Coffeespoons

With the work I have now, I thought it was high time for me to finally read King's On Writing . Let me put forth a few home truths: I am not a writer. The extent of my claim to being a writer goes as far as authoring around 7 teacher's modules, contributions to a few textbooks, an article in a magazine here and there (like 10 years ago), and one accepted essay in an anthology about to be published. And this blog. So, as one who must now help other writers publish their book, I figure I need to learn all I can about that craft. However, I am a reader, as should be obvious from this blog. I read voraciously and widely. Sometimes, I may not read as much or as often as I'd like, but I still go around with a couple of reading implements on me (my Kindle and a print book, more often than not).  Thus, putting these two truths together, my response to learning the craft of writing, especially of fiction, is to read about it. Right. Lame. But, for one who is so in love wi...

Yeah, gonna smack you down, bitch. ( img src ) During one of the sessions in last year's Manila International Literary Festival, I remember someone saying that it makes sense for an author like Neil Gaiman to be on Twitter, but not really for literary authors. And a lot of the audience were nodding their heads. Aside from my usual annoyance at the delineation once more of "literary" and "genre" authors, I also thought, "These people probably aren't on Twitter much, or else they'd know a 'literary' author such as Margaret Atwood is very active on Twitter, and her fans are loving her for it." And just to prove some more how wrong that statement about literary authors on Twitter was, I bring you Salman Rushdie 's very involved engagement with Tweeps in the #literarysmackdowns  hashtag. I am seriously impressed that Rushdie is taking all this time and effort to interact with people he does not know from Adam. Whether it's...

I've been pimping Surgeons Do Not Cry by Ting Tiongco for a while now for two reasons. The lesser of these reasons is that our company co-published the ebook edition . So that's my "full disclosure" statement. But the bigger reason is that I read the book and was utterly both charmed and blown away by it. Ting Tiongco was a med student at the University of the Philippines (UP) College of Medicine, the country's premiere med school, in the early 1970s. He interned at the Philippine General Hospital (PGH), a government hospital and the lab hospital of UP. PGH caters to the poorest of the poor, which is saying a lot in a third-world country. Moreover, the 1970s was a historic time in Metro Manila--the era of the declaration of martial law and student demonstrations against a dictatorial regime. So, Tiongco's book is a memoir of his experiences pre- and during med school during those tumultuous times.  But it is absolutely not a political book. I say ...

It's 11 hours to the ReaderCon. I'm awake because I'm cramming for the event, and what better time to cram when everyone is asleep? Since I didn't make it on a Friday again, I promised that I'd at least post this before the ReaderCon. So I'm abiding by my promise. The last ReaderCon Filipino Friday topic is What do you hope will happen in the ReaderCon? What are you expecting from the event? I will try to answer this as best as 2AM and my sleep-deprived brain will let me. I hope it'll start on time, that's for sure. I hope all the little details fall into place. I hope the food's good and sufficient. I hope it'll be a success. But let me veer away from speaking as a volunteer and organizer. What I hope for the ReaderCon is what I've always hoped: that more and more people will realize that reading is something many Filipinos engage in and are passionate about. As a corollary, readers will find other readers or will give birth ...

This is me trying to make up for the past 2 Filipino Fridays I missed plus answering this week's current Filipino Friday.:) Bear with me if this turns out into a long-ish post; it's a three-in-one. Prompt for Week 2:  How did you become a reader? What influenced you to take up reading as a hobby?...What is it about reading that you enjoy so much? I blame my mother, as I suppose most of us do. The story I fondly tell is of my mother taking me to Greenhills when I was three and, as we got down from the car, she was excitedly telling me that she would buy me a book. How do I know I was three? Because my mom says that's how old I was when I started reading. Anyway, my mom was gabbing away about buying me that book, and I distinctly remember thinking, "What's a book?" I had no idea what it was, but basing solely on my mother's excitement, I figured it'd be a good thing. And so she bought me two books, Little Red Riding Hood and...

img src For posterity's sake, I'd like to post here what used to be my Blogger profile write-up: I've learned that in my life there are only a few things I need to keep constant: my love for my family and my love for reading. The rest can come and go as they please. Now if you look at my current profile there on the right, you'll realize what has changed. What is constant: I am a reader, I am a mother. Things that have changed: I used to be an educator in the classroom; now I'm an occasional educator when I do teacher training. I used to work in educational publishing, which did not impede at all into my book blogging activities. Now, I work in a digital publishing company that publishes and co-publishes trade books and some academic content. So, yes, I know this will affect this blog somewhat.  But for the kind of work I am going to do, I'm willing to take that chance.  And what is the kind of work I am going to...

Better late than never. Filipino Friday is a meme that originated within the Filipino Book Bloggers site and is being  borrowed by the ReaderCon site in order to encourage participation among Filipino readers everywhere. The ReaderCon Filipino Friday will run for the 5 Fridays leading up to the big event on Sept. 14. This week's topic is an introduction. Here's the prompt from the site: Tell us what kind of reader you are. What are your favorite genres and books? Who are your favorite authors? Do you have a comfort read? And what's the best book you've read this year so far? You can also include links of where other readers can find you online. I like to think I'm an eclectic reader. Though I had favorite genres at certain points in my life (bestsellers in early high school, sf&f in late high school to college, classics in later college years, YA when I started working) I think I've gotten to a point where I'm willing to sample an...

Yes! Yes, it is. Yes, we're finally going to do it. Filipino Readers Make it Social! The First Filipino ReaderCon is finally going to happen on Sept. 14, from 1-6 PM at SMX Mall of Asia. We are going to be one of the special events during the Manila International Book Fair , which actually starts on that day. About 19 months ago, I declared what I believed about Filipino readers . Then, nearly a year ago, in a post about the local Future of the Book conference , I mentioned how some local publishers didn't seem to be aware of the level of activity of the reading public. But the germ of the ReaderCon idea finally took form during the first Manila International Literary Festival last year, when Tarie and I were imagining what our ideal conference would be, since we felt that literary festivals and book conferences could do with more reader involvement. And that was when we said that we should have a readers' convention. The time seems ripe for it, after ...

I don't intend to rehash a tired debate; I only mean to look at what formats I've been reading books this year and what this means. I got my Kindle last week of March and of the 20 books I've read since then, 7 have been Kindle ebooks. I think I'd be reading more of my Kindle books if not for that goal that I set for myself at the beginning of the year--that of cutting down my 2010 TBR to around half. However, what's more telling, I think, is how many books I've actually bought from brick-and-mortar bookstores since I got my Kindle. Ok, granted I also have that other challenge not to buy more than 12 print or e-books this year until I halve the TBR, I notice that I hardly show any interest when I pass by a bookstore anymore. Shocking, I know. Like other bibliophiles, I couldn't resist going inside a bookstore whenever I passed by one. And I couldn't resist buying at least one book whenever I entered one. Or if I didn't, I went through this...

John Sayles, writer, indie director, editor, actor. I met John Sayles, indie writer, director, and editor, last Tuesday during an intimate presscon organized by Fully Booked . What struck me first about the author was his seeming shyness.He introduced himself readily to the members of the media there (all 7 of us), but sat quietly while his partner and producer, Maggie Renzi, chatted us up very warmly. Nevertheless, the author of A Moment in the Sun , a doorstopper of a book which is to be launched this Saturday also at Fully Booked , looked around with sharp eyes that seemed to take in everything. To be honest, this was my first presscon, and I wasn’t sure what to expect. My images of presscons are shaped by Hollywood movies and coverages of Philippine politics. But this presscon was just a small group of people seated around a table, eating and chatting. (In Philippine culture, it doesn’t seem right to chat without eating.:D) Aside from members of traditional media and writers...

I am a proud pimp of Patrick Ness's Chaos Walking trilogy . To date, it is still the best YA series I have ever read. Beginning with the first book, The Knife of Never Letting Go , the series just got better with each installment. Which is why it's a shame that there are only 3 books. Which is why I have begun to look out for anything Ness. Which is why, when news came out of A Monster Calls , a book Ness wrote based on an idea from Siobhan Dowd, I jumped up and down in glee. Though the word "monster" is used both in this new book and in the title of the third book in Chaos Walking ( Monsters of Men ), this new book is not cut out of the same cloth as the dystopian series. But it's still Ness's writing. And after reading this book, I think I've figured out why I love Ness's writing so much. To me, he speaks truth: quietly, simply, powerfully. A Monster Calls is a tale of a young boy, Conor, coping with the reality of his mother's illness. On...

It won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2011 Pulitzer for fiction . And, Aldrin was raving about it .:) Which makes it a book that I could not pass up. In fact, I went all the way to Fully Booked , twice, just to get my reserved trade paperback copy of Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad . I held off on the Kindle version because of some negative feedback about the powerpoint chapter (i.e., it was hard to read). Yes, there's a powerpoint chapter, which I found utterly brilliant and charming. Forgive me if I can't summarize A Visit from the Goon Squad . I will have to seek recourse through this Publishers Weekly review . We begin in contemporaryish New York with kleptomaniac Sasha and her boss, rising music producer Bennie Salazar, before flashing back, with Bennie, to the glory days of Bay Area punk rock, and eventually forward, with Sasha, to a settled life. By then, Egan has accrued tertiary characters, like Scotty Hausmann, Bennie's...

Pagpagayuk and Mariang Sinukuan on the iPad This is a post wherein many of my worlds collide--my work, my book blogging, and--only a tad bit--my family. Anyway, the educational publisher I work for, Vibal Publishing House, Inc. , has released its first set of interactive storybook apps for the iPad and for the Android! And they're the first storybook apps for the iPad developed entirely in the Philippines by a publishing house! And they're the first Filipino-English bilingual storybook apps in the world! Yes, those are exclamation points because I'm very proud of having been part of the process of their development. So, this is not a review because I can't review something that I helped make. This is, obviously, shameless plugging. There are five storybooks from Vibal's Chikiting books imprint developed into apps. These are: Amansinaya: Goddess of the Sea Story by Eugene Evasco Illustrated by Jomike Tejido Mariang Sinukuan: The Goddess and Ke...

This was my Mother's Day read (yes, that long ago). I didn't want to read one of those Oprah books (not that I have anything against them, but I don't like being pigeon-holed.) and I think I made the right choice.I thought Jeannette Walls' The Glass Castle was a beautiful book. There are probably many other reasons why I chose it--issues with mothers, wanting to read about the Walls family, getting another book off my TBR...but mainly, I guess, the book called out to me. Regardless of reason, I was enthralled by the book from the beginning. Jeannette Walls' first memory was of being on fire. She was three and her mother let her cook hotdogs by herself. She got into an accident, caught fire, and was brought by her mom to the hospital. She loved being in the hospital because it was totally different from the trailer park in which they lived. Her brother and sister came to visit, as well as her dad, who didn't approve of hospitals or anything to do with The ...

Woman Reading in a Landscape by Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot ( img src ) She looks so calm and involved reading there, doesn't she? I do wish I were her, even for a little while. April has been a better reading month than March for me, all because of the Holy Week holidays we have here. Four days of not doing anything--just lying down to read. It's something I badly needed. I even got to blog a bit! So here are the books I read this month, with links to the two that I was able to review on my blog: One of Our Thursdays is Missing by Jasper Fforde - I'm a big fan of Fforde. And though I think that his first four Thursday Next books were much better than the two books that followed, I'm still a big fan. That is how much loyalty his first four Thursday Net books and the two Nursery Crime books have evoked in me. The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman - read many good things about this, so I got it on my Kindle. What I loved about it are the character studies. T...