Coffeespoons

Read: 3/29/09 5/5 stars I heart Jasper Fforde. As in, seriously. When I was young and stupid (heehee), I used to read the all the novels of a single writer I could get my hands on. This is why I've read all of Sidney Sheldon's works up until Memories of Midnight , when i decided that I better find some other fare. So, after high school, I never really collected any author's works in totality, the only exception being Jane Austen . Aside from her, the most I'd do is collect all the titles in an SF&F series, like David Eddings' The Mallorean or Terry Brooks' Scions of Shannara (both of which are follow-up series, by the way, of an initial successful series). However, I never felt the need to collect everything written by Eddings or Brooks. And I continued in this manner, sampling different authors or picking out their representative works, until I met Jasper Fforde. My exposure is to Anglo-American literature, and I maintain that if you're familar enough...

Though not in my original reading plan , I thought of keeping tabs on my progress on this list, too. This is the original list taken from the BBC Big Read website , by the way, not the one that's become a meme. Books in bold are those I've read. Books with hyperlinks are ones with reviews. The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë Catch-22, Joseph Heller Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame Great Expectations, Charles Dickens Little Women, Louisa May Alcott ...

Keeping track of my progress through Time's 100 Best Novels since 1923. This safely rules out Ulysses. (thank God.) Books in bold are those I've read. Books with links are those with reviews. The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow All the King's Men - Robert Penn Warren American Pastoral - Philip Roth An American Tragedy - Theodore Dreiser Animal Farm - George Orwell Appointment in Samarra - John O'Hara Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret - Judy Blume The Assistant - Bernard Malamud At Swim-Two-Birds - Flann O'Brien Atonement - Ian McEwan Beloved - Toni Morrison The Berlin Stories - Christopher Isherwood The Big Sleep - Raymond Chandler The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh The Bridge of San Luis Rey - Thornton Wilder Call It Sleep - Henry Roth Catch-22 - Joseph Heller The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger...

Keeping track of my Complete Booker project... The books in bold are the ones I've already read. The ones hyperlinked are those I've read since I started this blog. See here for a list of Booker Prize winners and shortlisted books till 2007. 2008 - The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga 2007 - The Gathering by Anne Enright 2006 - The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai 2005 - The Sea by John Banville 2004 - The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst 2003 - Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre 2002 - Life of Pi by Yann Martel 2001 - True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey 2000 - The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood 1999 - Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee 1998 - Amsterdam: A Novel by Ian McEwan 1997 - The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy 1996 - Last Orders by Graham Swift 1995 - The Ghost Road by Pat Barker 1994 - How Late It Was, How Late by James Kelman 1993 - Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha by Roddy Doyle 1992 - The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje 1992 - Sacred Hunger by Bar...

Why a lot of Book Tidbits? Obviously because I haven't been able to finish a book since, well, the last time I reviewed a book.:) I am about to finish Jasper Fforde's Fourth Bear , though. More on that when I finally finish it. Anyways, here are the interesting AND fearsome things I found lately: Bookseller magazine has awarded this year's prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year to the book entitled The 2009-2014 World Outlook for 60-Milligram Containers of Fromage Frais. Check out the other contenders and some previous winners for the Oddest Book Title in this article. Do you play computer games? Well, would you count the narrative in the game as a literary genre? Here's a "he-said-he-said" take on the issue courtesy of the Guardian blog. My take as a one-time addict to Final Fantasy X and X-2: I loved both of them for the story. (Well, admittedly, X-2 was sort of flaky.) Finally, the fearsome thing I found...the trailer of Where the Wild Things Are ...le...

That is my response to all this repackaging of Jane Austen. I long for the days when Austen was just Austen, and not "the Grandmother of Chick Lit." For pity's sake, she's only the grandmother of chick lit because some marketing executive thought it would be great to cash in on the "intellectuality" of Jane Austen's novels. Point 1: Jane Austen never wrote just romance novels. Austen's novels were a highly incisive commentary and criticism of the foibles in her society. Point 2: Jane Austen did not write for the reader of the 21st century, so please, spare me the comment that "she's not readable" or "she's boring." Boring probably to a lot of us who have been weaned on the shallow prose of the Dan Browns, Sidney Sheldons and Stephenie Meyers of our day and age. (By the way, I have read and enjoyed these authors. Notwithstanding, I think their prose is shallow.) I'd like to reiterate that Austen's writing would be m...

I didn't name this blog Coffeespoons because I'm a coffee addict. If I'm addicted to anything, it's books and buying books. The name, actually, has more to do with a line from a favorite poem, but that's up to you guys to figure out.:) Nevertheless, I do like my coffee and my blog is named Coffeespoons, so I thought it proper to feature this in one of my book news tidbits... Presenting--the 10 best appearances of coffee in literature ! This article from Guardian cites coffee fanatic Benjamin Obler's list of books that mention coffee in the most meaningful way. I assume it's meaningful, because I can hardly describe the quotes as highly descriptive. Sadly, I haven't read any of the books. I'll have to remedy that eventually.

Today, when I should be writing things that will generate me some income, I'm here surfing again for book news, just because I like it. Sylvia Plath's son, Nicholas Hughes, also commits suicide . It was only now that I learned the full story of the deaths in Ted Hughes' family. Pretty tragic. Why aren't I a bestselling author? 'Cause if I were, I could make deals like Audrey Niffenegger's for her second book . Funny, funny rant on silly blurbs and why books won't change your life . Finally, a hilarious cartoon on how Harry Potter, the book, was really born:

Read: 3/22/09 3/5 stars The first Atwood book that I seriously had trouble finishing. I am a big fan of Margaret Atwood, after reading her Booker Prize winning work, The Blind Assassin . My fan-hood was reinforced after I read Alias Grace . Apart from these two novels, I've also been reading her poetry at poets.org , and I simply think she has astounding insight and talent at word-crafting. That said, I'm not even sure that I'm disappointed with Surfacing. One of my old English professors used to love the phrase "Homer nods," signifying that not even the great Homer shone in his writing all the time. So, I guess it would be realistic that Atwood won't write stunners all the time. Also, though I couldn't get into the story (partly because there isn't much of a story), I grant that Atwood, through the voice of a mentally unstable woman, tried to show the final emancipation of the colonized from their colonists-- of women from men, of people from civiliz...

Read: 3/22/09 4/5 stars I heard about Emily Giffin through a book club friend (thanks, Blooey !). Supposedly, Giffin writes a different kind of chick lit. Not having read a lot of chick lit really, aside from the Shopaholic books of Kinsella, and that awful-book-but-good-movie, The Devil Wears Prada , I don't really have much to compare with. Regardless, based on what I have read, Something Blue seems a more mature look into relationships in the chick-lit world. Giffin's first book, Something Borrowed , actually introduces the readers to the same characters in Something Blue . Admittedly, I haven't read the first book yet. According to the background, Something Borrowed 's protagonist, Darcy Rhones, is the first book's antagonist. Hence, Darcy begins as an annoying, self-obssessed character, much like Kinsella's Becky Bloomwood. Darcy's character change, however, begins when everything that she took for granted was taken away from her, and she ends up alon...

This is a new kind of post that I'd like to do once in a while: aggregate interesting news in the world of books and publishing. By interesting, I mean interesting to me. But I certainly hope it interests others, too. Seems all is not hopeless for the good old codex. Apparently, even in the midst of global economic crisis, books, especially in Europe, are still selling and selling well. Check out this new series of children's classics illustrated by contemporary prize-winning illustrators . I'm not really well-versed in art, but these are books that I'd love to get for my kids. The first five titles in the series are Wind in the Willows , Classic Poetry , Alice in Wonderland , The Secret Garden , and Don Quixote . It seems Kenneth Branagh is set to direct an adaptation of yet another Marvel hero, Thor. Though they say the front runner for the Norse god character is Josh Hartnett, I'm still hoping studio execs will lean towards Alexander Skarsgaard. After all, as...

Read: 3/20/09 5/5 stars The title promises spells and delivers them. Spellbinding enough to keep me up till I finished it, Garden Spells is a magic realism-culinary treat, Southern style. The story revolves around the surviving Waverleys of Bascom, heirs of a magic garden and not without individual magic themselves. Claire, the older sister, stays behind in Bascom, running a catering business which specializes in incorporating edible flowers from her garden into the dishes. Her dishes are popular for the reactions they evoke in people--like chicken and water chestnut casserole made with snapdragon seed oil to ward off undue influence of others, fruit salad with dandeliion petals to influence spontaneous apologies, tea cakes with nasturtium mayonaisse to give people the ability to keep secrets, and a host of other scrumptiously described magical dishes. But Claire is a control freak and has intimacy issues. Perhaps the only person really close to her is her aging cousin Evanelle, also ...

Read: 3/16/09 3/5 stars I'm into vampire literature, so i didn't want to pass up a chance to read Darren Shan. After all, it's geared for young adults, like Twilight, though I heard a bit darker. I'm not sure if I agree with the darker part. The protagonist, coincidentally (wink) named after Darren Shan, goes with his best friend to watch an underground freak show, and, due to circumstances that only a teenager with an overactive imagination will get into, ends up having to apprentice himself to a real vampire who works in the freak show. Why don't I think that this is especially dark? Because the vampire himself says that vampires are not really evil creatures. They even shun making vampires out of people who have "bad" blood--people who have it in them to be killers. Also, to transform one into a vampire, one just has to do it through the fingers. The vampire pricks the fingers of the victim with his nails, pricks his own fingers, the two hold their fing...

Read: 3/9/09 4/5 stars This month, my book club, Flips Flipping Pages, has decided on a Japanese theme for our monthly book discussion. As opposed to the previous months wherein a specific book was assigned, the March book is actually any Japanese literature book, "literature" loosely referring to any printed work. So, though i considered trying to pass off the two manga books I had read as Japanese lit, a couple of weeks ago, I lucked into this book in one of my favorite UP used bookstores. I had never heard of the author nor the book, which makes it very surprising that I bought it as I rarely buy anything I have not heard of before. Truth be told, aside from the blurbs and the comments at the back identifying the author as a recipient of Japan's Imperial Prize in Literature, I bought the book because the back cover also stated that the book has sewn bindings. As someone who often buys mass-market or trade paperbacks with perfect binding, I was attracted to owning anoth...

Read: 3/6/09 3/5 stars I thought this book would be similar to The Girl with a Pearl Earring , meaning a fictional account of the backstory behind a classic painting. Not so. Though the story is set in Florence at the height of the great Florentine painters and artists, circa 1530s, the story was not about Botticelli's painting , nor about Botticelli. Venus simply referred to a girl, Alessandra, whose fullness of womanhood is achieved even amidst the strict rules governing her fair sex at the time. Alessandra who comes from a prominent merchant family wishes to paint. But the options open to a girl of her age and stature at that time were to marry or go into the convent. Her family hires a painter, unnamed throughout the book, commissioned to paint the walls of her family chapel. Of course, Alessandra is drawn towards this mysterious and brooding character, though nothing comes of it until after Alessandra's marriage to a refined gentleman. The love story and Alessandra's c...

Read: 3/2/09 5/5 stars So, I figured I better sneak in a lot of reading the beginning of this month because I have a feeling I won't be able to do much starting the middle of the month. This is the second book I finished today, which I also started today. And though I've read some negative reviews about No Country for Old Men, I found it a gripping read. Only up to a certain point, that is. Which I cannot reveal here. Or else I will be giving a spoiler. Aaaargh! <-- (this is me wanting to rant). One of the comments I've read about McCarthy is that he does not use proper punctuation. Now, I am sort of a grammar stickler because it comes with the job, but my stickler-ness does not extend to literature of this kind. So, for those who are thinking of reading it but are afraid to be turned off by the flouting of grammatical and punctuation rules, I say throw the traditional stuff out the window. The novel form has evolved and continues to evolve. This is not to say ...

Read: 3/2/09 5/5 stars Kiran Desai, daughter of Anita Desai, wins a Booker Prize for this, her first novel. And so the daughter gets what her mother has only been shortlisted for twice over. I have never read Anita Desai, mind. But this book, barring my occasional bemusement at the Booker's seeming desire to make up for their sins as colonizers, is a beautifully written piece of work and one whose win I will not question. The Inheritance of Loss is set mostly in Nepal, but partly in the US (and very minimally in Britain, through flashbacks). The cast of characters involves mostly natives of Nepal, in varied states of alienation from their nationality and themselves. Take Sai--an orphan who has to live with her grandfather, who was once a former judge and educated in England. They live in a small town in the mountains, in a house that spoke of former wealth amidst a population that is generally destitute. Sai prefers to speak English, though she is a native of Nepal. There is also a...

Read: 3/1/09 4/5 stars The last week has been hectic and work-laden that I couldn't get much reading done. Though the truth of the matter is, I have been reading, but I haven't really been trying to finish what I've been reading. The novel I'm still into begs to be read slowly, so I don't mind obliging. However, to feed my sense of accomplishment, I did purchase the next volume of Vampire Knight so I could finish reading a book before the week is out. The manga was actually my first buy at Fully Booked Bonifacio High Street. Last Saturday was also the first time I stepped inside that bookstore. Mind you, I've been in the vicinity several times before, but I've avoided stepping in because all times, I did not have the budget to buy a new book, and the bookstore looked so pretty and tempting that I thought my heart couldn't take entering that establishment without being able to buy anything. Last Saturday, though, I finally went in and, of the three books ...