Coffeespoons

From my Goodreads' Challenge page . The last five books I've read, to date, 16 Mar 2015. I powered through a three-book erotic romance series last Saturday. It was the Cityscape series by Jessica Hawkins , which I found by Googling for edgy romance novels (don't ask). But, boy when you ask for edgy, they give you edgy. So I chose this series which seemed the right kind of edgy for me at the time (true love via an extramarital affair; not really an unfamiliar theme in more serious literature). I liked the series. Sure, there was a lot of back-and-forth from the female lead; an alpha male who is perfect, as they usually are; and loads of sex which was hot but, if translated to reality, would be exhausting. Nevertheless, I got sucked up by it. (NOTE: One does not power through three books in less than 18 hours if you're not sucked up by them.) I'd like to point out, though, that I feel these covers are a bit misleading. I mean, you'd think that this was B...

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...

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 ...

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...

Gentlemen: Your ad in the Saturday Review of Literature says that you specialize in out-of-print books. The phrase "antiquarian booksellers" scares me somewhat, as I equate "antique" with expensive. I am a poor writer with an antiquarian taste in books and all the things I want are impossible to get over here except in very expensive rare editions, or in Barnes & Noble's grimy, marked-up schoolboy copies. I enclose a list of my most pressing problems. If you have clean secondhand copies of any of the books on the list, for no more than $5.00 each, will you consider this a purchase order and sent them to me? The letter is signed Helene Hanff. She sent it to Marks & Co. Booksellers, at 84 Charing Cross Road, London, England. The epistle is dated October 5, 1949. When Ms. Hanff says "over here" in her letter, she means New York City, which is where she lived at that time. I copied the entire first letter because I desperately want to s...

What happens when a geek gets his heart broken? I guess that depends on who the geek is and what geekery he claims. When it's Carljoe Javier , however, he writes a book. And uses a title that will make every Trekkie snap his head up and pay attention-- The Kobayashi Maru of Love . A little disclaimer--Carljoe was a classmate in one grad course. We sat through a class on Shakespeare's Tragedies where, to this day, I still sit in awe of a test that required me to name the play from which obscure Shakespearean lines were taken. And man, as one who loves Shakespeare, read all but 1 of his plays, and taught several of them for several years, I tell ya, they were OBSCURE. Incidentally, Tarie , energetic Asian YA and children's lit blogger, was also our classmate there. But I digress. So far, I have revealed that I am a Star Trek geek and a Shakespeare geek. Who says the two can't go hand in hand? Anybody who's seen Wrath of Khan will know that. So, it stands to r...

Read: 6 July 2009 I'm a big fan of The Bard. It all started when I saw Mel Gibson as Hamlet. How ironic is that? Anyway, the time I saw Mel Gibson's Hamlet, I was also into my "classic mode," which meant that I read a lot of classics at the time. For fun and of my own choice, not because I was required to. So, it was no big leap for me to decide to read Hamlet , for leisure. And although now I feel that Gibson overacted as Hamlet, I was initially drawn in by the beauty of Hamlet's death scene and the highly oedipal interpretation of the Closet scene. From Hamlet , I jumped to Romeo and Juliet (which I did not like as much, and still don't, romance notwithstanding). Then to Taming of the Shrew-- this time, thanks to the Moonlighting version (does anyone else still remember that series? By Jove, I loved Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd in it!). By then, I had graduated from college and started teaching. I decided to teach Midsummer Night's Dream to the jun...

Read: 4/18/09 5/5 stars! It has taken me a month to actually blog about this book. Why? Because after reading it, I was so astounded and, plainly, just in love with it that I could not write about it or did not know where to start. I did not think I had the words to do justice to how much I fell in love with the book. But given how much I really want to share the merits of this book with everyone, permit me then to talk about this book in a way that will in no way capture it's impact for me but at least give you an idea of what I loved about it and why. The King's English is the name of an independent bookstore in Salt Lake City, Utah. The owner, Betsy Burton, put it up back in 1975 with a business partner. And though Ms. Burton has a different business partner now, The King's English still stands and holds its own against the big-chain bookstores and dot-coms dominating the bookselling market today. So, yes, it's a non-fiction book. And as a testament to how much I lov...

I hardly ever read non-fiction for leisure. Actually, I don't at all. This book, however, is the first non-fiction book I've read that I thoroughly enjoyed. Never mind that I'm not a hiker nor a nature-lover. Never mind that I have no idea where the Appalachian Trail is (well, now I do, and you can, too! Good 'ol Wikipedia). The fact is, Bryson is hilarious, and therefore highly entertaining. Aside from its entertainment value, the book is full of interesting facts about nature, hiking, and the US itself. I'm glad I read it and I'm actually looking for more Bryson now to see how consistent he is. Read: 1/19/09 5/5 stars