UDHARA DE SILVA

Featured image credit: FotoNoir

Air Lanka’s Lockheed L-1011 TriStars were the aircraft that first pulled me into the orbit of commercial aviation. I flew on them almost every summer holiday between Riyadh, where I grew up, and Colombo, where our friends and relatives lived, from 1995 until the fleet was replaced by brand-new fly-by-wire A330s in the late 1990s. I remember the wide cabins, the impossibly cool S-duct third engine, and the pre-9/11 cockpit visits where pilots, recognising their own childhood awe in mine, walked me through the controls with kindness and pride.

Strip away the nostalgia and the inner six-year-old, and the verdict still stands: the L-1011 was arguably the best widebody of its era — and far too ahead of the curve. It was the first aircraft of its kind to land itself in near-zero visibility. It reduced pilot workload through sophisticated flight controls and safety systems. It was quieter, more comfortable, more refined than its rival.

That rival, the Douglas DC-10, was by many technical measures the inferior machine.

But it arrived first. In the end, only about 250 TriStars were built. The DC-10 delivered close to 450. The L-1011 programme sputtered to an end in just over a decade. The DC-10 kept evolving well into the 90s.

The TriStar leaves us with an uncomfortable truth: a great product is built as much on finance, risk management, sales strategy, and structural resilience as it is on engineering brilliance. In multi-billion-dollar bets, the invisible elements are not secondary — they are existential. Innovation at any cost is failure waiting to happen. Risk does not disappear because we refuse to stare at it. And ambition without humility is a dangerous mix — especially when success in one arena (defence contracting, in Lockheed’s case) is assumed to transfer seamlessly into another.

That lesson feels eerily relevant in an era that rewards audacity — especially in AI — with almost delirious enthusiasm.

The invisible work

We reward spectacle and ignore plumbing. The TriStar dazzled. And it died because of cash flow strain, single-supplier fragility, and timing. 

With Lockheed pursuing engineering perfection, they failed to design redundancy into critical elements of its development, relying on a single engine programme with Rolls Royce (the eventually game-changing RB211). They underestimated how aggressively the DC-10 would be marketed and sold. There was no meaningful Plan B baked into the strategy, no Version 1 that satisfied the market while hedging their technological and supplier concentration risk. A product doesn’t need to be perfect to success, it needs to be viable, able to make money, and ship on time. If you can’t scale these invisible bits, the visible won’t matter.

The 1970s were a period of enormous ambition in aviation. Deregulation reshaped the industry. Airlines with big dreams sprouted across continents. Lockheed, steeped in defence culture, leaned on its reputation and engineering pedigree.

Meanwhile, the DC-10 entered service a year earlier, in 1971. It too had three engines, positioned as a more efficient alternative to the fuel-hungry Boeing 747 dominating long-haul routes. It lacked the elegance of the TriStar, but it offered airlines two engine suppliers to choose from, aggressive financing, and earlier delivery slots. It secured major carriers in the United States and Europe.

Those boring foundations — contracts, financing, distribution, risk management — are rarely celebrated. But they allow bold ideas to survive long enough to matter. The MD-11, the DC-10’s successor, still flies today as a cargo workhorse for FedEx and UPS. 

The Cost of Concentration Risk

The fatal error was not simply choosing one engine supplier. It was choosing one path to victory.

The TriStar had no meaningful redundancy. No diversified hedges. No deliberate downside minimisation in proportion to the scale of risk. When you pursue high-risk innovation, concentration becomes lethal.

Lockheed could have reduced exposure through earlier and deeper customer financing structures. They could have explored parallel engine partnerships. They could have been developing a twin-engine future as propulsion technology advanced. They could have hedged against inevitable shocks in a cyclical, capital-heavy industry.

Instead, the strategy assumed that technical superiority would trump any delivery delays. This is not only an aviation lesson. Optionality is not inefficiency. It is resilience. When the stakes are existential, hedge early.

“Best” is contextual.

In consumer technology, “best” may mean ecosystem integration and user delight. In aviation, “best” often means cost per seat mile, reliability, fleet commonality, financing support, and predictable delivery timelines. 

I remember pilots telling me how much they loved flying the L-1011. But pilot admiration was not the product’s objective. Airlines needed a cheaper alternative to the 747 at a pivotal moment — during deregulation, oil shocks, and global economic shifts. They needed flexibility, cost discipline, and manageable risk.

The TriStar may have been technologically superior. But it did not fully align with the buying criteria that actually close orders.

How were these insights missed?

Not necessarily from a lack of intelligence — but perhaps from overconfidence. From assuming that ambition and technical excellence would align naturally with market forces. From hoping to ride the big bang of deregulation and expansion of the aviation universe without fully internalising the volatility of fuel prices, competition, and macroeconomics that would have translated into a more aggressive, life-or-death sales strategy.

Innovation must be staged. “Best” should sometimes mean good enough to enter the arena sustainably — not perfect at the cost of survival. Innovation cannot progress beyond its first breakthrough if it collapses under its own weight.

The counterfactual

 Imagining TriStar as a commercial success is a thought experiment in discipline. What it could have looked like:

• Launch with at least two engine options.
• Front-load aggressive sales to secure the first 100–200 frames, even at painful margins, to build learning curves and credibility.
• Ship a safe, viable version early; iterate toward perfection.
• Develop a twin-engine pipeline in anticipation of evolving economics.
• Secure long-term financing structured to withstand years of losses.
• Expect major macro shocks – such as oil shocks that hit in 1973 and surging inflation that reshaped aviation economics in the 70s – because commercial aircraft live across decades. 

Invisible work matters in transformative technology. Legal structures. Supply chains. Distribution models. Financing. Marketing momentum. These shape the world more than the headline features do.

In other industries, we see different risk architectures at play. Apple, with its multiple profit engines can afford to iterate on ambitious but unproven products like the Vision Pro. Beyoncé worked for decades on building massive global audiences before she could afford to drop albums with zero promotion or build-up. TMSC, which makes the world’s most advanced chips, does not scale innovation without first securing the capital, customers and buffers to handle shocks.

Where boring is good

There is a case for boring excellence where it counts. There is a case for satisficing — for getting an idea into the world satisfactorily rather than perfectly. And there’s the skill of being ambitious without arrogance, maintaining beginner’s mind while pursuing scale and experience. 

I wonder what global aviation might look like if Lockheed had survived in commercial aviation. What additional innovation might have emerged. What new machines might have awed the child I once was. The L-1011 remains one of the most beautiful aircraft ever built. Its story is not a cautionary tale against ambition. It is a warning against ambition without buffers and the humility to build world-astonishing things one survivable step at a time.

Further Reading:
The Sporty Game by John Newhouse

I hope you are having a great start to your 2026. Since I discovered Derek Sivers’ incredible collection of book notes many years ago, where he generously shares insights into the books he reads, I’ve been inspired to do some version of the same, starting with a few book notes myself, but over time, simply sharing what I’ve read over the course of each year along with thoughts on some standout titles. So here’s what I read in 2025.

(A note on the featured image: my favourite place to read last year, at the Heritance Kandalama Hotel, Sri Lanka, with a glorious view of the reservoir in front of the property and Sigiriya.)

Over the course of the year, I realised lots of what I read looked at systems, frameworks, architectures that lead to forms of success or failure. Good intentions and confident narratives aren’t enough to make a dent on the universe! Obvious enough, but fascinating to study through multiple lenses. Different memoirs, Buddhist texts, sci-fi, stuff written for very, very different audiences, kept bringing to light the insight that failures in individuals, business, society-at-large, the environment, are so often failures of underlying systems and incentives. 

The most unsettling books on business I read were not about villains. They were about insulation in opaque, seductive bubbles of privilege. When boards put the performance of performing over actual performance, when lobbying becomes entitlement, when proximity to power replaces responsibility. 

Businesses founded on genuine ideals eventually face crossroads (often more than once) where growth and values collide. Incentives, whether they’re tied to bonuses, status, or access to capital, can bring out the worst in people without any malicious intent behind their behaviour. And when checks and balances disappear, whether it be through lack of competition or lack of courage to intervene, you get priceless cautionary tales.

Books about sales management, agriculture, cooking and human potential converged on the same insight: we grow when our environments nourish us, not squeeze us. Whether coaching people over performatively managing them, letting animals (particularly livestock) self-select what their bodies need, or creating cultures where effort compounds rather than burns out, the message in these books was clear: nourishment matters more than superficial spoon-feeding.

The novels and short stories I read explained reality better than non-fiction. Stories about parallel universes, reincarnation, unknowable consciousness, and climate futures taught through feeling over fact. The future, hinted at by some books, proclaimed loudly by others, won’t have clean endings and have many trade-offs. Innovation alone won’t save us. Systems that allow, and require, humans to behave decently, are a part of our salvation too.

Other books I read dismantled the myth of the self-made individual. None of us start clean, we have many ancestors to thank for our existence, and the good, the bad and ugly. A few books that I dropped off without finishing reminded me that information alone is inert. It’s not enough to list out facts, they need to move us with narrative. 

I came out of my 2025 reading with a clearer sense of how to combine some of my idealistic tendencies with a growing respect for systems that bring out the best in us while constraining the worst. Full reading list below (starred books are highly recommended), hope you find something in there that inspires you to read just a little more this year! 

1. The Chairman’s Lounge by Joe Aston. Thrilling investigative journalism on the rise and fall of one of Australia’s household name CEOs. A cautionary tale for leaders at all levels of an organisation and the need for good governance that stands the test of time and C-suite turnover.
2.  Changing Planes by Ursula Le Guin. Fascinating short stories in which the misery of transiting in airpots can be channeled to take you to other planes of existence. Funny, insightful, thought provoking pieces that shine a light on our own weirdness.
3.  Very Bad People by Patrick Alley. The founder of Global Witness reveals how corruption works, from deals to violence and important links between environmental damage and corruption. The cases featured are bold, brave, with Patrick and his comrades overcoming incredible odds to uncover the truth. The corporate world could use such courage.
4. The First Time Sales Manager by Mike Weinberg. Standout lessons helpful for young managers: Hold your people accountable, help them improve at their jobs through proactive coaching, hire right, spend more time with the best people, quickly identify and address underperformance.
5. The Book of Elsewhere by Keanu Reeves and China Miéville. A Cloud Atlas-esque story about an immortal being trying to understand why he keeps respawning into the world when killed, while fighting a demon pig – yes, a pig – borne of the same energy that keeps trying to hunt him down. All while being a military weapon. Subtle Buddhist undertones woven into the action and sci-fi.
6.  Dirt by Bill Buford. A journalist’s adventure learning to become a French chef and understand the essence of French cuisine by moving with his wife and young boys to Lyon, the gastronomic capital of the world. Full of deep insight, entertaining stories of the characters that made the Lyonnaise restaurant scene, and a philosophical reflection on what it means to feed and be fed.  
7.  The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot. Possibly one of the most profound and impactful stories in human medicine and the origins of informed consent. Can’t help but feel deep gratitude for Henrietta Lacks, who unknowingly made incredible contributions to civilisation because of her cells – cancer treatments, vaccines, blood tests, etc. Incredible journalism by the author, which in and of itself is deeply inspiring.
8. The Colours of All the Cattle by Alex McCall Smith. Not the strongest installation of the ‘No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency’ series, but heartwarming nonetheless, which is what I seek whenever I pick up or listen to one of these books.
9.  Hidden Potential by Adam Grant. Highly, highly recommend to any learner, teacher, manager or parent.
10.  The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson. One of the best non-fiction fiction books I’ve ever read. Eye opening, insightful, imaginative and incredibly informative on how we might fight our way out of climate change permanently. 
11.  Matriarch by Tina Knowles. Incredible insights into the making of the strong, resilient, creative and entrepreneurial woman who made Beyoncé. Couldn’t put it down from the moment I started listening. Can see where Beyoncé gets her hustle from, and the incredible challenges and hurdles overcome throughout her career. So much grace and courage and making the most of every opportunity. 
12. Orbital by Samantha Harvey.
13. Virgin Millionaire by Ben Nas. Helpful personal finance principles in the Australian context, especially for young professionals starting to build momentum with their careers and incomes.
14. A Very Short History of Portugal by A.H. de Oliveira Marques. One of the only books I struggled to push through, giving up halfway. Taught like history in school. Mere facts and figures. No story or context or intrigue.
15. The Whole Story by John Mackay. Fastinating memoir of the journey of building Whole Foods Market by its founder, from the very early days to its sale to Amazon. Interesting lessons on business philosophy, problems of scaling healthy food, negotiation, tough conversations and brutal boardroom behaviour that eventually will find its way into almost every business.
16. Empire of the Elite by Michael M Grynbaum. A tale of the business cycle from birth to decline, with cautionary tales and success stories. Standout content on Anna Wintour and her ability to stay relevant and value adding. Crazy stories about how the company was financially managed, spending lavishly with no constraints to stay culturally prestigious. 
17. Good Arguments by Bo Seo. We need to learn how to disagree better to create meaningful change, all while connecting more with others who see things differently to us. Mechanics but also philosophy of debate. 
18. Journey to Mindfulness by Bhante Gunaratne . First time I’ve read the memoir of a Buddhist monk. Showed the humanity, struggle, work of one of the most insightful minds in Buddhism. Made me see Sri Lankan cultural norms differently too. 
19. Nourishment by Fred Provenza. Trust living systems to self-regulate through diversity, feedback and choice, rather than controlled, simplified, forced behaviours.
20.  Poor Charlie’s Almanack by Charlie Munger. So many wonderful and versatile tools by a business legend, including latticework of mental models, practical psychology, inversion, contrarianism, deep reading and thought, not being afraid to have theories without academic qualifications, and being as simple as one needs to be (but not any simpler). 
21. Solaris by Stanisław Lem 
22. Love, Loss and What We Ate by Padma Lakshmi. Beautiful memoir by the beautiful, intelligent foodie, TV host/producer and former wife of Salman Rushdie. Perfect and seamless transitions between childhood memories and her life journey, with food as the connective tissue between the two frames.
23. AI 2041 by Kai-Fu Lee, Chen Qiufan. Fascinating exploration of AI’s trajectory touching on health, wealth, happiness, education and more. Slightly cringey writing when the authors attempt to place stories in countries they may have visited or read about at some point in their lives (the Sri Lanka one particularly irked me), but doesn’t take away from the ambitious material. 
24.  Four Foundations of Mindfulness by Bhante Gunaratne. Practical insights on Buddhism’s “Four Noble Truths” in a way I haven’t heard in decades of listening to Buddhist monks at many an almsgiving or event I’d attended in childhood. 
25. The Cleaners by Ken Liu.

The French Impressionism exhibition at the NGV brought over a 100 works from the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, making the perfect weekend date with a friend. I found myself less absorbed by Monet’s gorgeous lilies than by the labour behind them. Each painting was sweat equity embodied, glazed in the residue of thousands of smaller acts of creation that took effort and focus and courage – hand-ground pigments, canvasses schlepped across rugged terrain, light studied for hours to get it just right, deciding unequivocally to go against the rules of academic art.

Every field is made up of these creative acts. Da Vinci filled thousands of pages with restless sketches, asking and attempting to answer questions no one else thought to ask. Geoffrey Bawa, Sri Lanka’s famous father of tropical modernism, didn’t even study architecture until his thirties, but acting on his lifelong curiosity eventually spawned buildings where nature and concrete intermingled to the most pleasing, sensual effect, like here, here, and here.

Discipline, of course, is the throughline across all iconic works and their creators. Gabriel García Márquez wrote from morning to night in the final year of writing One Hundred Years of Solitude, using journalistic rigor (the kind found in the 20th century) to anchor his magical realism to truth. Haruki Murakami writes like he trains for marathons – same hours, same laps, building endurance that churned out Norwegian Wood and 1Q84. A.R. Rahman composes while Chennai sleeps, chasing melodies until the sun rises.

For some, scaling is the artistic medium. Gordon Ramsay and Luke Nguyen multiply themselves through restaurants, multitudes of books and TV shows. José Andrés says that “real work comes when you pass your comfort zone”, urgency his fuel, whether plating intricate dishes for degustation or feeding Haiti and Gaza in the midst of unimaginable suffering and an unbelievable scarcity of food and water through his World Central Kitchen

Not every act of creation is loud. Y Combinator’s Paul Graham great work begins by chasing your curiosity—trying lots of ideas quickly, discarding most, and noticing which ones refuse to leave your mind. The great, late, Quincy Jones thrived on breadth, moving from Frank Sinatra to Donna Summer to Michael Jackson, Bossa Nova to film scores, treating variety as rocket fuel for creativity. Rick Rubin (probably the biggest force in contemporary western music you’ve never heard of) takes the opposite tack: silence, long listening, waiting for the right notes to drift in.

The contrast matters because today, the vast majority of us rarely give ourselves either – the sprint or the stillness (or, dare I say, boredom). A few quiet minutes on the train feel unbearable without music or a podcast. We constantly consume but ever so rarely make. But closing the gap between consumption and creation is how life is well lived.

Creation doesn’t mean masterpieces every time! It begins and remains small almost all of the time: one thought in a journal, a hurried after-work meal using whatever’s left in the fridge and pantry, planting mint in a tiny pot. They’re bodyweight exercises for the imagination muscles. As Maya Angelou brilliantly said “you can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have”.

No doubt there’s inertia in us mere mortals. For me, making feels like swimming through honey – slow, sticky, exhausting. But with each draft, each pie baked, each after hours session at the piano, the honey warms, thins, and suddenly movement feels natural. Creativity leaks across borders – time in the kitchen sharpens writing, time at the piano shapes my slides at work.

The point isn’t perfection, but reps to build muscle for when it matters. And the act of making is itself clarifying, joyful, and an antidote to the dullness we feel without our devices. Jazz musician Esperanza Spalding improvises with life as her instrument. Maybe that’s the point – the more we create, the less the outcome matters. The act itself becomes the music, and sometimes, if we’re lucky, the world hums along.

I’m by no means an upright ecowarrior. But over the years, through disparate sources and experiences, I’ve become very interested in how people approach their impact on the planet. This has included a week living in a simple ecolodge in Ecuador whose owners cultivate the land using permaculture principles, discovering Alice Waters and her incredibly simple but powerful approach to food through Masterclass, reading Kim Stanley Robinson’s ‘Ministry for the Future’, Bill Gates’ ‘How to Avoid a Climate Disaster’, the incredible docuseries ‘Omnivore’ by Noma founder René Redzepi, and paltry attempts to cultivate organic parsley and coriander on our south-facing balcony in East Melbourne (photos of gardening outcomes emphatically not supplied).

We consume. It’s very, very hard to do so in a way that’s not unsustainably extractive, let alone regenerative and antifragile. But it’s possible. The most exposure I have to regenerative living are through the eggs I buy (like the ones Honest Eggs make here in Australia). Fewer than 190 hens per hectare, treated as ecosystem engineers, moving across land improving soil, biodiversity and animal welfare. They’re more expensive no doubt, but my gosh, are they delicious both in taste and impact.

I’d like more touchpoints in my life that are regenerative in some shape or form. There are projects to watch and learn from, such as Microsoft data centres heating water for thousands of residents nearby, universities researching regenerative agriculture, and food hubs offering produce and education to laypeople. There’s also financing that rewards ecological gains, much like the system explored in Ministry for the Future (a book I’d highly recommend to anyone keen for a meticulously researched, fun ecothriller).

But this is just the tip of the melting iceberg. I’m keen to learn more about the inertia, transitory costs in various industries, challenges of measuring success, and the huge talent and knowledge gaps. From my limited experiences, conversations, self-education on the vast universe of regenerative thinking, the challenges seem gargantuan, but so do the opportunities for truly sustainable growth and living.

The National Museum of Cambodia suspended time and as well as the relentless heat, when I visited over the weekend. Sticking around in Phnom Penh for a few days following a work conference, I wanted to explore Cambodian culture through its food scene, and of course, its museum.

Home to one of the largest collections of Khmer and pre-Khmer objects, one of the first items that caught my eye as I wandered the “prehistoric wing” was a slab of stone, modest and worn. No dramatic story, just a few words etched in an ancient language that likely contained a donor list or an inventory.

I felt wonder that the stone had survived and made it to its current resting place, making it, intact, through centuries of nature being nature, civilisations coming and going, the brutal Khmer Rouge (who took many of the museums lives). I felt sadness for the hands that carved it. Hands now dust, their names and histories completely removed from memory. And I felt a quiet, overwhelming gratitude to be alive and bearing witness to it.

I don’t have credentials in history, but I love pausing in museums and ruins, imagining the lives behind the objects. I wonder what they hoped for, what they feared, what dreams they had. Zooming out, I think of the civilisations the collections are a part of – born, grown, maturing and eventually collapsing, becoming photo backdrops for strangers centuries later.

I’m not nihilistic at all, but when I spend time in these spaces, I feel two things at once. First, nothing I do today will matter at some point (relatively soon, in the grand scheme of things). Second, precisely because of that, I should do what causes the least harm and most benefit to those around me.

There’s the phrase “Live like today is your last”, but what if we also lived like our choices, however small, would ripple across centuries and millennia? What if the way we treat people and build things mattered less for ‘legacy’, but rather because a generations from now, someone or something may still be living with the echoes of our actions? Perhaps it should be “Live like today is your last, and as if your choices will shape lives for the next thousand years”. How can we be good ancestors?

You can’t visit Cambodia without soaking in the brilliance of the Hindu-Buddhist empire that created one of the most incredible testaments of human ingenuity, Angkor Wat, and that it coexists with the truly unfathomable trauma of the Khmer Rouge. Millions of futures stolen in just a handful of years. And yet Cambodia endures. The museum, rebuilt in 1979 after the end of the brutal 4-year regime, is a monument to resilience of Cambodian people.

One of the last rooms I visited had rows of Buddhas statues from several eras of the region. Styles changed, but their hand gestures, ‘mudras’, were consistent. I had to look them up on ChatGPT to learn what they meant: Fearlessness, teaching, meditation. The form adapted to the times, but the messages didn’t. In a world of constant change, one can choose calm, kindness, forgiveness.

My 4-day break in PNH was meant to be restorative – I got through 1.5 books in several cafes and ate my way through town, after all. But my couple of hours in the museum was the most meaningful, a reminder to be a part of the long, quiet continuum of people trying to leave the world a bit better than when they found it.

Now, if you’re wondering where I ate and read my books, here’s my list of spots I’d recommend. Many thanks to the friends who shared or took me to some of these places.

Backyard Cafe: decent coffee, super healthy food, and wonderful tropical chic ambience.

Sombok: Khmer fine dining, run by an all-women team and legendary executive chef, Kimsan Pol.

Kravanh: Elegent, classic Khmer cuisine in a beautiful colonial mansion. I had Snail here, and it was marvellous.

Eleven One Kitchen: fresh homemade food in a lush garden-like space with an open kitchen.

Cafe Malaya: a family-owned Malaysian restaurant with a wonderful, soul-nourishing buffet.

Addis Ethiopian Restaurant: not in a million years would I expect to have the best injera and Ethiopian curries I’ve ever had in Cambodia, but there you go. Superb, fresh flavours.

Cuisine Wat Damak: French Cambodian fusion, one of Asia’s 50 best restaurants (and whose 3-course set lunch costs under USD20 as of May 2025!).

If I may, I had a very, very good reading run last year. Some were recommended by friends, others gifted by family, and a couple thrown in by Amazon’s algorithm. I inevitably found a few at my favourite bookstore’s exceptionally well-curated bargain table.

I fortunately didn’t have to give up on any of the books I started. A few were challenging reads, forcing me to focus, think through implications and take lots of notes. Others were soothing balms to take the edge off intense work days. All left me with a feeling of time well spent. So if you’re looking for books that will expand your perspective, sharpen instincts, inspire through the lives of others, keep you hooked from page one, then keep reading.

 Burn Book – Kara Swisher (Fearless, sharp, mandatory reading. Tech’s power players exposed.)

 Key Idea: Tech journalist Kara Swisher, through memoir, exposes the makings of Silicon Valley’s biggest egos—Zuckerberg and co —cutting through the myth-making to reveal the real, flawed figures behind tech’s most powerful companies.

 Biggest insight: Speak truth to power.

 Who should read this: Anyone fascinated by tech, power, and the personalities shaping our world.

 Alchemy – Rory Sutherland (Logic is overrated—human psychology drives decisions.)

 Key Idea: The best solutions often don’t make sense. Understanding irrational human behavior is the real superpower in business, marketing, and life.

 Biggest insight: The “official reason” behind a decision is almost never the real reason, and is unknown to even those who made it.

 Who should read this: Anyone who thinks logical reasoning is the be all, end all.

 Eaters of the Dead – Michael Crichton (A historical retelling of Beowulf, told through the eyes of an Ibn Battuta-like Arab scholar.)

 Key Idea: The writer behind Jurassic Park and Westworld reimagines the Beowulf legend, blending adventure, history, and myth into a brilliantly reframed narrative.

 Biggest insight: There are far more interesting ways to retell a timeless story than simply modernise using the latest tech and storytelling trends (yes, I’m thinking of Disney remakes).

 Who should read this: Fans of historical fiction, adventure novels, and anyone who loves the thrill of well-researched storytelling.

 A Calamity of Souls – David Baldacci (A gripping, powerful story set in the racially charged 1960s.)

 Key Idea: Set in the American South in the 60s, this novel follows a racially charged murder case, with a white and Black lawyer pairing up to help a Black man accused of murdering his wealthy, older, white employers.

 Biggest insight: The fight for racial justice was (and still is) messy, painful, and brutally personal.

 Who should read this: Fans of historical fiction, courtroom dramas and civil rights in America.

 The Billionaire Raj – James Crabtree (A deep dive into India’s rise—and its growing inequality.)

 Key Idea: India’s economic boom has led to staggering inequality, with billionaires amassing massive wealth while millions struggle. Crabtree examines the consequences of unchecked growth.

 Biggest insight: Fix inequality, end crony capitalism, navigate the challenges of industrialisation to unlock the potential of India’s people.

 Who should read this: Anyone curious about global economics, emerging markets, and the intersection of wealth, politics and corruption.

1. The Big Leap – Gay Hendricks (Self development)
2. The Last Graduate (Book 2 of The Scholomance Trilogy) – Naomi Novik (Fantasy)
3. IKEA: How to Become The World’s Richest Man – Johan Stenebo (Biography)
4. Eaters of the Dead – Michael Crichton (Fantasy)
5. Thinking in Systems: A Primer – Donella H. Meadows (Science)
6. Same as Ever – Morgan Housel (Business)
7. Burn Book – Kara Swisher (Business Memoir)
8. The Billionaire Raj – James Crabtree (Business)
9. Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl – Carrie Brownstein (Memoir)
10. Alchemy – Rory Sutherland (Social psychology)
11. A Calamity of Souls – David Baldacci (Historical fiction)
12. House of Hidden Meanings – RuPaul (Memoir)
13. How the World Thinks – Julian Baggini (History/Philosophy)
14. A Memoir of my Former Self – Hilary Mantel (Essays)
15. As Always, Julia: The Letters of Julia Child and Avis Devoto – Joan Reardon (Biography)
16. Training the Mind – Chögyam Trungpa (Tibetan Buddhism)
17. The Story of a Ceylon Teamaker – Merrill Fernando (Memoir)
18. The Contrarian – Max Chafkin (Biography)
19. How to Write a Great Business Plan – William A. Sahlman (Business)
20. Supercommunicators – Charles Duhigg (Business)
21. The Cat Who Taught Zen – James Norbury (Fiction)
22. The House of Unexpected Sisters (Book 18 of ‘The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency) – Alexander McCall Smith (Fiction)
23. Make Something Wonderful – Steve Jobs (Business)
24. Becoming Steve Jobs – Brent Schlender (Biography)
25. The Watchmen – Alan Moore (Fiction)
26. The Kamogawa Food Detectives – Hisashi Kashwai

Hope you find something in the above that stays with you. If there’s one that I should add to my 2025 list, let’s talk!

A recent piece in The Atlantic shocked me: even Ivy League students – those elite overachievers – are struggling to read deeply. Not scrolling. Not skimming. But focussing and engaging with a book. And it’s not just them. Many of us haven’t read a single book in the last year. Not one.

When was the last time you got lost in a book, taken on a journey so palpable you could smell, hear, touch and see things in a way that made you marvel at how the author did it? Why does it even matter in an age of sugar-hit content that can be digested in seconds? When we stop reading, we don’t just lower our ability to metabolise knowledge and emotion, but also the ability to focus, think critically, and imagine possibilities beyond the here and now. It’s like letting your mind’s gym membership lapse, with your imagination muscles soon withering away. The solution is sitting right there—on the shelf, on your phone, or in your headphones.

I wasn’t always a devout reader. I read as a kid—school assignments and few fiction series (if you grew up in the 90s like I did, Animorphs and Goosebumps may have been a part of your repertoire too). I enjoyed reading, but I wasn’t even close to being a voracious bookworm. By my twenties, though, something clicked. Reading became more than a way to pass time; it became a critical tool for growth.

At first, I thought just finishing books was enough. If I read it, I’d remember it, right? I sadly am not one of the lucky few with a photographic memory, so whatever titles I read passed right through me. Then, I moved onto highlighting like my life depended on it. Pages would glow neon yellow, but when I tried to recall the big idea? Blank.

A few years ago came Readwise, my lifesaver. It’s an app that takes my digital highlights and serves them up in daily snippets, helping me reflect and actually remember what I’ve read. From there, I leveled up my game. Now I jot down scrappy notes—not polished essays, but ideas, connections, and questions. Reading stopped being a one-way street; it became a conversation. Now, books aren’t just something I consume. They’re part of how I think, create, and grow.

Since building up my capacity to read (read: no more excuses), I aim to read 25 books, up from an initial target of 10-15 in my early years of intentional reading. It’s a target that pushes me but does not overwhelm me. Some years I hit it; some years I don’t. The real purpose of the reading target? Maintaining the habit.

I read in every format. Nothing beats the feel (and smell) of a paperback. But my Kindle is a godsend when I’m on the go. Audible is perfect for walks, chores, and commutes. Where do I find books? Podcasts, curated reading lists, independent bookstores (Readings in Melbourne being my favourite), and, more often than not, the occasional Kindle deal. The key is to pick books I’m genuinely curious about—not ones I feel obligated to read.

Thankfully, reading may be having a moment through new marketing channels. Trends like TikTok’s #BookTok have turned books into cultural phenomena. People are geeking out over novels and sharing recommendations in ways that feel fresh and fun. It’s messy, sure—part hype, part substance—but it’s proof that literature still has potential to captivate minds.

Make 2025 the year we rediscover the joy of reading. And I mean joy. Not obligation. Not FOMO. Pick up a book you actually want to read. Maybe it’s a thriller that keeps you up all night. Maybe it’s a classic that is a mental marathon to digest. Maybe it’s a coffee table book about a place you’ve dreamed of visiting or a trashy celebrity memoir. It doesn’t matter. The beauty of reading is its infinite possibility to inspire and move. It sharpens your mind, deepens your empathy, and gives you a way to escape or explore.

So, go ahead. Dust off that book you’ve been meaning to read, or download something new. You might just fall in love.

P.S. I’ll share my 2024 reading list soon. But in the meantime, here’s what I read last year—what’s on your shelf?

A few helpful links:

• If Anthony Bourdain made a documentary about reading, this would be it.
• Polymath Tyler Cowen on reading in clusters, giving up books early if they don’t grab you.
• Sonke Ahrens (academic and author of ‘How to Take Smart Notes’) on reading actively with a notetaking medium on hand.
• How to use Readwise.
• How Cal Newport reads.

For my third visit to the archives of ‘A Life Less Ordinary’, where I talk to interesting thinkers and doers from Asia, it’s Venuri Perera. Venuri is a Sri Lankan performance artist, choreographer, curator and educator whose work has been shown around the planet from Colombo to Berlin. She is trained in Kandyan dance, a striking traditional Sri Lankan danceform that up until the 60s was only performed by men (more on the context of females in Kandyan dance, as explained by Venuri, here).

In 2014, at the opening performance of the first Colomboscope arts festival in Sri Lanka, Venuri performed a ritual, ‘Kesel Maduwa’, reimagining elements of traditional Sinhala Buddhist healing ceremonies. As a kid who grew up with some exposure to these types of rituals on summer holidays to Sri Lanka, I found her ritual seductive, captivating, even shocking (further reading on ‘Kesel Maduwa’ here). And while I didn’t get all the nuance in the performance or the social critique, I got enough. I along with the rest of the local and foreign audience were gripped for the entire ritual, about 30 minutes long, which grew and grew in intensity. She was brilliant.

Naturally, she was on my guest wish list when planning for my first season of A Life Less Ordinary, centred around Sri Lankan thinkers, artists, entrepreneurs and more. And she graciously agreed to meet with me and my co-host Tanya when we reached out!

Our chat covered a lot, from her approach to performing, the early struggles of building her education and career, and Vipassana meditation. I would love to catch up with her to see how her ideas, art and activism has evolved since we last spoke in 2017. @roadsideninja on IG is the best place to find out more about Venuri Perera. I feel so fortunate to have had chatted to such a bold, creative, unflinching mind.

Photo credit: Venuri Perera, I dance for , Colomboscope 2019 by Ruvin de Silva. Source: https://www.artforum.com/events/colomboscope-244879/

Momofuku founder David Chang is a Renaissance guy. And his memoir, ’Eat a Peach’, reveals the intense highs, excruciating lows, and continuous growth throughout his career as a chef, restaurateur, and media guy. I read ‘Eat a Peach‘ a couple of years ago, but there was so much I highlighted from the book (full book notes here), a simple copy/paste job just wouldn’t do justice to one of the most thrilling and multidimensional memoirs I’ve come across. Chang’s raw honesty and ideas on work, creativity, living well and more transcends the food world. It contains as much insight as music producer Rick Rubin’s tome ’The Creative Act’, but feels more rollercoaster than zen. Which is why I loved it. Above all, it’s a book for anyone looking to feel what it’s like to hustle like your life depended on it in one of the most intense and cut-throat industries on the planet.

Chang isn’t without criticism. A former employee of his reviewed the same memoir I rave about from her perspective, and, in all honesty, I doubt I would have survived in the kind of work environment he cultivated. He’s tried to acknowledge and apologise for his behaviour both in the memoir and since its publishing, but scars remain in some of his former employees. He’s also had to backtrack on trying to trademark the popular condiment name “chili crunch”, being perceived as a “trademark bully”.

But his career has undeniably made a dent in the food world, and while there are aspects of his style I’d rather not emulate, there’s a lot more inspiration than not. Heck, I’ve never even been to one of his restaurants in the US before, and yet here I am, on the other side of the planet, talking about his projects like I’ve eaten at all of his legendary establishments (note: one day, fingers crossed). So here are some of the ideas, passages and quotes from ‘Eat a Peach’ that I found pretty unforgettable.

Choose hard, even when you don’t have to.
“You’re in the basement doing prep, and you realize that there are multiple ways to approach the task, including one that will be much quicker than the method your chef has called for. Chances are, no one will be the wiser if you take the easy route. But you still choose the more arduous path. Why? Because you realize that you’re not cheating the customer or your chef. You’re cheating yourself. You are cheating yourself out of practice and cheating yourself out of building the kind of fuck-you mentality that is vital to your survival.”

Squeeze out a few more reps.
“In a kitchen environment…I found a reserve of sheer, stubborn willpower to make up for what I lacked in talent.”

”Eat shit”
“Eating shit meant listening. Eating shit meant acknowledging my errors and shortcomings. Eating shit meant facing confrontations that made me uncomfortable. Eating shit meant putting my cell phone away when someone was talking to me. Eating shit meant not fleeing. Eating shit meant being grateful. Eating shit meant controlling myself when people fell short of my expectations. Eating shit meant putting others before myself.”

Channel that ‘hard on yourself’ feeling into something good.
“I’ve found that the cooks with the brightest prospects are the ones who are hardest on themselves. The trick is to direct that dissatisfaction to your advantage. Every day as a cook can be a fresh start. There are no lingering effects from the previous bad service. Yesterday’s mistakes are gone. Resolve to be better today. Just know that in three or four months’ time when you move to a new section, it’s all going to feel freshly impossible again.”

Don’t be an heir.
“If you or your staff come to work feeling like you deserve all that recognition and praise, you’re fucked. Entitlement and complacency are your enemy. It’s equivalent to the struggles of inherited wealth. Customers can smell it on you, and believe me, they will disappear the second they get a whiff. When you feel the job getting easier, your task is to find a new challenge. Not for some puritanical reason, but because it’s the only way to make it in the long run. The day you stop making mistakes is the day you stop growing. The only mistake is not to learn from your errors.”

Be grateful. Really grateful.
“I also pointed out the problem of prior success: You may, for instance, find yourself dreading another busy night of service at the restaurants, but can you snap out of it and see how privileged we are to have customers? Can you remember to treat every guest as though their business will make or break us?“

Believe.
“You need to kill the critics with the strength of your convictions. Do not cook out of fear or shy away from your vision.”

Try anything and everything.
“In my current life, I have the blessing of getting to eat more broadly than almost anyone else on earth. It’s a hugely unfair advantage as a chef. But back then, I hadn’t seen too much more than your average twenty-something American cook. The difference is that I was willing to recognize the value in everything, even places I despised. I was also readily willing to admit to loving lowbrow foods that other people wrote off as beneath them. I wanted to know why people liked what they liked.”

Remix everything.
“The most interesting cooking at Momofuku comes from bridging seemingly different worlds.” Innovation often arises from merging diverse influences and ideas, leading to unique and exciting creations.”

Seek the uncool.
“Twenty years ago it was ramen for me. That was the subject I loved that most other Americans didn’t care about yet. But if I were starting out today, I’d move to Hunan province or study Keralan cuisine or consider the possibilities presented by tired dining sectors like shopping malls. You’re looking for anything that’s been written off as cheap or ignored because it’s not cool. Cool is your enemy. Whatever you decide, make sure to do the homework. If improv is the equivalent of creative cooking, then the best chefs are improv actors who have also studied serious technique.”

Experiment like no one’s watching.
“By confronting failure, you take fear out of the equation. You stop shying away from ideas just because they seem like they may not work. You start asking whether an idea is “bad” because it’s actually bad or because the common wisdom says so. You begin to thrive when you’re not supposed to. You just have to be comfortable with instability, change, and a great deal of stress.“

The worst thing that can happen is you die.
“If the worst possible outcome is death…then nothing else should scare me, whether it’s pain, hard work, embarrassment, failure, or financial ruin.”

Level up, always.
“Think of it as a video game. As you progress, you have to learn new moves, fight more difficult bosses, navigate more challenging levels. It’s supposed to get more difficult or else it wouldn’t be interesting or rewarding to play. How boring would it be to play the same level over and over again?”

Have a backbone.
“Most journalists are smart enough to detect when you’re bullshitting them, and even when they’re not, there’s no use in bullshitting yourself. Here’s a better strategy: stick to your moral compass, give everything you have to doing good work, and speak honestly.“

Show, don’t tell.
“I’d been captivated by Emerson and Thoreau, who helped plant the seeds for American Pragmatism. I interpreted their writing to mean that one’s goal should be to live as an embodiment of philosophy, to test one’s beliefs through one’s actions rather than through study or discussion. Cooking was my way of making that happen. If I wasn’t cooking food I believed in, then what was I even doing?“

Do it even though it won’t last forever.
“The result of your labor—the thing you take so much pride in—is shit. Literally, shit. Your work is something that the customer will later flush down a toilet. You may as well be a Tibetan monk who spends weeks constructing an elaborate sand mandala only to sweep it away immediately. (Unfortunately, cooking will not provide you with any of the same spiritual rewards.) To keep going, you must buy into codes that give meaning to your existence“

Push culture forward.
“Let’s say a Chinese chef uses four times as many ingredients and spends three times longer making a bowl of noodles. Even the cultured foodie still expects to pay no more than eight or ten bucks. False cultural constructs tell us that pasta can be expensive, while noodles have to be cheap. The same dichotomy exists between almost any Asian (or African or Latin American) dish and its Western analogue. To me, there is literally no other explanation than racism. Don’t even try to talk to me about how the price differential is a result of service and decor. That shit is paid for by people who are willing to spend money on safe, “non-ethnic” food.”

Light up your space.
“When diners walk into a room that’s about to burst with excited energy, they can’t help but feel it, too. Sometimes you’ve got to inject a restaurant with that vitality however you can.“

Don’t forget people make it all worth it in the end.
“As you become successful, you will see that the only path of any value is to stop short of the peak and make sure you’re not alone at the summit.”

Given how much David Chang has done and continues to do, I’m amazed he found the time to reflect and look back on his life at all, share with a heap of vulnerability and honesty, and write with such oomph. To experience the full, thrilling ride, pick up your own copy of ’Eat a Peach’, and squeeze in a few episodes of his shows ’Ugly Delicious’ and ‘Dinner Time Live’ on Netflix, which embody much of what he says in the book.

Check out all of my book highlights here.

The pull of trading in the busy life that is city life for a quieter, simpler, cleaner life out in nature was a force I contended with on a recent long weekend with friends in north Tasmania. Having taken the overnight Spirit of Tasmania ferry the night before after a particularly meeting-rich workweek, my first visit to the island thrust me into (almost) tech free living that was jarring and discombobulating for a full 24 hours, until the night sky and soothing remoteness of Tassie’s Northern Highlands settled my mind and urge to check my phone’s notifications. Also, shout out to Vodafone for a network that must have been designed to get you to look around, smell the fresh air, and force your phone to airplane mode because I couldn’t load as much as Google map for much of our time there .

In all seriousness, Tasmania isn’t perfect, politically, socially, or actually, even environmentally. But it didn’t need to be perfect to anchor me in the moment, in the delicious silence, crystal clear air, vast landscapes, and great local produce. I came across this passage from psychologist and meditation teacher Tara Brach’s book, Radical Acceptance shortly after returning to Melbourne.

“Convinced that we are not good enough, we can never relax. We stay on guard, monitoring ourselves for shortcomings. When we inevitably find them, we feel even more insecure and undeserving. We have to try even harder. The irony of all of this is … where do we think we are going anyway? One meditation student told me that he felt as if he were steamrolling through his days, driven by the feeling that he needed to do more. In a wistful tone he added, “I’m skimming over life and racing to the finish line—death.””

Tara Brach, Radical Acceptance (2003)

The student could have used a weekend like mine.

I returned to my Busy City Life promising to come back for seconds and thirds, of course. But also, I was reminded of Bill Gates’ powerful book on avoiding a climate disaster, hopeful that somewhere in the bustle of the city are many minds doing their bit to move society towards more sustainable, even regenerative, ways of operating, so that places like Tasmanian wilderness remain healthy for centuries to come. And down to my own individual, daily level, I returned with a renewed promise to try and consume a little more mindfully, whether buying local and seasonal produce, or spending a bit more for regeneratively farmed eggs and organic meat. Little choices here and there compound over time, after all.

Here’s some info on how we traveled, where we slept, where we soaked in unadulterated nature:

• Spirit of Tasmania: made for a little overnight adventure at the request of the ship-loving one in the group of friends I travelled with. Best option if you don’t want to spend money on car rental and you happen to be in or driving through Melbourne, because your car can travel with you on the ferry. Otherwise, the novelty can wear off quite quickly and a short flight to Launceston might be the best way to get to northern Tasmania.
• Tiny Escapes Cradle Valley: a handful of gorgeous, individualised cabins spaced well apart, with creature comforts (comfy beds, kitchens, fire pits) surrounded by lush forest and a short drive from Cradle Mountain. At night, you could hear a pin drop while staring, awestruck, at strands of the Milky Way above you.
• Cradle Mountain, Dove Lake Circuit Walk: the highlight of our weekend. An easy, scenic hike that takes about four hours, allowing you to soak up the views.
• Devils@Cradle: a conservation facility at Cradle Mountain doing incredibly important work supporting insurance populations of Tasmanian Devils and Tasmanian Quolls. Highly recommend doing a guided tour where you can learn so much about the mysterious and adorable (and endangered) Devils and Quolls.
• Sheffield: on a grocery run to gather supplies for a feast we intended to whip up at our lovely, remote accomodation, we inadvertently ended up at Tasmania’s Town of Murals. Every other building had a beautiful, quirky, sometimes hilarious scene painted on, following a tradition started in 1986 by artist John Lendis.
• Launceston: the final stop for half of my group. I wouldn’t say it was the highlight of our weekend, but Cataract Gorge made for a lovely walk with an eerily gorgeous Victorian-era park, complete with wild wallabies and a couple of very confident peacocks. Oh, and we had some of the best Indian food I’ve had in while there too, at a friendly, casual restaurant called Spice on Charles.