Coffeespoons

In six hours or so, 2010 will end for me. It's been a year of many great and grand changes in my life, and for that, I am truly grateful. And although I didn't even read half of the books that I did last year (I only made it to 41 books this year), I am grateful, too, that I did not meet a book this year that I didn't like. 2010 was a year of slow but beautiful reading. Unfortunately, this was also a year of lazy blogging. So, though I can rave about all 10 of these books, I do need to catch up with reviews for most of them. Especially the ones I read in the last two months of the year. Anyway, without further ado, here they are, in the order in which I read them: 1) Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel 2) The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell 3) Monsters of Men by Patrick Ness 4) Watership Down by Richard Adams 5) The Passage by Justin Cronin 6) Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart 7) A High Wind in Jamaica by Richard Hughes 8) The Woman in White b...

Last year, I was floored . This year, I am tickled. Yup, this oft-neglected, but much-loved (by me) book blog is a finalist once more in the Philippine Blog Awards 2010 , for the Arts & Culture category. Hurray, hurray! As before, I am humbled and surprised to be a finalist. But, to badly paraphrase dear old Tennyson, mine is not to make reply, mine is not to reason why. And so, I sincerely dedicate and share this nomination with the other Pinoy book bloggers , who, in each one's unique way, are pushing the reality of the Filipino as reader further into our country's and the world's consciousness. I salute all the Filipino book bloggers I've ever had the pleasure of reading and meeting online or offline for doing what they can to promote our local literature, local publishing, and local readership. You know who you are.:) They may not be doing it consciously, but the very fact that they write about books, local or foreign and engage in great bookish disc...

In England, a traveling library stops near the palace and gets an unexpected visitor: none other than the Queen herself. (The present Queen of England, we are to assume.) Out of courtesy, the Queen decides to borrow a book by Ivy Compton-Burnett. And thence begins the Queen's literary adventure, much to her delectation and to her Cabinet's horror. For, believe it or not, reading as a hobby is quite a hindrance to the Queen's performance of her duties. So goes the story of Alan Bennett's The Uncommon Reader . One of the other uncommon things about this book is how I always find it misplaced in one of the local bookshops. Perhaps because the back cover blurb says it's about the Queen as a reader? Because it is always placed in the Nonfiction shelf, when it is most definitely NOT a nonfiction book at all. Unless, that is, at some point in her life, the Queen was...wait. That would be a spoiler. Anyway, it's a short and lovely book. I say that because I don...

Last Nov. 18 and 19, I was fortunate enough to attend LOL (Lit Out Loud) , the first international literary festival held here in Manila, organized by the National Book Development Board . The festival was actually till the 20th, but I couldn't make it the last day as I had another seminar to attend. Anyway, the first two days were full enough for me, what with listening to and interacting with writers, agents, and educators. Though I was there for work reasons, I believe I enjoyed the festival more as a reader than as an editor. Obviously, I love books and reading. I do own a book blog, after all. And I am part of a book club. And I have been talking about connecting more readers with authors/publishers and vice-versa . And so, attending this festival has been more of a venue for me to engage with authors and get at least some part of this message across: Hey, there are a lot of Filipino readers and a great many of them are active online. Sit up, take notice, and take advan...

What can be said about this book that has not been said before? Then again, art is derivative, and though I'm dangerously stretching the definition of art by applying it to my reviews, let me launch ahead and just say what everyone else has said... Read this book because it is fantastic. Super Sad True Love Story  by Gary Shteyngart is a surprising book because, much as it is marketed as a satire and therefore expected to be funny, what strikes me most of all is its drama and humanity. And those two things are not funny but just plain heartbreaking. So I guess the title didn't lie. Shteyngart's novel is set in a not-too-distant future where social networking and the interweb is taken to its unrestrained frontier--everyone communicates via their apparat (something like an iPhone, I guess, but much smaller and more powerful). To be honest, I couldn't picture what the apparat looked like, but its described as something you can wear on your neck, with a smooth cylin...

Triccie, owner of Libreria, is the second from the left. Photo courtesy of Kenneth Yu of Philippine Genre Stories  (gentleman at the far right). Last Saturday, I was finally able to snatch some time out for myself in order to join the second Filipino Book Bloggers' meet-up. I blogged about the first meet-up here , and this second meet-up was last Nov. 13. Fortuitously, it was held in Libreria at Cubao X. I say fortuitously because Triccie, Libreria's owner, is a book friend and I had been planning to go visit her newly reopened book shop but had never found the excuse to break away from my self-imposed work-home cycle. The meet-up provided me with the excuse. Libreria's entrance. Photo from Kenneth Yu . And so, nearly three hours late (because I did have work that day), I finally made it to Libreria to find everyone comfortably chatting around the bookstore's center table and sipping their freshly-brewed refillable coffee. They were book bloggers. With coffe...

The NYRB Reading Week ended last Saturday, November 13, and from our point of view, the response was amazing. After collating all the reviews, we learned that there was a total of 53 reviews of 38 NYRBs from 32 different blogs! Thank you, again, to everyone who participated. You can check out all the posts that we collated here and in Mrs. B's final consolidation post . Now, as promised, we are announcing the winners of the prizes and giveaways for our NYRB Reading Week. These prizes were donated both by Fully Booked and Random House . Yesterday, Mrs. B and I finally met, for the first time, and decided the winners together. We first selected our winners for favorite reviews and best photo. Then, we wrote the names of the participating blogs (minus the ones we'd awarded already) on pieces of paper, and randomly picked from the bunch. Without further ado, therefore, here are the winners: My favorite review Evening All Afternoon 's review of Wish Her Safe at Home...

It's already past 1 in the afternoon here in Manila, so I figure that ends Nov. 13 in almost all parts of the world. Hence, it's the end of our wonderful and enriching NYRB Reading Week . My co-host, Mrs. B , and I are very thankful to everyone who participated this week via writing reviews and other posts about NYRB. Here is a summary of everyone who gave links to their reviews and other posts for our reading week. Nov. 7 Gathering Books - The Bear That Wasn’t by Frank Tashlin I Prefer Reading - Poison Penmanship: The gentle art of muckracking by Jessica Mitford Soliony’s Blog - The Stray Dog Cabaret: A book of Russian poems by Paul Schmidt Kyusireader - Asleep in the Sun by Adolfo Bioy Casares Lizzy’s Literary Life - Aquis Submersus by Theodor Storm Lit Stuff - The Unknown Masterpiece by Honore de Balzac Nov. 8 Letters and Sodas: Book Notes - Witch Grass by Raymond Queneau Gathering Books - The Man Who Lost His Head by Claire Hutchet Bishop ...