Patrick Lam

Thoughts and travels of Patrick Lam

Review: Flight of the Huia by Kerry-Jayne Wilson

A review of a 2004 book about NZ ecology, ecosystems, and species endemic to NZ.

Book Review: We, the Others: Allophones, Immigrants, and Belonging in Canada by Toula Drimonis

Toula Drimonis writes about immigrants and allophones (non-English, non-French mother tongue) in modern Quebec society, talking about integration of immigrants and how broader society evolves in response. Her story, as the daughter of Greek immigrants, overlaps with mine in some ways.

Book review: Before the Dawn by Tōson Shimazaki

A review of the Great Japanese Novel, which describes the life of village chief Aoyama Hanzō along a main highway through the opening of Japan to the world and the Meiji Restoration. Kind of the anti-It’s-a-Wonderful-World as he realizes that his efforts didn’t bear much fruit.

Book review: Overload by Kelly and Moen

I was wandering through a Wellington City Library branch and picked up Overload: How Good Jobs Went Bad and What We Can Do about It by Erin L. Kelly and Phyllis Moen, a book published March 2020. I don’t usually read management books but I am interested in how people work in 2021; work-life balance was cited in Minister Navdeep Bains’s recent resignation, for instance (of course it always is for politicians), and discussed in a Globe and Mail Opinion.