Coffeespoons

Image from popartmachine I don't exactly review every book I read. I realized that that policy isn't feasible given my schedule and practices. So, I review only the books I feel like reviewing, whether I liked them or not. However, I feel that I should at least mention the books I don't plan to review as a sign of respect for them, whether I liked them or not. And so, I shall be starting a monthly round-up post, where I shall list the books I've read but do not intend to review. I'll be including a short comment about each book, at the very least. Since it's a month in review, I might also take the opportunity to mention bookish events that I mentioned or otherwise, as well as reading updates. Hence, welcome to the first of such posts. I'll be cheating here a bit because this post includes books which I read in December. Without further ado, here are the non-reviews: The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier - I understand now why some people wa...

I was aiming to keep it simple this year, but couldn't help signing up to the Whodunit Reading Challenge , sponsored by the wonderful site, Gathering Books . To quote from the original post, ...to start 2011, we embrace books that are shrouded in secrecy, suspense, and mystery (and crime, too) The challenge runs from January until June 30th, and there are 4 levels of participation: Novice Profiler: 1-2 books Crime Detective: 3-5 books Mythic Crime Buster: 6-8 books Criminal Genius/Mastermind: 9 books and above I'm signing up for the Crime Detective level , so I shall now scour my TBR for at least 5 suspense, mystery, and crime stories. I have to make this challenge coincide with my 2011 reading plan , which is to read primarily from my TBR. Then again, I've just looked around at the books on my desk and below my dresser, and I think I can easily find five.  The beautiful thing about this challenge is that the books can be for any age group--children, ...

Soledad's Sister  by Jose "Butch" Dalisay is the first Philippine novel to be shortlisted for the distinguished Man Asian Literary Prize  in 2007. I remember reading about the Man Asian at that time and finding out about Dalisay's shortlisted novel. And I recall thinking, "Well, that sounds about right." After all, Butch Dalisay is one of the country's premier writers.This much is evident when you read Soledad's Sister . Way back in college, I was fortunate enough to have Butch Dalisay as one of my professors. The class was an undergrad course on Survey of American Literature, and I remember every single story and poem we took up to this day. I also remember him reading to us one of his essays during class. He had his Mac open on his desk and was reading his essay from the screen. Back then, I was thinking, "This should be boring. But it isn't." And I realized it wasn't boring because I was entranced by his words. The summary...

Grace is a 20-something Chinese-Filipina who lives in Manila. She teaches pre-school, has a more-or-less traditional Chinese-Fil family, and, finally, a fiancé. Except that now, she's wondering about the fiancé. Her "dream" man, not to mention the man her parents approve of, tells her, soon after he's proposed, that he's moving to Singapore for a few months. Supposedly, it's to secure their future. Now, a fiancé leaving right after his proposal and sounding excited by it does not seem to bode well for the relationship. Especially when he starts talking a lot about another woman. So Grace, not to be hoodwinked out of her future marital bliss, decides to go to Singapore, surprise her man, and lay claim to him. And therein begins Grace's true search for herself. In the process, Grace traipses after her fiancé across three countries. What happens in the end? Something I am happy about. And that's all you'll get from me, at this point. Tara Seri...

My latest order from Book Depository has finally arrived! At least, 5 out of the 6 books I ordered. And no, these don't count toward my 12-book limit for this year, because these were ordered mid-December last year. So, I actually included these in my TBR count. Did I mention I love Book Depository? They are kind enough to ship for free to my country, and they send the books in these nice individual packets. Also, so far, my books have always arrived before I expect them. My two prior orders took less than two weeks to arrive, and though this order took a little over a month from  the time I ordered them, I actually expected them much later because I factored in the holiday rush. I did order them close to Christmas, after all. I'm still waiting for the sixth book, Jasper Fforde's The Last Dragonslayer . I'm a big Fforde fan and couldn't wait for the book to appear in bookstores here. So, about these 5: Everything is Illuminate d by Jonathan Safran Foer...

Best and Worst poster care of Ajie . The blue door is the entrance to Libreria. Last Saturday, our book club, Flips Flipping Pages , had our yearly Best and Worst Reads discussion at Libreria bookstore. This is the third FFP Best and Worst discussion, and I think it's safe to say that it's the most well-attended one. A few reasons for that: some book club members whom we haven't seen in a while have made a long-awaited appearance and we also had some members of the Filipino Book Bloggers over. We were also hoping to have author Marianne Villanueva with us, but her flight for the day was delayed, so she couldn't make it to the discussion. I later found out that the only reason she was flying over to Manila from her family home in Bacolod (another Philippine province) was to attend the discussion and meet up again with the Filipino Book Bloggers. I thought that was very sweet of her and was disappointed not to have her over. We really enjoyed the last meet-...

Filipino Friday is a weekly discussion among the community of Filipino Book Bloggers about anything book or blog-related. I volunteered to host this week's discussion because of a burning question I have which I'd like my fellow book bloggers to answer. First, the background: During the Lit out Loud festival , Tarie and I, with a couple of our friends, were discussing what our ideal conference/convention would be. The LOL festival was good, but from a reader's and book blogger's perspective, it seemed that there was something lacking. So, we got to thinking of what kind of conference we'd like to have. Which got us to thinking, "Hey, what if we put up our own conference or convention?" Next... We had a small meeting last December with Chachic , Kenneth , and Paolo where Tarie and I pitched the idea, primarily to get feedback. There was an animated discussion and a number of suggestions, but, overall, there was support. We talked about possible...

Yes, it's my blog's second birthday today! Wow, two years book blogging. I thought that I wouldn't make a big deal about this, but I was actually excited last night and was telling my family, "Hey, my blog will be 2 tomorrow!" Not that they actually read my blog, but they do know that I blog.:) So, two years means that my honeymoon stage with blogging is definitely over and the real work has set in. By work, I do not mean the dreadful, soulless kind. I mean the thing that may not enamor you everyday, but you do anyway because you know, deep down, you love it. Kinda like a marriage. Last year, on my first blogiversary, I wrote very passionately about the Filipino reader . I didn't really know it then, but that post became a sort of manifesto for me and colored what I wanted to do as a reader, a blogger,  and a book club member in the succeeding year. This year, I don't have an issue to talk about with a burning passion. Rather, I find myself still...

Gentlemen: Your ad in the Saturday Review of Literature says that you specialize in out-of-print books. The phrase "antiquarian booksellers" scares me somewhat, as I equate "antique" with expensive. I am a poor writer with an antiquarian taste in books and all the things I want are impossible to get over here except in very expensive rare editions, or in Barnes & Noble's grimy, marked-up schoolboy copies. I enclose a list of my most pressing problems. If you have clean secondhand copies of any of the books on the list, for no more than $5.00 each, will you consider this a purchase order and sent them to me? The letter is signed Helene Hanff. She sent it to Marks & Co. Booksellers, at 84 Charing Cross Road, London, England. The epistle is dated October 5, 1949. When Ms. Hanff says "over here" in her letter, she means New York City, which is where she lived at that time. I copied the entire first letter because I desperately want to s...

When reading a poetry collection, one of the last things you expect to do is laugh out loud. But, if you were to read Adam David's new edition of The El Bimbo Variations , that is exactly what you'd be doing. My advice: try not to read it in public, unless you're okay with people looking at you weird because your shoulders are suddenly shaking in laughter or you have a snap-happy grin on your face. I first read The El Bimbo Variations back when it was still in pdf format. Four years ago, the poet Adam David gave a talk to one of our high school junior classes during a yearly activity where we expose students to real-life writers. In preparation, he sent us  a copy of his El Bimbo Variations , and told me that we could distribute it to the students so that they'd know his work. We photocopied them for the classes assigned to Adam and, on the day of the talk, I went in and listened to his session where he got riled up about big publishers and their limited repertoire...

This is me trying to catch up with all those reviews I want to write... When I was a teenager, I remember watching a movie with a kid and a ghost of a woman in white. I loved that movie, and have always thought that it was entitled The Woman in White . So, I thought that the movie and Wilkie Collins' novel were one and the same. Because of my vague recollections of that movie, it took me until page 100 or so to figure out that both were completely different stories. In the first place, there wasn't a kid in the novel. In the second, there was no ghost either. And so, curiosity finally got the better of me and I googled the movie. Apparently, it was entitled The Lady in White . Not so far off then, was I? The Woman in White , however, is one of those classics that readers keep saying is unputdownable. Now, I've read my share of classics, and let me tell you, though most of them are beautiful reads, few of them are unputdownable. Then again, most classics are so much ...

2010 was a year of failed reading challenges, but satisfactory reading. You can check my status for the challenges I joined last 2010 , and you can see I read a paltry amount for each. Also, I didn't even read any of the 22 other titles from my TBR that I listed. Ah well. But, as I did mention in my Top 10 for 2011 post, I read many excellent books in the last year, and I took as much time with them as I wanted, so it's still been a good reading year. This didn't help me tackle my TBR problem, however. So, though I'd been shopping around for reading challenges and goals before last year ended, I was only able to firm one up after an afternoon of clearing and cleaning my desk. There's nothing like taking stock of exactly how much clutter I have and how many TBR books are languishing in my shelves and gathering dust on my desk to goad me into coming up with an insane reading plan. The best I can do with my desk for now. Books standing on the right and...

I like dares and I have an insane (for me) 177 books in my TBR. So the TBR Dare , hosted by C.B. at Ready When You Are, C.B. is right up my alley. C.B. clarifies that this is not a challenge, but a dare. The dare is this: read only your TBR books for as long as you can. The dare starts on Jan. 1 and ends on April 1 because, according to the original post, "...we're all fools for taking a dare like this one, we know it and we celebrate it. " I like it. I don't know why this is, but calling it a dare seems more comfortable. I think it's the acknowledgement that we'll all break at some point, so it's more freewheeling and guilt-free. And so, I commit to reading only my TBR books (those I've owned before 2011) until the end of February. I figure two months is a challenging enough length of time without unrealistically overextending myself either. However, I'm going to beg for a pass for the book club books that I'll need to read during...

This is me attempting to track my progress on my 2011 Reading Plan. UPDATE:  Total Books Read - 69 Books Read from my TBR: 1. Soledad's Sister by Butch Dalisay (Jan. 6) 2. $#*! My Dad Says by Justin Halpern (Jan. 7) 3. The El Bimbo Variations by Adam David (Jan. 11) 4. Tun-huang by Yasushi Inoue (Jan.11) 5. The Reader by Bernard Schlink (Jan. 16) 6. Light Boxes by Shane Jones (Jan. 17) 7. Electra and other plays by Sophocles (trans. by E.F. Watling) (Jan. 27) 8. The Woman in Black by Susan Hill (Jan. 27) 9. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver (Feb. 2) 10. Once by Morris Gleitzman (Feb. 3) 11. The Last Dragonslayer by Jasper Fforde (Feb. 5) 12. Blue Angel, White Shadow by Charlson Ong (Feb. 8) 13. One Day by David Nicholls (Feb. 14) 14. Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight by Alexandra Fuller (Feb. 19) 15. From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E. L. Konigsburg (Feb. 22) 16. A Door in the Wall by Marguerite de Ange...