tarik2an

I started reading this book merely to get some tips on building better habits and destroying the bad ones. Now, my word of advice is just turn to the appendix and read the step-by-step guide. That appendix, however, only describes you what to do. The author has said that there is no one formula to create a habit, and that you should discover your own way to build your habits. That is what the rest of the book is for.

This book contain stories that stress the importance of habits and why and how you should care about it. True to his background as a journalist, Charles Duhigg is a great storyteller who seamlessly combines powerful narratives of people both extraordinary and ordinary with the results of scientific research. Once you have read all the chapters in the book, then the step-by-step guide will be much more meaningful and compelling for you. After all, telling the stories of people being able/unable to change their habits is just as important as the habit change guide itself. They provide readers with not only the knowledge, but also the motivation to actually take up to the challenge of transforming their habits. This also means that the book is a very slow read, though (that's why I gave it 1 less star). I myself needed 2 months to get to the end of this book, but that's partly because I haven't had a good grasp of what this book really is. I'm not that good at remembering stories, but it seems that the author did a really good job at delivering his tales of successes and failures at habit-building given that I can remember every single story very well now.

If you want to change yourself but don't know how, then this book will offer you many glimpses of enlightenment and the much-needed push to do so.

If you have trouble with self-worth and self-esteem, you will feel many times better after reading Mr. Rogers' memorable sayings.

The man was like a modern day prophet.

While this book-length essay provides us with how we get to the digital age and how information technology has reshapes us, I really feel that this book is severely outdated. I know, this book was published in 2011, but somehow it's already 20 years late compared to 2017. We now worry about fake news and Donald Trump, or about robots taking over our jobs. Yes, issues regarding isolation, copyright, and new political activism still hold today, but these kinds of discussions have been rendered obsolete by how fast our world is changing.

Saya tidak begitu menikmati karya puisi yang banyak bertumpu pada simbol-simbol. Sayangnya, puisi Kahlil Gibran adalah ragam yang begitu banyak dibumbui dengan perumpamaan. Selain puisinya soal cinta, perkawinan, dan anak, banyak perkataan sang nabi yang saya lewati begitu saja. Bagi saya, seorang nabi boleh saja dan bahkan perlu bertutur dengan perumpamaan. Namun, ia mesti bercerita dengan terang-benerang, memahamkan mana yang betul dan mana yang batil. Sayang Almustafa bukan nabi yang semacam itu, sehingga banyak dari perkataannya yang tidak mampu saya serap karena terlalu samar-samar dan penuh dengan misal yang bisa saya tangkap apa maksudnya. Terpaksalah tidak saya ingat-ingat banyak dari apa yang ia katakan.'

Saya tidak tahu apakah puisi Kahlil Gibran yang lain gaya bahasanya semacam ini atau tidak. Namun, dibandingkan dengan versi terjemahan KPG, versi yang diterjemahkan Pak Sapardi ini lebih bisa dipahami dan dibaca. Barangkali ini karena kosakata yang dipakai lebih umum, dan baris demi barisnya dibuat sesingkat mungkin.

I found this book on the Gutenberg Project when I was in junior high. Never heard of the writer before, and I still don't know much about him now. What he wrote, though, is nothing of the ordinary. Indeed, he admitted in this book that his views on Islam are neither “orthodox nor heterodox (i.e. not too common or too uncommon), but something in between.”

A good portion of this book discusses Al-Fatihah, the first chapter of the Quran. It is a central text for muslims, the author argued, because it succinctly presents the central tenets of Islamic belief in God: that we worship God, that we seek help in Him, and that we ask Him to guide us to the straight path. The author also noted the similarity between this chapter and the Christian's Lord's Prayer.

He later expanded his rendering of Al-Fatihah into arguments on why Islam is the best religion, what is true Islam, and how is Islam compatible with science. He distinguishes between Islam and Iman, arguing that those under the creeds of Christianity and Judaism might also be considered muslims, and that what we know today as “muslims” are actually referred to as “mu'mins” (or believers) in the Quran. This is where this book is the most progressive. On the other hand, given that this book was written back in 1920s, it is sure enough that the “science” parts of this book are severely dated. He tried to justify the accordance of Islam with modern science, but like all those who tried to do this, he falls into equating the scripture's timelessness with science's ever-changing nature.

All in all, this is a good quick read for muslims who want to think and reflect of their religion. You will never recite Al-Fatihah in your prayers the same way again.

Versi ini susah betul dibaca. Pertama: karena ceritanya betul-betul diperas sampai-sampai nuansanya jadi hilang semua. Kedua: terjemahannya kurang enak diikuti, kurang mengalir.

Sebaiknya baca bahasa Inggrisnya saja atau yang terbitan KPG. Semoga nanti bisa kalau ada waktu (dan duit).

Bung kecil yang jadi perdana menteri di umur 36 tahun, menjabat cuma 2 tahun, untuk selanjutnya dipinggirkan dan akhirnya meninggal di pengasingan.

Sebetulnya saya kurang suka dengan buku sejarah/biografi yang penuturannya tidak kronologis dan antar babnya kurang runtut. Serial buku ini lebih mirip kumpulan artikel tentang tokoh nasional daripada buku biografi utuh (sepertinya memang begitu karena memang sumber buku ini dari tulisan-tulisan Tempo). Namun, kekurangan ini ditutupi dengan banyaknya cerita-cerita pribadi yang dimasukkan, sehingga pahlawan-pahlawan nasional ini akhirnya lebih terlihat sebagai manusia daripada dewa. Ada juga cerita-cerita yang lain seperti sejarah Proklamasi di Cirebon yang ternyata mendahului Bung Karno dua hari. Selain itu, tulisan-tulisan kolom di akhir buku juga membuat terang kontribusi apa yang telah ditorehkan Sjahrir untuk Indonesia, yang tak pernah diceritakan di pelajaran sejarah.

Although sometimes bored by the self-deprecating and laborious-thinking narrator, I found many glimpses of enlightenment in this brief novel. Every lover who has read this book might wonder which chapter their love story is in now. With each chapter, you will see your assumptions about love in general and dating culture in particular challenged, and for good reasons. I'd like to think of this novel as a literal introduction to the subject of love as Sophie's World is an outright beginner's course in philosophy. As such, perhaps it is better not to read this book for the plot as you will be in a massive boredom trying to find action in the dense paragraphs of Alain de Botton.

Definitely would read again some time.

Saya menghormati terjemahan The Message of The Quran yang disusun Muhammad Asad, tapi tidak buku ini. Mungkin karena dua karya tersebut ditulis pada masa yang berbeda. Islam di Simpang Jalan ini ditulis saat sang pengarang baru saja menjadi mualaf dan mengganti nama aslinya Leopold Weiss. Sangat terlihat tendensi beliau dalam menilai konflik antara Islam dan Barat, barangkali persis seperti yang diramalkan Samuel P. Huntington sekitar 60 tahun sesudah buku ini ditulis.

Sayangnya, buku ini tidak banyak menambah wawasan baru untuk memandang konflik Barat-Islam. Asad memaparkan sebab-sebab tidak sesuainya peradaban Islam dan peradaban Eropa dari sudut pandangnya sebagai orang yang bersimpati terhadap Islam. Toh konflik itu sudah dan masih terjadi sekarang dan yang kita butuhkan adalah solusi menjembatani ketimpangan peradaban ini, bukan saling mengalahkan atau menaklukkan.

Catatan (agak) penting: saya belum pernah nonton AADC, bahkan filmnya yang pertama sekalipun.

Puisi cinta memang mudah memancing perasaan, sebab semua orang pasti mengalaminya. Karena itu pulalah ia cepat jadi membosankan. Walau ada satu dua rangkai kata yang cukup saya ingat (misal “Kau yang panas di kening. Kau yang dingin di kenang” yang sangat sering dikutip itu), tapi sisa-sisanya walaupun sentimental tapi cenderung membosankan. Entahlah, saya tidak begitu suka puisi-puisi cinta Aan Mansyur walau saya tak memungkiri kecakapannya dalam merangkai kata. Saya sempat membaca terjemahan beliau atas Puisi XX karya Pablo Neruda yang elok dan saya pakai sebagai acuan membuat terjemahan saya sendiri.

Mungkin gaya berpuisi seperti kumpulan ini memang sudah sangat formulaik, contohnya pada puisi Kahlil Gibran dan Pablo Neruda yang mengkiaskan cinta dengan peristiwa-peristiwa alam seperti siang dan malam atau panas dan dingin. Sama dengan bukunya Boy Candra yang dari judulnya (“Senja, Hujan, dan Cerita yang Telah Usai”) saja sudah tampak pasaran dan mencomot gaya berjudulnya Goenawan Mohammad (“Tuhan dan Hal-hal yang Tak Selesai”). Oke, ini ngelantur.

Oh ya, saya kurang suka pula ketika buku kumpulan puisi dicampurkan dengan buku kumpulan foto. Kesannya seperti membatasi ruang imajinasi pembaca dengan menampilkan gambaran peristiwa yang ingin disampaikan sekalian. Barangkali ini karena keharusan dari filmnya, ya. Naasnya saya tidak paham karena belum (dan tidak berminat) menonton film yang memuat kumpulan ini.

Dari sampul depan sampai sampul belakang buku ini, saya tidak menemukan puisi yang betul-betul orisinal. Elok, iya. Mengena, iya. Tapi, saya tidak merasakan rasa-rasa sastra di kumpulan ini. Tidak masalah menikmati buku ini, sayang ia bakal dingin di kenangnya.

I picked the book on the wrong time. This is supposed to be a very theoretical book on translation studies aimed for advocating for the paradigm of foreignization. I, barely understanding scholarly discussion about translation, was frequently lost inside Venuti's dense prose and near-eternal paragraphs.

Venuti argued that translators have too long underestimated their own role in shaping history by rendering themselves “invisible” in the translation process. He challenged mainstream idea (or so he said) that a good translation is a translation that does not read like a translation. This acceptance about translation leads to a fluent translation: a translation that is readable but conceals differences between the author's and the translator's culture. As a result, readers of the translated work think that they are directly interacting with the author while in fact they are accessing the original work through the ideological lenses of the translator. Venuti condemns this phenomenon as a kind of cultural opression where the author's deeply-held values are discarded and replaced with the target-language culture's presuppositions. A notable example is when a Roman text telling intimate interactions between two males was interpreted as homosexual activities in English translation during the Victorian era.

His “call for action” emphasizes the need for translators to preserve some kind of “strangeness” in their translators so that readers realize that they are reading something from a different mind. In some cases, calls like this makes sense since there are many translations that act as though as they are the author's words in another language rather than the near-original work of the translator, such as the famous Fitzgerald's “translation” of Omar Khayam's Rubaiyat. However, in other cases Venuti just seemed to be paranoid of threats of cultural opression and how translators seem to be neglected.

I might need to read this book sometime later after having some good grasp of the fundamental issues in translation studies in order to enjoy the full depth's of Venuti's argument.

Ide dasarnya eksotis dan asli, sayang tidak dibarengi dengan world-building yang kuat.

Fiksi fantasi memang cukup sulit dibuat walalupun pengarang punya segala kekuasaan untuk membuat apapun yang dia mau. Tapi, perlu diingat bahwa para pembaca hidup di dunia yang nyata. Tidak ada masalah dengan membuat negeri yang mataharinya tidak kunjung bisa terbenam, tapi kurang bisa dipahami kalau orang bisa membuat partai politik di zaman musafir masih berkelana naik keledai. Tidak bisa Mungkin di sini Seno Gumira Ajidarma sedang terobsesi dengan beberapa latar atau karakter, semisal negeri di tengah padang pasir yang selalu diliputi senja atau pengawal kembar yang bisa membunuh sepasukan petarung dengan sekali serang. Sayangnya, mungkin beliau tidak merasa perlu memperluas obsesinya itu menjadi sebuah dunia yang utuh. Tampaknya seluruh novel ini adalah wadah bagi karakter-karakter sakti atau pemandangan-pemandangan eksotis sang pengarang yang tidak mungkin tertampung di dunia nyata.

Deskripsi dalam novel ini tampaknya memang kuat di latar Negeri Senja sendiri (meski tak selalu kohesif) dan pihak-pihak yang bertarung di dalamnya. Namun, tampaknya saya membutuhkan sesuatu yang lebih dari itu: suatu fantasi yang bisa membuat pembaca tidak sekadar jadi penonton di dalam dunia rekaan, namun juga membayangkan dirinya menjadi seorang manusia di dalam dunia itu. Buat saya, lebih menarik sebuah fantasi yang tidak hanya membuat saya membayangkan jadi raja dan pengembaranya, tapi juga kaum fakir dan hamba sahayanya. Tampaknya, agak sulit membayangkan menjadi seorang manusia yang utuh di Negeri Senja, seperti sulitnya membayangkan wajah Tirana, Sang Penguasa Buta.

Alur ceritanya juga masih membuat saya bingung. Ada misteri yang tidak terjawab bukan karena sang pengarang tidak membukanya, namun semata-mata karena ia tidak menceritakannya sebagai sebuah misteri, semisal kotak senja yang hanya jadi barang bawaan sang pengembara saja dan tak pernah dijelaskan mengapa ia begitu berharga. Jujur saya bingung ketika sang pengarang menyebut-nyebut Alina dan Maneka tanpa tahu siapa mereka sebenarnya. Lebih terperanjat lagi ketika saya masuk Bab IV, ketika sang pengarang bercerita tentang perempuan-perempuan di Negeri Senja yang pernah ditemuinya tanpa ada sangkut-pautnya dengan cerita Negeri Senja. Meski demikian, konflik antara Tirana yang bisa memberangus dan memenjarakan orang sampai roh-rohnya dan Partai Hitam serta Komplotan Pisau Belati yang tak pernah kelihatan tampak masuk akal dan menarik perhatian saya.

Novel ini mungkin tidak akan jadi populer, tapi saya bisa memahami mereka yang membacanya (dan menulis fantasi seperti ini) untuk menggambarkan dunia-dunia yang tak pernah ada di pikiran kita atau orang-orang yang takkan pernah mengembuskan napas di bumi.

Who deserves to be called a leader? Why should it be him or her? And what do leaders do anyway?

People have been arguing about the ideal leader. It's normal. If we all agreed on the concept of leadership, then we would not have to hold elections or support one person over the other to represent us. This book illuminates my understanding of leadership and leaders.

In essence, each article in this compilation gives differing and sometimes competing definitions of leadership. Daniel Coleman sees that a leader has higher emotional intelligence than others, while Kotler maintains that the work of a leader is to steer people through change. According to Jim Collins, truly great leaders face their lives with humility and don't draw attention to themselves, but Goffee and Jones insists that a leader should put forward some characteristics that set them apart from other people. Peter F. Drucker, interestingly, throws away the notion of a “leader” and believes that everyone should be able to be an executive (i.e. completing tasks in an organization) regardless of their personality or interpersonal influence if they followed several rules.

After repeatedly reading each chapter, though, I have begun to understand that what makes a leader is very dependent on the situation. There is no perfect leader for all things to all peoople. Rather, there are leaders for particular organizations, particular peoples, and particular times and places. Perhaps we should be satisfied sticking to those various definitions of leadership because they seem to represent these differing contexts.

This book is not intended as a “how to be a leader” for leaders or anyone who seeks to gain a position of leadership. Rather, the readings should give them an insight on how they should dedicate their effort and exercise their influence over their organizations and people. In that case, I found this book really enlightening.

Pengantar singkat tentang sejarah Jepang mulai Kerajaan Yamato hingga akhir Perang Dunia II. Isinya sendiri cenderung kaku, informasinya diulang-ulang tapi banyak istilah yang sebelumnya tidak dijelaskan. Terlebih, nada buku ini sangat Jepang-sentris karena pengarangnya sendiri orang Jepang. Tapi, pengantar kritis dari Mochtar Lubis bisa dijadikan pegangan agar tidak terlalu terbawa dalam narasi buku ini. Menurut saya, pengantar itu malah lebih penting daripada isi bukunya sendiri.

Helped me for analyzing his Design for my final paper in poetry class. The discussion offered is long-winded, though.

A sturdy collection of tips for organizational leaders. It's not a complete toolbox for all purposes, but the tips might well be worth reading over and over again in case you ran out of ideas or need some brainstorming for solutions.

As a linguistics student, reading about Chomsky reminds me that even a practitioner on the humanities could make a significant contribution on how we run our world. Chomsky's linguistics (which has thankfully become a standard on how we are doing the discipline) focuses less on describing language phenomena but on explaining things related on how humans are able to use language. He seeks a scientific pursuit of understanding the human language, and so his thoughts on the subject are clear-cut, unlike many philosophers and literary theorists with their obscure jargon and confusing reasoning. His theory on universal grammar sheds light that we humans are endowed with a special ability to create things. Our behaviors are not determined only by our environment. We have the creative ability to do things. And so, in facing our world where injustices prevail and ordinary people are driven out from contributing to their community, we have the means within ourselves to initiate change. The government may deceive us and mislead us, but we can learn about their tricks.

I cannot say whether the book correctly introduces or misrepresents Chomsky's ideas since I have not read a single book written by him. The way it delivers his massage, though, is engaging and thought-provoking. Language and literature students should try to learn from his example.

Oedipus the King set in pre-Civil War South Carolina plantation.

A satire of Victorian society with Oscar Wilde's strong appetite for wit. Too bad I was still working very hard to absorb the context.

Ada enam sifat manusia Indonesia menurut Mochtar Lubis: hipokrit alias munafik, enggan bertanggung jawab, berjiwa feodal, percaya takhayul, memiliki bakat seni, dan memiliki watak yang lemah. Dengan keras ia melalui pidato kebudayaannya mengkritik tatanan masyarakat di akhir tahun 70-an. Di situ juga banyak wanti-wanti bahwa jika tahun 2000 situasi itu tidak berubah, maka masyarakat kita bakal makin terpuruk. Sayangnya, tahun 2015 ini pidato itu tetap menyengat dan masih mencerminkan mentalitas kita.

Agak kesulitan di bab tentang Berdyaev dan Jaspers. Bahasa yang dipakai di bab-bab ini seringkali terlalu beristilah, misalnya “deifikasi” atau “transendensi” yang kurang dijelaskan dengan runtut. Tapi, selebihnya, banyak hal baru yang bisa kuambil dari buku pengantar ini. Existentialism is such a menacing concept.

Most of the part, the flow of this introduction can get very confusing. Perhaps that's why this book's chapters are not taught in order in my class. One of the things that gets in the way of understanding the explanations is that there is no glossary chapter. You can rarely just highlight the few important bits in each chapter since you need to read through the entire chapter to get a sense of what it tries to say. Nonetheless, going through those difficulties is worth it in the end. I could get a grasp of syntax in general (the title is a misnomer, I think, since there are lots of explanations taken from languages other than English).

I still have to reread this book, though.

Actually this is a highly tedious read: fairytale-like plot especially at the end, endless streams of Chinese references that I could not relate to (though this is normal since the late writer was a Sinology professor), and most importantly, vocabularic verbosity. The only rewarding things I found, and deeply like, from this story is that it has a well-developed unique protagonist and the world-building which adds a distinctive Chinese flavor to it.

A haunting reminder that religions, though imaginary they might be, should not be taken lightly. Espinosa, a freethinker, takes his punishment for using the Gospel as a dinner story for the illiterate family he lives with. And it does happen in an ironic way.

A very accessible book for anyone who wants to dig deeper into the workings of English words and phrases. The excellent thing about this book is that it does not seek to simplify and present a dumbed-down version of morphology. Instead, the readers are persuaded to navigate through the complex world of morphology by following through the explanations. It's not the kind of book that you could just skim, but the one that should be read like a story book. As a consequence, it tends to get mightily repetitive.