Coffeespoons

Was it a good reading year? Yep. I read what I could, so I read enough. And I read what I felt would give me joy. And, I got in my goal of reading 60 books a year. Sure, a couple were short picture books, but they were lovely. A few more stats for this reading year: Total books read: 60 80% of the authors of the books I read, as far as I know, are women. 9 or 15% of the books I read were written by Filipino authors. 28 or roughly 47% of the books I read were published in 2017; 9 or 15% have yet to be published in 2018. 34 or roughly 57% of the books I read were published by Penguin Random House publishers or clients And here are my best reads for 2017, organized according to when they were/are to be published: Love Irresistibly by Julie James - I only started reading Julie James this year, because I heard she was popular in my region. I see why. I've read a couple, but this one about a prosecutor and a hotshot corporate counsel who unwittingly fall in love was ...

Some of the books from Filipino authors published by intl. publishers. Clockwise from top left: Age of Blight by Kristine Ong Muslim; The Bone Witch by Rin Chupeco; The Courageous Princess Vol. 1 by Rod Espinosa; Learning To Fall by Mina Esguerra, Smaller And Smaller Circles by F.H. Batacan; The Last Time I'll Write About You by Dawn Lanuza. It seems an exciting time for Filipino authors. A Filipina YA author was at the Brooklyn Book Festival and other festivals, some Filipino authors just wrapped up panels during the Fil-Am International Book Festival in San Francisco , a few other Fil-Am authors are coming out with new books from a major publisher in the next few months ( literary fiction , young adult , and middle grade ), and another classic author was recently published by Penguin Classics. Not to mention that a few Filipino authors have been pitching at #dvpit and have already found agents . And I'm pretty sure I'm barely scratching the surface her...

Hello. Still around. Or maybe I should say, finally around. Presence is a tricky thing, isn't it? You're here, but not here. Even when you want to be here. Anyway, I am here now. Determined (or at least convinced) that I should carve out some time to go back to writing. And to me, writing means blogging. Because that was most of the writing that I did for me. The other writing that I did for me would be Facebook status updates, but let's be honest: those disappear into the ether. And though you might get hundreds of engagements because of them, they're always tenuous at best. Now blogging...is tenuous, too. But less so than Facebook status updates, so let's stick to this. I have so many things that I've wanted to write about, that I've wanted to say. And because they are legion, I'm not going to touch them lest I freeze up again. Instead, let us begin from zero... Imagine me as a new blogger. Eager to share books that I love with the world. Fois...

My 10 best reads in the year 2016 They say better late than never. Besides, it's still Chinese New Year's eve somewhere in the world. So. Anyway, yes, this blog is still around. Mostly for sentimental reasons. And if there's one thing I have never missed in the 8 years that this blog has been live, it's posting my ten best reads of the past year. Obviously a bit late this time around, since I usually post this a few hours (or minutes!) before midnight of January first. But there was a family vacation, and then recovering from the family vacation, and then catching up with work, etc. etc....you know how that goes. Also, unlike last year, I didn't have the energy to do an in-depth analysis, with charts, of the books I read. Instead, I have some quick and dirty figures. For instance: I read 68 books last year - A far cry from my Goodreads goal of 100. My original goal was 60, which I changed to 100 because I figured I should count the children's books I...