Coffeespoons

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...

Triccie, owner of Libreria, is the second from the left. Photo courtesy of Kenneth Yu of Philippine Genre Stories  (gentleman at the far right). Last Saturday, I was finally able to snatch some time out for myself in order to join the second Filipino Book Bloggers' meet-up. I blogged about the first meet-up here , and this second meet-up was last Nov. 13. Fortuitously, it was held in Libreria at Cubao X. I say fortuitously because Triccie, Libreria's owner, is a book friend and I had been planning to go visit her newly reopened book shop but had never found the excuse to break away from my self-imposed work-home cycle. The meet-up provided me with the excuse. Libreria's entrance. Photo from Kenneth Yu . And so, nearly three hours late (because I did have work that day), I finally made it to Libreria to find everyone comfortably chatting around the bookstore's center table and sipping their freshly-brewed refillable coffee. They were book bloggers. With coffe...

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...