These are some of my favourite bits and pieces I dug up in April, 2020.

Favourite book: The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories by Ken Liu. This book is a collection of Ken Liu’s most popular short stories as well as some of his personal favourites. I tried a sample of this book on Kindle upon my friend Amy’s recommendation and after reading two short stories, I immediately purchased the rest of the book. While all these stories are unique in their own way, a common thread between them are that they are beautifully written and they make your world just a little brighter. I would read one or two before I went to bed and then have the most fantastic dreams. In particular, The Paper Menagerie is one of my favourite short stories in here and it’s won three of short fiction’s major awards: The Hugo, Nebula and the World Fantasy Awards. It can be found online for free here.

Favourite podcast: Emotions by Invisibilia. This was the first podcast episode I’d heard from Invisibilia and was immediately hooked. This podcast takes you on a journey to re-examine some of the narratives we tell ourselves and does so with some fantastic storytelling. After listening to this, the way I previously thought about emotion was completely shattered (in a good way).

Favourite article: 50 Painful Truths By Truth Potato That You Need To Hear. Cute but devastating.

Favourite video: Why Did I Say “Yes” To Speak Here? This video was a talk given by author Malcolm Gladwell at Google Zeitgeist, a collection of talks by people changing the world. This talk addressed the bizarre phenomenon of Relative Deprivation Theory, a concept which makes total sense but at the same time, makes no sense whatsoever. Listening to this made me seriously question if some of the stories we accept are simply untrue, such as going to more prestigious Universities being naturally better. And more importantly, if they are untrue – why do we accept them at all?

Favourite quote: To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation. – Pi,  Life of Pi (shoutout to @jenn_the_shrimp for the book recommendation!).