Coffeespoons

Forty-five minutes before the clock strikes 12 here, and 2013 steps in. So, I've enough time to finally post my ten favorite reads from 2012. I actually read a lot of good books this year , but it's been a custom on this blog to post 10 of my favorite books for the year. My main criteria for choosing these books: I ponder on them until now and still have warm feelings when I see them. The Family Fang by Kevin Wilson - I found this story of a family of performance artists hilarious and moving, especially with the kids having to deal with their crazy parents. The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides - I loved Middlesex, but this one, my God. It is beautiful. The language, the characters, the description of the house and community. House of Mirth by Edith Wharton - I still feel bad about Lily Bart. She was a rebel, but things just didn't work out her way. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot - This is the book that made me want to read mor...

Some of the books I read this year And in the photo finish of photo finishes, here's my year in reading, 2012 edition. At the beginning of the year, I jokingly said in one of our book club threads that I'm targeting to read 10 books this year. I didn't want to pressure myself to reach a certain number of books read at the expense of relishing reading or choosing books that I actually want to read. That happened when I used to set my reading target to 100 books for the year. Now, according to my Shelfari bookshelf , I read a total of 55 books this year, give or take. I say "give or take" because I really wasn't sure how to count the comic book issues and graphic novels. Also, there are a few indie comics and books that I haven't been able to add to my bookshelf. In any case, I'm happy to say I exceeded the 10 book goal.:-P So, the books I read in 2012: The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern The Sisters Brothers by Patrick DeWitt Miss Pereg...

( img src ) Earlier today, I was thinking of all the things I've been planning to do. It started with me wondering why I'm not a full-time mom, because I occasionally find myself wishing that I were. Of course, aside from the fact that I have to earn a living, I also enjoy my job tremendously. So, the desire to be a full-time mom is really a function of time. I would love to have enough time to do all the activities I'd like to do with my kids and do my job well. But it's not as if my family and my job are the only things I want to do. I'm not even talking about bucket list things here, although I do hope to spend a few weeks in each major European city one day. I'm talking about simple, doable things like my hobbies (reading) and my advocacies (reading) which I haven't gotten around to because there are only so many hours in a day. There are all those books I've been wanting to read. Books in my physical TBR, books in my Kindle's TBR, books...

The books for our non-fic read-along Over at our Shelfari book club, Flips Flipping Pages , a friend, Shani, and I have announced our new non-fiction read-along project . The project was born out of our combined geek minds, minds that like talking about pop psychology, technology, marketing, maybe a little philosophy, and other such nonsense. Seriously, we just wanted to read more non-fiction and talk about it. So, we've lined up the following books for our non-fiction read-along. One book per month: December - The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr January - Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything by Joshua Foer February - You are Not So Smart: Why You Have Too Many Friends on Facebook, Why Your Memory Is Mostly Fiction, and 46 Other Ways You're Deluding Yourself  by David McRaney What was intended as a two-woman read-along became something we opened up to our other book club members, tho...

Top Row L-R: Smaller and Smaller Circles , It's a Mens World , The El Bimbo Variations Bottom Row L-R: Texticles , Joaquinesquerie , sample of Pop Stories for Groovy Kids cover This is a post I've been promising to write for a few months now. So, it's a day after my birthday--new year, new life and all that jazz-- and I'm finally getting off my bum to finish it. Let's call this the year that I do the things I've been planning to do for a long time. Caveat # 1: This list is based only on the books I've read and really loved. Unfortunately, I haven't read as many Filipino books as I'd like. Caveat # 2: I suppose some of you know I work with a publishing company. And so, though I do love many of the books we published, I've decided on not including them in this list for now. Would like to reserve them for another post (if I do finally get around to that). So, these books are not published by us. Caveat # 3: Though I may know the writer...

img src These books about books are difficult for book-lovers to ignore, I think. You put the word "bookstore" in the title, with a quirky name and, bam! Next bibliophile that comes across it is going to pick it up for sure. Well, in my case, I checked the Amazon page . I'd been seeing the hype around the novel. So, bookshop + quirky name + interesting book description + hype = Yes, I will get you. My initial question, though, was whether I'd get the print book or the ebook. I'd also read this interview of Robin Sloane implying that, in the age of ebooks, you have to find reasons for buyers to invest in the print book. I thought that was a pretty smart idea. There has to be added value to the print book, otherwise people like me, who try not to overburden our currently overburdened book shelves, are just going to get the ebook. So I checked out what added value the print book had. I usually get the print book if: 1) I know the book's going to be a...

Bel Kaufman, author of one of my all-time favorite books. ( img src ) I got an email yesterday from a Ms. De Silva of Open Road Media . It was a marketing email telling me about the release of Bel Kaufman's cult classic, Up the Down Staircase , in ebook format. It gave the usual short background about the author and a link to new content, specifically a video of Bel Kaufmann. Now, I usually do not do anything about emails like this. Not that I don't appreciate them--trust me, I do. I am shallow and, once in a while, I like feeling important enough for a marketer's email. But I have a lot of things on my plate--as might be obvious from the sporadic posts on this blog--so I really don't have the time to take books for review or even post announcements and such. But I'm making an exception for this. Because I am truly impressed.  First, I am impressed by Bel Kaufman. My God, the woman is 101 years old! And lucid as ever. I fell in love with Up the Down...

Maybe because I was thinking of Christmas? And maybe because, for the first time in ever , I only bought Filipino-published books. For the uninitiate, the MIBF stands for the Manila International Book Fair , the country's biggest and most prominent book fair. Unlike other book fairs around the globe, the MIBF is really more of consumers' market, with hordes of readers descending upon the happily waiting publishers and distributors, setting out to find the long sought for book or the cheapest bargain. And, lately, hoping to catch a favorite author during one of the book launches or author-signing events during the MIBF. The show runs for 5 days. It started on a Weds., Sept. 12 and will run till Sept. 16. My first visit was on a Friday, where I bought these four books for my kids: Three are from Hiyas Publishing (OMF Lit) and one from Adarna House, Inc. The Great Duck and Crocodile Race by Robert Magnuson - which I love. Love the art, love the text, love the messag...

If I were a guy, this would be my wet dream. ( img src ) I believe there is such a thing as too many books. In my youth, I never thought so. I wanted to own a library as huge as Belle's in Beauty and the Beast. I thought a library like that was better than love. But it's not love that convinced me otherwise about books. It was a lingering sense of guilt (thank you, Catholic education) and two floods. The first flood happened 3 years ago. I wrote about it here . And though my books were all saved, I thought that it was about time I trimmed down my library. So I had shelves made that were 4 1/2 feet off the floor, and I challenged myself to own only enough books that would fit in them. Of course, that didn't happen. Once again, books claimed their dominion over my work desk, my dresser, on top of my bedroom drawer, and even the bedroom floor. Then, a few weeks ago, another flood. It came into our house again and though it didn't reach as high as it did 3 year...

I have one hour to catch up on last week's Filipino Friday before the linky disappears, so here goes... This week's prompt: School of Reading. We all started reading somewhere, and more often than not, we were influenced by someone. Who got you into reading? Your parents? A friend? A librarian? One teacher who always lends out his/her books? How helpful was your school in helping your reading habit / fueling your book addiction? Who got me into reading? My mom. Read to me every night when I was 3 to 5 years old. At least, every night she was at home from the hospital. So, reading time was also bonding time with my mom. And then my brother, who also took over reading to me when mom was on duty at the hospital. Dad was never a big reader, but that's ok 'cause he's big with the 'rithmetic. Was my school helpful in fueling my book addiction? That depends on which school we're talking about. To be fair, my book addiction grew with every school I we...

It's Filipino ReaderCon time again. And that means the return of ReaderCon Filipino Fridays ! Once more, the great and varied Filipino reading community is preparing to come together for the ReaderCon. In preparation for that, we have the Filipino Friday meme where a few of us can get to know each other. Which is the topic for this year's first ReaderCon Filipino Friday . Introductions . As with every start of a weekly meme, we need to know a bit about you! Talk about your top 3-5 (or more!) favorite books of all time, the genres you read and would never read, the books that surprised you this year. You can also talk about how you became a reader and why you love it so much! And finally, if you were in the ReaderCon last year, talk about your experience too! If you weren’t there, but you’re planning to go this year, then what do you expect for the upcoming ReaderCon? All right, then... Favorite books: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee - all-time favorite, ...

Aren't the covers pretty? There, I've been wanting to put these covers side by side and post them online for the past few weeks. These are the covers for the ebook editions of Philippine Speculative Fiction (PSF), Vols. 1-4. And yes, we published them. The ebook editions, I mean, as the print ones were independently published by Dean Alfar and company since 2005. The covers were made by our production editor, Adam David , and our artist, Lester Banzuelo (better known to others as the drummer of Fuseboxx . Yeah, we cool like that. Or, at least, he is.). I remember passing by Adam and Lester's workstations as I was walking to our office pantry when I had to stop because I saw the covers on their screens. I think they were working on the Vol. 4 cover by then. When I saw the sinister Christmas-y cover, I believe I felt what can only be described as "kilig" (rough English translation: "to be tickled pink"). I would've giggled, but I was trying ha...

One of the badges from last year's ReaderCon ...would you support it? Last year, we held the first Filipino Readers' Conference or ReaderCon , entitled "Filipino Readers Make it Social." Back then, what we wanted to do was spread awareness about the vibrant reading communities of the country. We had two panels: one on book clubs and another on book blogging. We held it in a small room, good for 70 people, during the Manila International Book Fair. Surprisingly, the room was filled, the panelists enthusiastic, and the crowd friendly and participative. Generally, people said the event was a success, with a few comments that there could have been more time for socializing. I tend to agree. And so before that first ReaderCon ended, I, with bravado, said that there would be another one next year, because I felt we had barely scratched the surface of what we can do as a reading community, for the reading community. This is next year. I am still intent on making Read...

Libreria last day party. (photo courtesy of Rhett ) Libreria. Where we ate, danced, slept, wrote, scavenged, hobnobbed with writers, spilled drinks, raised hell, got drunk, and oh yes, read, for a year and a half, closed its doors last Saturday. The closing of indie bookstores isn't as alarming in this country, but the closing of this particular indie bookstore is. Because it was our haven, refuge, our treehouse, our clubhouse. And I don't just mean for my book club . It was home, too, to the Filipino Book Bloggers . It was a place we could go to geek out about books and feel like we belonged. So though it was around only for a little while, it has inspired a loyalty in us. Owner and proprietor, Triccie, finally decided to close shop because her work necessitated that she be in a different province for several days in the week and because the bookstore stopped earning money. And I keep thinking that I wish I had enough money to keep the place as it is--a venue for book...

I didn't finish House of Mirth in time for our book discussion last Saturday. When I stepped into the venue, I had only read up to 72% of my ebook. So I was thinking of keeping quiet as I hadn't finished the book (though I did know the ending), but then I'm not the kind who keeps quiet in any kind of discussion. It was interesting that many people from the club identified Lily Bart as a gambler. I didn't see that at all. I mean, sure, she had gambling debts. But you don't really see her engage in gambling in the novel. Being the romantic kind, I pegged her as a rebel. The poor girl seemed to want to get away from the kind of life she was weaned into. Though at the same time, she knows that she'll always value money and beauty highly. Nevertheless, though she had a great number of opportunities to finally marry someone to secure her future, she never saw any plan through. And though she could've fought dirty like many of the people in her set, she never ...