The Nightingale

For our current purpose, it is important to understand that both the medium of the novel and of music is realised in time, not space. A novel unfolds its words in time, even when asynchronous. A song unfolds its notes within measures of time. Indeed there is a resonance, even synergy, between books and music.

I have found that the practice of writing a reading journal leverages on the catharsis one experiences upon completing a reading. Revisiting and writing out annotations in the reading journal help to synthesise concepts and therefore aid learning. You get more out of reading by writing.

To stretch Postman’s ecological analogy, the new media of today is like an invasive species carelessly introduced into a habitat. What results is often ecological collapse that leaves a wasteland in its wake: nothing survives, not even the new species.

Books and print may not be central to the structuring of public discourse, as it once was, but I am thankful that in bookclubs such as ours and in many others, small groups of people gather to partake, for themselves, in the intellectual effort to understand.

Novels make us recognise, reflect, and subsequently enact change in ourselves and in society: books are personal as well as social.

No matter what you encounter, if your heart is centred, you will draw connections that augment what the heart knows and recognises of truth and beauty.

Until mid-May 2024 Wardah Books is hosting two installation artworks. One by Singapore artist Isabella Ong and another by Thai artist Wantanee Siripattananuntakul. While both artists fulfil their artistic vision by making paper, their starting points cannot be more different.

My own son is now grappling with the news of the war on Gaza and he asked me how I dealt with the Bosnian genocide; I had spoken about Bosnia with him from time to time so he knew I would have a response. I said that I read all I could about Bosnia, and I wrote poems as a way of making sense of what I was reading. It may not seem much – and truly the poems I wrote didn’t amount to anything – but in a forgetful world, remembering can be a revolutionary act.

84 Minutes