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Lim Swee Heong on Reading Randy Pausch's The Last Lecture for Gratitude, Dreams and Making Time Count

Some books find readers because of the circumstances in which they were written. In this piece, I, Lim Swee Heong, who also writes online as bullbearnme Swee, look at The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch with Jeffrey Zaslow, a short nonfiction book built around a university talk given by a professor who knew his time was limited, and at what readers can take from it about gratitude, childhood dreams and how we choose to spend our days. What the book is The Last Lecture is a work of nonfiction co-written by Randy Pausch, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, and Jeffrey Zaslow, a Wall Street Journal columnist. It was published by Hyperion in April 2008. The book grew out of a lecture Pausch gave at Carnegie Mellon on 18 September 2007, titled Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams. By then he had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and had been told that his illness was terminal. Zaslow was in the audience that day and wrote about the talk in his new...
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Lim Swee Heong on Reading Richard Bach's Jonathan Livingston Seagull for Practice, Curiosity and Self-Belief

Not every motivational book is long, practical or packed with research. Some of the most memorable ones are short stories that leave you with a single image to carry around. In this piece, I, Lim Swee Heong, who also writes online as bullbearnme Swee, look at Richard Bach's Jonathan Livingston Seagull, a brief allegorical fable about a seagull who cares more about learning to fly well than about fitting in, and about what readers can take from it for everyday practice, curiosity and self-belief. What the book is Jonathan Livingston Seagull is a novella by the American author Richard Bach. It was first published in book form in 1970 by Macmillan, with black-and-white photographs of seagulls in flight by the photographer Russell Munson. It arrived with little advertising, yet by the end of 1972 it had reached the top of bestseller lists, largely through word of mouth. A film adaptation directed by Hall Bartlett followed in 1973. In 2014 the book was reissued as Jonathan Livingston...
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Lim Swee Heong on Reading Nelson Mandela's Long Walk to Freedom for Patience, Purpose and Resilience

Some books motivate through quick wins and clever tips. Others motivate by showing how a person held on to a purpose across decades, through setbacks that would have broken most of us. In this piece, I, Lim Swee Heong, who also writes online as bullbearnme Swee, look at Nelson Mandela's autobiography Long Walk to Freedom, a long but rewarding book about patience, conviction and the slow, steady work of building a better future. What the book is Long Walk to Freedom is the autobiography of Nelson Mandela, the South African anti-apartheid leader who later became the country's first democratically elected president. It was first published in 1994, the same year Mandela took office, and it covers his life from his childhood in the rural Eastern Cape through his education, his work as a lawyer and activist, his long imprisonment and his release in February 1990, up to the period around South Africa's first fully democratic elections. The book has an unusual history. Mandela b...
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Lim Swee Heong on Reading Mitch Albom's Tuesdays with Morrie for Gratitude, Priorities and Connection

Some motivational books push us to do more. Others ask a quieter question: are we spending our time on what actually matters? In this piece, I, Lim Swee Heong, who also writes online as bullbearnme Swee, look at Mitch Albom's Tuesdays with Morrie, a short memoir that has stayed popular for decades because it turns big questions about work, relationships and time into conversations anyone can follow. What the book is Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, a Young Man, and Life's Greatest Lesson is a memoir by the American writer Mitch Albom, first published by Doubleday in August 1997. At the time, Albom was best known as a sports columnist for the Detroit Free Press. The book went on to become a number-one New York Times bestseller and, according to the author's own website, has been published in 45 languages. It was later adapted into an Emmy-winning television film starring Jack Lemmon and Hank Azaria, and into a stage play. The book is about Morrie Schwartz, a sociology ...
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Lim Swee Heong on Reading Thor Heyerdahl's Kon-Tiki for Bold Plans and Steady Teamwork

Some books motivate by telling us to dream big. Others do it by showing what a big idea looks like once it meets wind, salt water and daily routine. In this piece, I, Lim Swee Heong, who also writes online as bullbearnme Swee, look at Thor Heyerdahl's Kon-Tiki, a classic true adventure that still has useful things to say about planning, courage, teamwork and keeping an open mind about whether we were right. What the book is Kon-Tiki is a work of narrative nonfiction by the Norwegian explorer and writer Thor Heyerdahl. It was first published in Norway in November 1948 as Kon-Tiki ekspedisjonen, and an English translation by F. H. Lyon followed in 1950. English editions have appeared under titles such as The Kon-Tiki Expedition: By Raft Across the South Seas and Kon-Tiki: Across the Pacific by Raft. The Kon-Tiki Museum in Oslo describes it as the best-selling book ever written by a Norwegian author, translated into more than 70 languages. The book is Heyerdahl's own first-pers...
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Lim Swee Heong on Reading David McCullough's The Wright Brothers for Patient, Curious Persistence

Some of the most encouraging books are not about winning at all, but about how people kept learning when nobody was watching. In this piece, I, Lim Swee Heong, who also writes online as bullbearnme Swee, look at David McCullough's The Wright Brothers, a biography that offers a grounded, practical kind of motivation about curiosity, careful testing and steady work over many years. What the book is The Wright Brothers by David McCullough was published by Simon & Schuster in May 2015. It is nonfiction, a biography of Wilbur and Orville Wright, the brothers from Dayton, Ohio, who made the first powered, controlled flights of a heavier-than-air machine with a pilot aboard, on the Outer Banks of North Carolina in December 1903. McCullough, who won the Pulitzer Prize twice for earlier biographies, built this book on the Wright Papers, including diaries, notebooks, scrapbooks and more than a thousand letters from private family correspondence. That source base shapes the book. Rathe...
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Lim Swee Heong on Reading Hidden Figures for Quiet Excellence and Persistence

Some of the most motivating books are not written as self-help at all. In this piece, I, Lim Swee Heong, who also writes online as bullbearnme Swee, look at Margot Lee Shetterly's Hidden Figures, a work of narrative history that offers a steady, grounded kind of encouragement about skill, patience and doing careful work even when few people are watching. What the book is Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race was published by William Morrow in September 2016. It is nonfiction, built on archival documents, interviews and years of research. Shetterly grew up in Hampton, Virginia, near the NASA Langley Research Center, and she has explained that she knew many of the families connected to the laboratory before she understood how much of its history had gone untold. The book follows several Black women who worked as "computers" at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, known as NACA, ...
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