Khuê Phạm’s debut, Brothers and Ghosts, is a historical fiction loosely based on stories of her family. Set in Berlin, Sài Gòn, and California, the narratives flips between a young Vietnamese-German journalist who is searching for her identity, her father who left Việt Nam during the war to study medical in Germany, and her uncle who settled in California. The stories of the war in Việt Nam and the new life in a foreign land juxtapose from one chapter to the next, which is similar to Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai’s The Mountains Sing.

I would prefer reading the novel in its original text, but Ms. Phạm wrote Brothers and Ghosts in German. I had to read in English translation. Fortunately, Charles Hawley and Daryl Lindsey have done an excellent job of translating from German to English. The novel is engaging from start to finish. Furthermore, Vietnamese words have proper diacritics, which make a huge different for Vietnamese readers.

Adrian Shaughnessy’s Herb Lubalin: American Graphic Design is a heavy book. Out of 448 pages, the first 80 pages dedicated to Lubalin’s biography. The rest of the book showcased his extraordinary works including Fact, Mother & Child, and Avant Garde. His typographic skills were outstanding. This book is an inspirational source for graphic designers.

I picked up this book at a poetry-reading event to support the author, who is Việt Nam veteran. I also wanted to read Karlin’s perspective on the war since he fought there. I thought the stories were nonfiction, but they were fiction. I couldn’t fully wrap my head around the stories. I didn’t know what I was reading. Some stories have diacritics for Vietnamese words, which takes the guess work out of me, but some don’t. I might come back to this collection down the line.

Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai returns to America on a book tour for her debut poetry collection in English titled The Color of Peace. Last Thursday, April 25, the day after my 47^th birthday, I invited my son to join me to hear her read some of her poems and conversation with Vietnam veteran Wayne Karlin. As I am writing this, today, April 30, 2025, also marks the 50^th anniversary of the end of the American War in Việt Nam. During the event, Quế Mai read “The Fish” and “Thorns of Roses” from her collection. I enjoyed her Vietnamese reading even more, especially when she incorporated ca dao singing into her poetry. In The Color of Peace Quế Mai the pain and the sorrow of a Vietnamese woman who were born during the time of war and who witnessed the casualties of war at a young age. Quế Mai uses literature to speak out for peace. Listening to her talking the war and her passionate of peace made me give her a title: “The poet of peace.” This collection is moving, powerful, and deeply personal. “My Mother” is one of her personal poems. She wrote:

When I told my mother
I would go to America
to read my poetry, she
knocked her pair of chopsticks
against the boiling pot
and called out “America?”

Forty-one years before that
when she was carrying me
inside her stomach
from the sky, blackness
came and
exploded into American bombs.

My mother jumped into a shelter so small
she had to arch her back
so her baby wouldn’t be squashed
against the crumbling earth.

And now, the baby—her daughter—the poet from Việt Nam
had been invited to come
to America—the land of her former
enemy to share her stories.

My mother cupped her palms
into a lotus in front of her chest
and told me she wished
she could replace guns, and tanks,
bombs, and bullets,
violence, and hatred,
with poetry.

I finally understand the true meaning of suffering after reading Thích Nhất Hạnh’s How to Smile. All these years, I thought I was stressing out thin, worrying too much, and depressing, but I was suffering. Using bitter melon (khổ qua) as a metaphor, Thích Nhất Hạnh explained:

There’s a vegetable in Vietnam called bitter melon. The Chinese word for bitter also means suffering. If you’re not used to eating bitter melon, you may suffer.…

Suffering is bitter, and our natural tendency is to run away from it. Our store consciousness, our unconscious mind, can set up a program of behaviors to help us run away from suffering and approach only what’s pleasant. This prevents us from knowing the goodness of suffering, the healing it can bring.

As I read this passage, his message makes perfect sense. Suffering is inevitable. No matter how good your life is or how much money you have, you will experience suffering. You have to face it. Thích Nhất Hạnh reminded us:

When you don’t know how to handle the suffering inside you or how to help handle the suffering around you, you may try not to be there anymore, thinking that will make you feel better. To commit suicide is an act of despair. It’s not wise

What I have been experiencing all these years is suffering. The longer you live, the more suffering you will have to go through. I am only 47, and yet I suffered the lost of both of my parents. I care deeply about my family, career, and democracy, but they are out of my control. When I feel completely hopeless, I suffer. If I can’t get rid of suffering, I have to embrace it. This is what Thích Nhất Hạnh was getting at:

[O]ur conscious mind knows that suffering has things to teach us, and that we shouldn’t be afraid of it. We are ready to suffer a little bit in order to learn, grow, and heal. We have to use our intelligence. We use our concentration to get insight, to transform the suffering and become an enlightened one, a free person.

Rather than succumb to suffering, I thrive on it. I don’t want suffering to hold me back. I was suffering when I first learned snowboarding. I kept falling hard and I could have given up, but I didn’t want to run away from my suffering. I kept at it until I could turn my suffering into pleasants. After reading this book, I will face suffering with a smile.

Tập thơ Đời mãi ở phương đông của nhà thơ Du Tử Lê phát hành năm 1974 lúc ông 32 tuổi. Ông viết trong tình trạng ưu uất và vốn đã nên những bài thơ tình của ông nói lên sự đau đớn: “tình như một đường gươm / ngực đây, gươm hãy ngập”.

Hạnh phúc lúc đó đối với ông cũng rất sầu muộn. Trong “Khi ở biển với T.C”, ông viết:

hạnh phúc ở trên cao
ta đào sâu dưới đáy
hãy vỗ lên đời tan
Những ngày mưa lệ nhạt

Và ông kết thúc rằng:

hạnh phúc không có chân
cách gì ta đuổi được
tình yêu không có cánh
làm sao ta bay theo
tất cả ở tim người
cõi hư vô thần thánh

Lớn lên vào thời điểm chinh chiến, ông thèm thuồng da thịt như thèm thuồng hòa bình:

ta trở về nha trang
thấy trời ôm biển lạ
bỗng anh thèm ôm em
thấy nụ hôn rất ngọt
thấy ngực thơm mùi trầm
ôi hòa bình hòa bình

Và “Giữ đời cho nhau” là bài thơ quen thuộc vì được nhạc sĩ Từ Công Phụng phổ thành ca khúc:

ơn em thơ dại từ trời
theo ta xuống biển vớt đời ta trôi
ơn em, dáng mỏng mưa vời
theo ta lên núi về đồi yêu thương
ơn em, ngực ngải môi trầm
cho ta cỏ mặn trăm lần lá ngoan
ơn em, hơi thoảng chỗ nằm
dấu quanh quẩn dấu nỗi buồn một nơi
ơn em, hồn sớm ngậm ngùi
kiếp sau xin giữ lại đời cho nhau

Tôi đọc tập thơ này sau những buổi trượt tuyết để thư giãn. Những lúc đó thân thể mỏi mệt và đầu óc cũng không tỉnh táo. Tuy nhiên tôi cảm thấy thích những lời thơ sâu sắc của ông. Nếu có cơ hội tôi sẽ tìm đọc thêm thơ của ông.

With 20 years of experience and having designed hundreds of books, Debbie Berne covers every detail that goes into designing a completely book from start to finish. The primary focus is print. She dedicates one chapter on e-books, but nothing on web books.

On “Using Fonts Together,” Berne writes:

It’s certainly possible—and in type scholarship often considered admirable—to set an entire book in a single typeface. More commonly, I want two or three fonts for all the different situations inside a book. Usually, I will choose a serifed text type for the body text and a sans serif as a contrast for chapter titles and headings. Sometimes the diversity of text will make the addition of a third font appropriate- for sidebars or other distinctive passages, as display type in part or chapter openers, or for small areas of emphasis or little areas of flair. This is (usually) enough. Font choice isn’t the only way to differentiate kinds of text, and designers push type to show its many faces by using it bold or in all caps or larger or, when possible, in color. Keeping a font palette limited makes a big project feel unified and intentional.

This passage made me curious how many typefaces I used in Vietnamese Typography. It turns out 100 typefaces are being used for the book site. Oops! I broke the rule.

Nevertheless, this is a comprehensive, informative guide on designing a book that everyone who’s involved in publishing a book should read.

After reading two books on democracy back to back, I needed something lighter. Rob Sheffield’s book on how Taylor Swift reinvented pop music seems like a good reading detour. I must confess: I am not a Swiftie. I tried to listen to her albums, but I can’t get past three songs. I read Sheffield’s music reviews for Rolling Stone every once in a while; therefore, I wanted to know what he has to say about Taylor Swift. Not knowing her work makes it hard for me to follow the book. I enjoyed it though. It’s a quick read. I might take a deep dive into her catalog like I had with Miles Davis, JAY-Z, and Bob Dylan. Will see!

Democracy is dying in the United States. It is up to us, the people, to save our democracy. In this brief book, the authors provide 10 steps to defend our democracy:

1. Be prepared and learn how our government supposed to work
2. Get informed and learn how to spot real news vs. fake news
3. Vote early and often from up upballots to downballots
4. Donate in the candidates and causes you believe in while navigate America’s deeply fucked campaign system
5. Volunteer, knock on doors, and do what you can
6. Organize, boycott, and protest
7. Take a break and take care of yourself
8. Make politics your job and your duty to save our democracy
9. Run for office
10. Get to the finish line

It’s a quick read that will help you to get involve. I don’t care about politics, but I care deeply about our democracy. I am doing a small part on this blog to defend our democracy.

In Democracy Awakening, Professor Heather Cox Richardson teaches an essential civic course that Americans need to learn about democracy. From historical to policial to cultural to social to moral, Professor Richardson provides each perspective with clarity. The US democracy has survived over 200 years, but not without challenges. More than ever, democracy is on the brink of collapsing today with Trump and his lies. Professor Richardson writes:

If he could get Americans to reject the truth and accept his lies about what had happened, they would be psychologically committed to him.…

He had successfully sold his own narrative over the truth, and his supporters would continue to believe him rather than those calling him out.

Professor Richardson provides details on Trump lies:

Far from retreating, Trump had moved to the stage that scholars of authoritarianism call a “Big Lie,” a key propaganda tool associated with Nazi Germany. This is a lie so huge that no one can believe it is false. If leaders repeat it enough times, refusing to admit that it is a lie, people come to think it is the truth because surely no one would make up anything so outrageous.…

Big lies are springboards for authoritarians. They enable a leader to convince followers that they were unfairly cheated of power by those the leader demonizes. In the U.S., the power of Trump’s Big Lie to rally supporters meant that the Republican Party gradually purged those members who continued to stand against him, and leaders consistently refused to acknowledge that Biden had won the election. “Election denier” became a political identity, and going into Biden’s presidency, most Republicans simply affirmed that he was the current president.

Professor Richardson gives a brief explanation on how ur political system should work:

The Constitution established a representative democracy, a republic, in which voters would elect lawmakers who would represent the people. That legislative branch would be a balance to a single leader at the head of the executive branch; each would prevent the rise of a tyrant from the other side. Congress would write all “necessary and proper” laws, levy taxes, borrow money, pay the nation’s debts, establish a postal service, establish courts, declare war, support an army and navy, and organize and call forth “the militia to execute the Laws of the Union” and “provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States.”

The president would execute the laws, but if Congress overstepped, the president could veto proposed legislation. In turn, Congress could override a presidential veto. Congress could declare war, but the president was the commander in chief of the army and had the power to make treaties with foreign powers. It was quite an elegant system of paths and trip wires, really.…

Finally, the Framers authorized a third branch of government, the judicial branch, with a Supreme Court to settle disputes between inhabitants of the different states. They also guaranteed that every defendant had the right to a jury trial but said little else about the judiciary.

This book is a must-read for American citizens who ignored democracy or were clueless about democracy. Learn the truth and recognize the difference between democracy and autocracy. Without democracy, the United States is no longer the land of the free. Without freedom, nothing else matters.