Coffeespoons

According to this Guardian article , the hullabaloo surrounding the release of Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol was lost on American literati, whose attention were intent on A Gate at the Stairs , the new book from Lorrie Moore. I'd say that's pretty high praise for a book. Stands to reason, then, that I had high hopes for Moore's Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? . In a post about my bloot (book loot), I mentioned that I bought this book because I read somewhere that it was one of the best yet overlooked young adult books. After having read the book, let me qualify that remark now: first, if you're going to make a young adult read this, then it better be a very mature young adult, because this book is not of the J.K. Rowling-Rick Riordan-Suzanne Collins ilk. It opens with the main character Berie, already a middle-aged woman, who is vacationing in Paris with her husband whom she no longer loves. Berie's unhappiness leads her to reminisce on the summer of her ...

A couple of Saturdays ago, I attended a Literacy Forum sponsored by the Reading Association of the Philippines at the National Library. The two guest speakers were board members of the International Reading Association . Now, I am a self-declared reading advocate. When I used to teach in a school, I enjoyed coming up with various projects to encourage students and fellow teachers to read. I even spent my own money on most of them. So, research about reading habits of children or people in general interest me. For this Literacy Forum, one thing really struck me, and that was the assertion from one of the reading experts that boys prefer reading nonfiction, and girls prefer fiction . And this supposedly explains a couple of things: why many boys are reluctant readers at school and why a lot of students have difficulty with higher level reading material. How so? Well, majority of English or reading teachers are female. Now, since females prefer reading fiction, this prefere...

What would Neil Gaiman place on the walls of a public library to encourage children to read? "The four words that children ask, when you pause, telling them a story. The four words you hear at the end of a chapter. The four words, spoken or unspoken, that show you, as a storyteller, that people care. ...and then what happened? " Gaiman's introduction to Stories is an homage to story, to our  innate desire for a plot, something to give us a sense that what we're reading is actually going somewhere. And so, in this short story anthology edited by Mr. Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio, they gathered short fiction that actually told stories.  This isn't the first time I heard and responded to the case for story. Almost a year ago, I read and posted this Lev Grossman article  about the plot against plot. A few posts ago, I linked to the Guardian article mentioning Stories and Michael Chabon's McSweeney's intro  in one breath. And, in affirmation of the dictum t...

A first, ladies and gentlemen, because I have NEVER won anything in a raffle or a game of chance. So, to echo Homer, "Woohoo!!!" Anyway,  Tina at One More Page  sponsored a book giveaway of Feed by Mira Grant. I figured I'd join this one because, 1) I like Tina's blog and 2) I thought it's high time for me to read a zombie novel, so I might as well try winning one. Yep, I've never read a zombie novel, cause zombies honestly freak me out, except for the cute ones on Plants vs. Zombies. Lo and behold, I get my wish! I win this book. And I get to read it, too! Funny, because the blurb and the reviews say that the book is about a couple of bloggers in a postapocalyptic zombie society who are covering the campaign of a presidential candidate. Blogging, new media, politics, and zombies. Awesome. Thank you so much for the contest and for the book, Tina! And since now the universe has conspired to let me win a little something, I'm thinking it might consp...

The word sounds suspiciously like bloat , which is sometimes how I feel. But more importantly, it's what my book collection is always in danger of becoming (if it hasn't already). Bloot is my shorthand for book loot.  To be fair to myself (which I always try to be ;-P), I've been better now about buying books. No longer do I buy dozens a month. I buy 1 or 2 or six. That's a big improvement, trust me. I find that the emptiness in my life and the desire to fill it with unabated consumerism is no longer as compelling as it was before. And though I don't usually--almost never--post about books I recently acquired, I am happy enough about these to show them off. And I am happy about them because, well--do you get the feeling that sometimes you buy books because some people around you talk about them so much, and you feel that you have to read them too, so you sort of adapt a little bit to fit in to what others around you are reading? Or maybe you're not as neu...