Written by a psychiatrist doctor, who is very interested in “near death experience”, it wasn’t a book that I thought I would read, as I’d have deemed this topic as “unscientific” and “lack of evidence”. But it is such a new book, and I was really curious how this topic can be scientific (since it’s written by a medical specialist) and Penguin actually published this book. So, to be “open and curious” I decided to borrow this and read it!

It’s indeed eye-opening. It has changed so much of how people see “death” and then how they live their lives. For most of those people who experienced near-death experiences, it was such a pleasant and positive journey, everyone would have guessed that then they might long dying, no longer interested to stay and suffer in this physical world, but no, they live life even more fully and compassionately, knowing that death is not scary, it helps people to live even more fully!

Not just that, it’s also important for the rest of us, especially the family members and medical staff to stay open and not too quick to disregard their experiences, or think that they are going nuts. I believe that there are still so much more thing that science can’t explain, yet!

Reading the book also made me contemplate about our mind and consciousness, like really, how does our mind exist and is it really our brain that creates our mind and consciousness? If this is true, how could these people who were almost dead and unconscious have such profound experience at the same time?

So yes, I’d recommend people to read this, especially those sceptics.

On a side note, if you have had near death experiences and would like to connect with others who have similar experiences (based on Dr Greyson’s experience, you wouldn’t need therapy, but it’d probably be of tremendous help for you to be with others who have similar experiences), you may contact me, I’d try to gather you all virtually. Alternatively, you can contact the author!

This is seriously one of the best books I’ve ever read! Every psychologist, psychology graduate and anyone who is interested in psychology should really read this, you won’t regret it!

I picked up this book less than two weeks ago from the National Library.

If you have done psychology undergraduate, do you remember Patient H. M.? To be honest, I barely remember him, until I was teaching psychology undergraduate and what I learnt about him are slowly coming back again.

To those who have not heard of him, he suffered from severe epilepsy after being hit by a bike during his teenage years, and since then he was literally living in episodes and episodes of epilepsy. Once an intelligent boy, he could barely attend college or hold any job due to the “breaks” that his brain was taking so frequently. Until one day in August 1953, the grandfather of the author Luke Dittrich opened his brain and sucked out his amygdala, hippocampus and some other parts in both hemispheres. After that surgery, patient H.M. can no longer form any new memory. He literally lived in the present moment all the time, every person is new, every task at hand is new, everything has to be told and retold, learnt and relearnt… (though experiment showed that he could still form some implicit memory, or procedural memory!!) Obviously, he became the most researched subject in understanding human’s brain, memory and neurology in the history.

When I was still in the Uni, he was known as patient H.M., his names and identity were protected just so people would not be able to find him, but now I know he is Henry Gustave Molaison. He past away in 2008 (but for Henry, his memory ended on that day in 1953).

Luke is such a brilliant writer, he linked the told and untold stories about patient H.M., with shocking history about how people used to “treat” people with mental illness, used to open up another human being’s brain and take out some parts, with his family secrets and tales. He also spent at least 6 years digging deeper into all the related people and places. I literally couldn’t stop myself flipping the page… If you have learnt some psychology, you would encounter some other familiar figures (e.g. Phineas Gage, Monsieur Tan) and how some popular concepts about brain and mind were discovered etc too.

I came across this book by Hope Jahren in Bedok library and couldn’t stop myself reading it.

As much as I want to know more, reading it is actually depressing at the same time. How the world has changed during the past century, how agriculture has changed, how the ocean has changed, how the growing and processing of food have changed, how the air we are breathing in has changed, how the energy we are consuming has increased etc… It’s not easy to learn about the shocking statistics and facts, and to continue to live ignorantly. This is especially so while I’m now here in Singapore, where the Covid-19 pandemic is quite under control, and it’s a developed country with sufficient clean water for all, nicely lit up city at night, plastic bags are everywhere and don’t (but might soon) cost 20 cents, there are always endless queues outside the stores when Apple launches some new products etc.

We can continue to live this way, and raise the next generation to be like ourselves, but soon there won’t be more generations to come as the earth will no longer be suitable for any lives.

I know people get eco-anxiety – a fear of ecological damages or environmental disaster, and this fear is no good when we aren’t collectively, or the countries around the world aren’t working together to do something about it. But still, the fear is needed, and the fear can be reduced when we play our parts, and then start to influence those around us, hopefully.

I borrowed this book from the library, the author is a Nephrologist (renal/kidney specialist), Dr Jason Fung.

It is a fairly new book, the hardcover was published in December 2020, very up-to-date. I would say it’s for anyone who wants to learn more about cancer, as it’s very accessible, not too medical and technical. Dr Fung would take you through the history of cancer, what researchers already found and knew (e.g. what’s likely to cause cancer, is the problem with the seed (the genes and cancer cells) or the soil (environment we are in), what treatments are available, what works for what types of cancer, how cancer evolves over time and why certain treatment that don’t evolve would fail over time etc).

I also like that he summarises from time to time. There is also this Chapter 20 that summarises most of the things (but you wouldn’t want to just read that chapter, because you would miss the opportunity to be in awe of this single cell organism who lives in multicellularity and striving so hard to survive (i.e. cancer) and also evolution. (The fact that I’m using “who” tells you how I feel about it after reading and learning about it).

You’d learn so much from the book and want to share with people around you. You probably might change some little or big things in your lifestyle. I’m now also listening to his audiobook, “Life in the fasting lane”. There are also “The Diabetes Code” and “The Obesity Code” by the same author.