Coffeespoons

Happy April 1! I have no jokes; instead, in the grand tradition of book content creators everywhere, here is a reading wrap-up. And because it's a holiday here in the Philippines, I actually took the time to compare wrap-ups of Goodreads , Fable , and Storygraph . And as you'll see here, I used Storygraph.  Honestly, I update Goodreads and Fable more. But Fable has the disadvantage of being difficult to add new books, and I like to include the Philippine-published titles I've read. I love you, Philippine publisher and writer friends, but I do let out a yell of frustration whenever I try to add Philippine title on Goodreads, and I can't find it. And yes, Goodreads is my first stop, because of longevity and because from experience, it's highly likely that if the title isn't on Goodreads, it's not going to be on Fable or Storygraph. But the inverse is not true. All to say, Goodreads still has the largest database. But it's not so much of a problem if the ti...

Image c/o Fable I read 8 books last month! I’m quite impressed by myself, lol.  Frankly, my only real “resolution” for the year was to do my darndest to pick up a book and read, instead of doomscrolling through social media. Because last year, I realized that I—perhaps with 50% of humanity?—spent a lot of time doing that. Hours in a day. And apart from knowing most of the memes and references because I was terminally online, I don’t know what else that got me.  Well, unending sources of anger, too.  So anyway, because I was mostly offline over Christmas and New Year for a family vacation, I realized it’s not really impossible to spend less time on social media. Granted, I missed some viral stuff and also wasn’t aware of everything going on in my large and small worlds, but it didn’t feel crippling. And then Zuckerberg’s kissing the Trumpian ring sealed the deal for me.  I’d say I was both successful and not in replacing doomscrolling with reading my books. Successful...

Woman Reading in a Landscape by Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot ( img src ) She looks so calm and involved reading there, doesn't she? I do wish I were her, even for a little while. April has been a better reading month than March for me, all because of the Holy Week holidays we have here. Four days of not doing anything--just lying down to read. It's something I badly needed. I even got to blog a bit! So here are the books I read this month, with links to the two that I was able to review on my blog: One of Our Thursdays is Missing by Jasper Fforde - I'm a big fan of Fforde. And though I think that his first four Thursday Next books were much better than the two books that followed, I'm still a big fan. That is how much loyalty his first four Thursday Net books and the two Nursery Crime books have evoked in me. The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman - read many good things about this, so I got it on my Kindle. What I loved about it are the character studies. T...

Woman Reading by Pablo Picasso ( img src ) Yes, March was a mad month, both in good and not-so-good ways. So, March was a month of stringent deadlines, a lot of which I am still laboring under. However, it was also a month of family and celebration. My son celebrated his 7th birthday and my sister got married, all in the span of one week. Consequently, family came home from distant lands (some from local provinces and others from far-off countries) to celebrate with us. And, I gotta say, I love family reunions. Now that I think about it, I don't even live in the same hemisphere as some of my immediate family, whom I love very much, so I try to drop everything so we all can hang out together. Anyway, what all this means, too, is that I haven't been making much progress in my reading goals (not to mention my blogging, but I think you can tell). No matter, though. This is one time where I'm comfortable putting reading in the back seat. Although, with my new toy, I thi...

A Woman Reading by Claude Monet ( img src ) Yup, better late than never. My last pos t mentions how busy I've been, hence my apologies for this. I'm still hoping to review some of these books, so here's a list of what I finished last February The Poisonwood Bible   by Barbara Kingsolver (Feb. 2) - heavy and beautiful. Once  by Morris Gleitzman (Feb. 3) - shocking and disappointing The Last Dragonslayer   by Jasper Fford e (Feb. 5) - classic Fforde, but for kids Blue Angel, White Shadow   by Charlson Ong (Feb. 8) - I enjoyed it, I did. One Day   by David Nicholls (Feb. 14) - I actually expected more from this. Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight   by Alexandra Fuller (Feb. 19) - Charming, charming memoir of an African childhood. From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler   by E. L. Konigsburg (Feb. 22) - a re-read, because I was trying to recall the movie. And what books I acquired last February: A Fine Balanc...

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...