Between Pages

When I go looking for books, I follow my “nose,” as if wandering through a meadow woven with wildflowers. I see books as mysterious meeting points—encounters with authors whose voices is encapsulated. These meetings between the reader and writer feel beyond time and space and intimate. Even in an age of rapidly ascending AI, I don’t believe books will ever die. They are simply too interesting to disappear.

In a world saturated with short clips and endless social media feeds, books have become for me an eternal retreat—nourishing slow food that bathes the heart and soul. In leadership terms, I think of good books as medicine. And I don’t mean business books or toolkits. I mean books with real stories to tell, where truth is harvested through engaging with human souls.

After all, to be a great leader—especially in today’s world, we must first be human. Do we truly understand what it means to be human? Do we understand our responsibility and our right to be the example we ourselves would follow? The same questions apply to parenting as well.

So here they are, the books that touched me most in 2025:

The Forty Rules of Love – Elif Shafak

I couldn’t put this novel down once I started. I gladly sacrificed a few nights of sleep for it. What fascinated me most was how two stories, unfolding across different times and spaces, mirror each other so synchronistically—like the double helix of DNA.

Despite the title initially putting me off, what drew me in was the presence of Rumi. The story is partly woven around the historical myth of how Rumi became a poet, and his profound friendship with Shams. That alone was enough to hook me.

The Essential Rumi - Coleman Barks

I love Rumi’s poems. They speak to me like an ancient, familiar soul calling from far away—yet feeling incredibly close and present. Sufism and Taoism seem to share the same archetype: never rigid, always flowing, breathing freedom from the source, unattached to any fixed form.

The poems feel like small pearls—each carrying a profound truth, offered lightly and playfully. Rumi has become my “before-bed little treat.” Like chocolate: not meant to be consumed in excess, but deeply satisfying when savored one piece at a time.

Pedro Páramo – Juan Rulfo

I first became interested in this book after learning that Gabriel García Márquez once said it helped him break through writer’s block and led him to One Hundred Years of Solitude. Coincidentally, the Chinese writer Yu Hua has spoken of its similarly profound impact on him.  Rulfo’s storytelling is strange and unsettling in the best way. There is no clear or linear storyline; instead, the narrative is woven together through fragmented scenes. Yet I can’t put it down.

As I read, I kept asking myself: “Is this character alive or dead?”, “What is spoken, and what remains unsaid?” By the end, as Pedro Páramo’s image slowly crystallized through the surrounding souls and scenes, I found myself wondering what he truly symbolizes. A haunting and fascinating experience.

The Awakening – Kate Chopin

This classic had been sitting quietly on my Kindle for months. I only picked it up at the very end of the year, during the holiday break. Perhaps it needed to be read at the threshold of a new year.

Several times, I felt tempted to stop reading. The story moves forward so plainly. The longing stretches on, while events remain sparse. And yet, every time I put it down, I found myself returning to it the next time I entered my “library.”

There was a slow, persistent pull—an unrecognized longing to know what would happen to Edna, the protagonist. What is the price of awakening to one’s inner life in a world not built to accommodate it? As the Chinese saying goes, if you are the only sober one among the drunk, how do you live?

The Art and Science of Personality Development - Dan P. McAdams

This book came to me through my work circle, and I enjoyed reading it. At its heart lies a curious and essential question: How do we become who we are over time? And to what extent can that process be consciously shaped?

Is our personality simply what happens to us, or can we actively participate in its development through reflecting on our goals, our sense of meaning, and the stories we tell about our lives?

The book prompted me to reflect not only on leadership, but also on parenting. How do I participate in my children’s personality development in a way that best supports them in finding their own agency—and authoring their own stories?

Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out (生死疲劳) – Mo Yan

This novel is written by one of my favorite Chinese authors, Mo Yan. I laughed out loud so much while reading it. Yet beneath the humor lies a deep reservoir of truth—especially about the eras lived through by my grandparents and parents.

The protagonist is a landlord wrongfully executed in the 1950s. Refusing to accept his fate in the underworld, the King of Hell repeatedly sends him back into the cycle of reincarnation. He is reborn—each time retaining the memory of his previous life—as a donkey, an ox, a pig, a dog, and a monkey, before finally returning as a human. Through these animal lives, he witnesses the transformations of his family and, on a larger scale, the sweeping changes of an entire country. These five reincarnations align precisely with the most turbulent fifty years of modern Chinese history.

Each perspective feels startlingly fresh. By animalizing humans, Mo Yan renders the inner world vividly human—emotional, self-aware, while keeping the external portrayal faithful to each animal’s real instincts and traits.

The world moves forward relentlessly, rarely looking back at what has been crushed beneath its feet. Power simply changes its face, continuing to wield the same violence. Seen through the eyes of animals, society becomes both wildly fictional and painfully real at once. For me, the book carries a sense of radical expressive freedom.

On Writing – Stephen King

This is the best book on writing I have ever read—precisely because it doesn’t try to teach. I believe the best teachers simply live their truth, walk the talk, and tell their own stories. On Writing does exactly that.

More memoir than manual, it taught me a great deal about writing by allowing me to tap into the writer’s spirit. And in truth, it’s about much more than writing. It speaks to anyone seeking to engage with creativity, honesty, and craft—whatever their path may be.

In all fairness, I think it should be called “On Creating”.

What books touched you that you’d like to share?