Amber Works from Home: Some Good Online Reads
It's been a long while since we have been confined to our homes. When daily workouts and weekly grocery runs are no longer enough to fend off cabin fever and preserve our sanity, here are some online reading resources you can explore, whether you are a serious-casual reader or enjoy more frivolous subjects. As they say, while your body can withstand a great deal, it's your mind you have to convince. So here's to letting our minds roam free in the pastures of expanded thought horizons, beyond the mindless scrolling of Instagram.
1. Medium.com
Medium is an ad-free digital publisher and content syndication platform. Its massive repository of thought pieces and articles allows you to traverse and explore new ideas and stories on a daily basis and subscribe to the authors and publications you enjoy. With a fee of $5/month, you get access to a limited number of subscription-only pieces and unlimited non-subscription stories. Think of it as long-form Twitter, only more curated.
Some interesting pieces include Don't Fuck Up the Culture, published by Brian Chesky (CEO of Airbnb, Inc.) and The 30 Second Habit with a Lifelong Impact, which advocates the virtues of note-taking.
2. Longform.org
An aggregator site of digital journalism curated by the the writing program at the University of Pittsburgh, Longform updates regularly with links to essays published around the Internet, which are, as its name promises, reliably long-form and in-depth.
Find anything from a 17,000 word odyssey on the Sahara Desert to a GQ true crime piece on the Truck Stop Killer.
3. Quora.com
Quora is an online question-and-answer platform, which aims to empower people to share and collectively grow knowledge, centred around a full spectrum of topics from politics and culture to more light-hearted conversations on fashion, style and travel.
Read answers to questions like "What is the most extreme political hypocrisy?" or more frivolous (yet no less interesting!) discussions on "Do cats get emotionally attached to their owners like dogs?" or ask your own questions and get answers from credible sources with first-hand knowledge.
4. eReads by National Library Board
For those of us based in Singapore, the NLB offers more than 800,000 e-books and audiobooks which may be borrowed online via its mobile app. These include Penguin fiction and non-fiction classics, cherished Haruki Murakami fiction novels and even cookbooks on hawker cooking and Nyonya dishes and travel tomes.
A SingPass, NRIC or FIN number is required for free membership and anyone with a myLibrary ID can borrow up to 16 eBooks via the app for up to 21 days.
Love,
the Amber team