F. Scott Fitzgerald (September 24, 1896 – December 21, 1940). So, of course, I had to dip into The Great Gatsby. Fortunately, you can read The Great Gatsby online for free. Now what’s the first thing that comes…
Readiscovery 