Coffeespoons

Why I liked Crashed (Junior Bender #1)... because Nancy Pearl included it among her "under the radar" reads for this summer , and I do like trying books not many people have read. Then again, this isn't really a reason why I liked the book. More like a reason why I'm inclined to like it, so... because the plot's tight and moves along quickly, and the writing's smooth and witty. because of who Junior Bender is--a crook (with a heart of gold, of course) who does detective work for other crooks. And in addition to being a career criminal, he's a career reader. Sold.  I highlighted a few sections. Read and see if you don't like him, or at least, how he spends is off-work days. “It’s true. Like it or not, I’m a professional burglar.” “You mean, like full-time?” She stretched the words out derisively. “Well, you see, that’s one of the nice things about being a burglar. You only work a couple of times a month.” “What do you do the rest ...

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...

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 ...

Summary "Madeleine Hanna breaks out of her straight-and-narrow mold when she falls in love with charismatic loner Leonard Bankhead, while an old friend resurfaces, obsessed with the idea that Madeleine is his destiny." - from NPR.org The good stuff It started with the books. And it went on and on with books. The Marriage Plot is replete with references to books. We catch the three main characters, Madeleine, Leonard, and Mitchell, in college and the first year out of it, and much mention is made of their reading material. In fact, two of the characters fall in love precisely because of books, and the other one in the triangle uses his readings and scholarship as a crutch for his unrequited love. However, it is Madeleine's reading list that speaks the most to me, since she loves the narrative and considers herself a "Victorianist," a specialization I would also love to have. (Just to show how much I enjoyed the books, see the list compiled below.) I on...

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...

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 ...

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...

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 ...

Ever since I left teaching, I've become more interested in the field of communication and marketing. Which, I admit, is strange because communication and marketing are pretty useful skills if you're a teacher. Except that, I think, a lot of teachers don't realize this. As an English teacher for almost 12 years, I wasn't provided with any kind of communications training, nor training on designing my message. We were given a lot of training on teaching strategies, teaching frameworks, philosophies, etc. Now, yes, some of the teaching strategy strategy training has to do with communication, but I don't recall any training or preparation that was meant for communication alone. Which, I think, is a pity. When I listen to my husband or my friends from corporate talk about communications training or how to market, I think, "Hey, these ideas are really useful to an educator." And I wonder why we don't talk about these things a lot. A lot of educators may kno...

I finally read Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go and finished it in one day. What surprised me about it is how readable it was. I'd heard much praise about the book, but I think I was surprised by its readability because my only exposure, so far, to Kazuo Ishiguro was the movie version of "Remains of the Day." I loved it, but knew it was langurous. Thus, it was pleasant to find out that Never Let Me Go was the kind of book that you wanted to and could finish in a day. So now I can finally watch the movie.:) Never Let Me Go is the story of three friends, Kathy, Tommy, and Ruth, who grew up in Hailsham, a boardinghouse in England. There, they spent an idyllic childhood under firm but kind guardians. They were taught to create art and value each other's creations. Yet, Hailsham students are different from the rest of humanity. As this was mentioned in the movie trailer, hinted at from the very beginning of the book, and revealed in full by the first quarte...

I think you can tell I'm a fan of NYRB. I actually squealed when a Random House executive gave me a catalog (as if I couldn't go find the books online). Ah well. What I liked a lot about the catalog, though, is the list of NYRB Classics recommended for young adults, which includes Tun-Huang by Yasushi Inoue. It was new (as in newly released), it was Asian, it was NYRB. That was that. Tun-huang 's summary sounded very promising, and I quote: More than a thousand years ago, an extraordinary trove of early Buddhist sutras and other scriptures was secreted away in caves near the Silk Road city of Tun-huang. But who hid this magnificent treasure and why? In Tun-huang, the great modern Japanese novelist Yasushi Inoue tells the story of Chao Tsing-te, a young Chinese man whose accidental failure to take the all-important exam that will qualify him as a high government official leads to a chance encounter that draws him farther and farther into the wild and contested land...

I've come to the conclusion that I will never be able to write a review that will do justice to John William's Stoner , so I might as well write the review anyway. Actually, this isn't really a review, so much as a log of what I think about this book, two months after I read it. And my first think is... Oh my God, I love this book. Considering it's been two months since I first read it, and I still think and feel the same, it must be true love. I swear I'm not the only one. In fact, I got this book because folks over at The Millions were raving about it last year. Since I was trying to introduce myself to NYRBs, I figured I should start with the best, hence Stoner . Also, during our NYRB Reading Week , a couple of participants wrote very eloquently about Stoner . The funny thing is, almost all the reviews I've read of Stoner prior to reading the book say that when you read or write the summary, it doesn't seem like an interesting book at all. C...

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...