DEVELOP YOUR SPARK

Anju Kakkar, Managing Editor of Humber Press, is an avid reader who has developed an eclectic taste for books over her years of travels. Here she recommends four of her favourite fiction and non-fiction books for SPARK readers.

Title: Shantaram

Author: Gregory David Roberts

About: “It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love and fate and the choices we make, but the heart of it came to me in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and being tortured.” So begins this epic, mesmerizing first novel set in the underworld of contemporary Bombay. Shantaram is narrated by Lin, an escaped convict with a false passport who flees maximum security prison in Australia for the teeming streets of a city where he can disappear.

Title: Sophie's World: A Novel About the History of Philosophy

Author: Jostein Gaarder

About: A pageturning novel that is also an exploration of the great philosophical concepts of Western thought, Sophie's World has fired the imagination of readers all over the world, with more than twenty million copies in print.

One day fourteen-year-old Sophie Amundsen comes home from school to find in her mailbox two notes, with one question on each: “Who are you?” and “Where does the world come from?” From that irresistible beginning, Sophie becomes obsessed with questions that take her far beyond what she knows of her Norwegian village.

Title: Meditations

Author: Marcus Aurelius (translated by Gregory Hays)

About: Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (a.d. 121–180) succeeded his adoptive father as emperor of Rome in a.d. 161—and Meditations remains one of the greatest works of spiritual and ethical reflection ever written. With a profound understanding of human behavior, Marcus provides insights, wisdom, and practical guidance on everything from living in the world to coping with adversity to interacting with others.

Title: The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying

Author: Sogyal Rinpoche

About: The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying is the ultimate introduction to Tibetan Buddhist wisdom. An enlightening, inspiring, and comforting manual for life and death that the New York Times calls, “The Tibetan equivalent of [Dante’s] The Divine Comedy,” this is the essential work that moved Huston Smith, author of The World’s Religions, to proclaim, “I have encountered no book on the interplay of life and death that is more comprehensive, practical, and wise.”

re·search/’rēˌsərCH, rəˈsərCH/, noun

Research is something that everyone can do, and everyone ought to do. It is simply collecting information and thinking systematically about it.

Raewyn Connell

QUIPS AND QUOTES

Without data, you're just another person with an opinion.

W. Edwards Deming

It's not a silly question if you can't answer it.

Jostein Gaarder

...learn not to overstretch ourselves with extraneous activities and preoccupations, but to simplify our lives more and more. The key to finding a happy balance in modern lives is simplicity.

Sogyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying

Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data.

Arthur Conan Doyle as Sherlock Holmes

The power of statistics and the clean lines of quantitative research appealed to me, but I fell in love with the richness and depth of qualitative research.

Brené Brown

It is a good thing for a research scientist to discard a pet hypothesis every day before breakfast.

Konrad Lorenz