Book Recommendations

A woman walks away from a life that looks successful from the outside and opens a small bookshop. What follows is quiet, tender, and deeply true. I think about this book whenever someone tells me they are thinking about doing something differently.

An honest and generous book about the second half of life, not as decline, but as a different kind of flourishing. Particularly meaningful if you are at a point where you are asking what comes next.

A librarian who gives people not quite the book they asked for, but the one they actually need. As someone who works in a library, this one felt personal. Warm, gentle and quietly wise.

The most honest book I have read about what it actually feels like to become a manager for the first time: the self-doubt, the learning, the small moments that matter. Practical without being prescriptive.

Written by one of Singapore's most respected public servants. The framing of leadership as service, and of character as the foundation of everything else, has stayed with me.

Short enough to read in an afternoon, but the ideas stay longer. A reminder that leadership is fundamentally about helping others find the courage to take their own next step.

Elizabeth Zott is one of my favourite characters in fiction. A chemist in the 1960s who ends up hosting a cooking show, and uses it to change how women see themselves. Funny, furious and deeply satisfying.

Young women navigating work, ambition and friendship in a bookshop. Small in scale but generous in heart. The kind of novel that makes you feel seen in the ordinary moments.