1 . I was trained as a gymnast in Hunan, China, in the 1970s. The government wanted to transfer (转学) me to a school for athletes while my parents wanted me to become an engineer, because they firmly believed there was only one sure way to happiness: a safe and well-paid job. But my dream was to become a Chinese opera singer. Although I tried everything I could to go to opera school, I knew I was too old to be trained and my dream would never come true.

But that’s so unfair. So I was determined to find another calling — books. I satisfied my hunger for parental advice from the Fu Lei’s Family Letters by Fu Lei and Zhu Meifu, found my role model of an independent woman from Jane Eyre, learned to be efficient from Cheaper by the Dozen, and inspired myself to study abroad after reading Complete Works of Sanmao and Lessons from History.

I came to the U. S. in 1995 where I started comparative reading. Comparing and contrasting give scholars a more complete understanding of a topic. So I thought, well, if comparative reading works for research, why not do it in daily life too? So I started reading books in pairs. They can be about people who are involved in the same event — Benjamin Franklin by Walter Isaacson and John Adams by David McCullough, for example, or friends with shared experiences. I also compare the same stories in different genres or similar stories from different cultures, as Joseph Campbell did in his wonderful book The Power of Myth.

Books have given me a magic portal (入口) to connect with people of the past and the present. I have come to believe that coming true is not the only purpose of a dream. Its most important purpose is to get us in touch with where dreams come from, where passion comes from and where happiness comes from. Even a shattered (遭受极大打击的) dream can do that for you. So may books be always with you.

4 . Robot science fiction has long been a favorite for readers. If you want to check out any of these titles for free, you can do so with Audible’s one-month free trial. Click here to download Audible’s app to try for $0.00.

I. Robot

The author of I, Robot, Isaac Asimov, is an indisputable giant within the world of robot science fiction due to his creation of the three laws of robotics. I, Robot is a landmark work of robot sci-fi which explores every facet of robots and their place in the world of humans, from their conception through to their possible replacement of humanity.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is an absolute landmark work of robot science fiction and has gained even greater recognition due to being made into the classic motion picture Blade Runner. The story’s hero is tasked with hunting down sentient robots that have gone immoral.

The Night Sessions

The Night Sessions by Ken MacLeod envisions a world in which religions and those who believe in them have been pushed to the edge of society. This is also a world populated by sentient robots that sometimes help humanity but are often shunned by their very creators.

Sea of Rust

Sea of Rust is set in a future world in which humanity has been totally wiped out by an unimaginably powerful artificial intelligence system and the robots it has at its command. In this world without mankind, the two most powerful artificial intelligence systems fight for control. It is both a tight story of survival and an optimistic adventure.

Form a Habit of Reading

As the World Book Day is approaching, reading is appealing to more and more people.

6 . Imagine that you take a walk around your yard or nearby park and immediately, the sounds of an insect band surround you. Produced by the muscular movements of insects called treehopper (角蝉), this imagined soundscape comes from vibrations(共鸣、振动)that flow across the surface of plants. But it is not at all like the familiar vocalizations of crickets(蟋蟀); instead, it’s something richer, more varied. Some sounds are song-like, others are similar to the noises of machines or musical instruments. The noise made from even a single plant may be “as noisy as a busy street”.

In An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us, Pulitzer prize-winning science journalist Ed Yong explains that, on a real walk instead of this one we’ve imagined, humans would not be able to hear the treehoppers’ music without special equipment. In the company of scientists with a laser vibrometer(振动计), a device that changes the treehopper vibrations into sounds audible to human ears, Yong gets to hear them in the wild and in the laboratory. He is shocked by the attractive sounds.

In this book that follows on from 2018’s I Contain Multitudes, Yong writes in a perfect balance of scientific severity and personal awe as he invites readers to grasp something of how other animals experience the world. Communicating through surface vibrations is a rather cool example that extends beyond treehoppers to elephants and spiders, and to this fact about frogs. Attuned to vibrations entering the eggs, frog hatches quickly if a snake shows up with a hard bite, but ignore rain, wind, footsteps and even an earthquake.

My admiration for the book is, well, immense. Like many thousands of other people, I have relied throughout the course of COVID-19 on Yong’s reporting at The Atlantic as he cracked open the fast-changing world of pandemic science. Now, with An Immense World, Yong brings into beautiful focus a host of other animal sensory worlds that co-exist with ours, and how we may protect them.