A review by chiyitam
What Gives Us Our Names, by Alvin Pang
4.0
A sliver of a book with a beautiful cover and well chosen font and jacket design.
The assignment of this book seems to be 'imagine if all the moral aspirations we have were personified', and it answers that very literally. It goes through each story in turn, Passion, Purpose, Success etc. Each entry is simple, and short enough that you can just enjoy the author's take without feeling like you've been whacked over the head with Aesop's Fables. The book starts with a scene of them all at a gathering, I wound up expecting that to be mirrored at the end. It does not. Because of how the simple idea was repeated over and over, I was left wanting for the book to elevate the simple construct at some point.
A very lovely book, that by no small measure also benefits from the well designed aesthetic of its material form.
The assignment of this book seems to be 'imagine if all the moral aspirations we have were personified', and it answers that very literally. It goes through each story in turn, Passion, Purpose, Success etc. Each entry is simple, and short enough that you can just enjoy the author's take without feeling like you've been whacked over the head with Aesop's Fables. The book starts with a scene of them all at a gathering, I wound up expecting that to be mirrored at the end. It does not. Because of how the simple idea was repeated over and over, I was left wanting for the book to elevate the simple construct at some point.
A very lovely book, that by no small measure also benefits from the well designed aesthetic of its material form.