Coffeespoons

Not much of an update these last few days. Unless we're talking about what's happening in the world. Which is extremely disturbing that I found myself giving into the doomscroll again, albeit on different apps.  But there are still other interestingnesses--still in the realm of books and publishing--that can distract from <gestures to everything> this. Among my faves in the last few days are: This news item about a company based in Cebu called Innocentrix (aka PageTurner Press and Media) who apparently ran publishing scams victimizing several people in the US --and perhaps elsewhere--by promising them fame and fortune through publishing in exchange for a lot of money. Their CEO and VP were arrested by the FBI last December. Is it weird to include this as a "favorite"? Perhaps. I'm not making light of what happened to the victims or the seriousness of the money laundering and fraud. But I suppose among the things I find interesting are that the news was repo...

I started a new job last month, and it's more or less something I've been looking for for a long while. For as long as I can remember, I'd always dreamed of reading books for a living. I may have made career choices that led to that. Well now, the new job is sort of like that in what may be the best place possible: Penguin Random House . Yup, I now work as part of the international sales team of Penguin Random House US.  If you're a person who reads book blogs, I don't have to tell you that this is an awesome job. And though I also tell friends that I worked for it, I think a large part of it, too, was luck. Perhaps being in the right place at the right time, and maybe even doing the right things. Whatever it is, it's hard to look a gift-horse in the mouth, you know? The lobby uptown In any case, this great opportunity is still a job: a job I seem to be willing to spend hours and hours in. There's still a lot of stuff to learn (and unlearn) a...

If there's one thing I haven't missed in all these years of maintaining (or not) this blog, it's the annual best read post. And here it is! This year, too, I opted to summarize my reading year via a deck, which you can check out on Slideshare or here, if you're so inclined. To see all books I read this year, head on over to my Goodreads 2015 shelf. Honey's 2015 Year in Reading from Honey de Peralta As I mention in a Facebook post, I would love to do a more in depth reading habit analysis on a much bigger data set, so if you know of anyone who needs help with something like that, let me know. Anyway, on to my Ten Best Reads of 2015... The Neapolitan Serie s by Elena Ferrante - Ok, this is cheating because this is actually four books. But I promise you, they are a force of nature. It is basically the story of the friendship of two women, set in mid-20th century in Naples. But the women and the characterization...beyond words. If you are a woman...

At Tweedle Book Cafe , one of the new and hip book cafes to open in Quezon City, Metro Manila. I've been here twice: the first was to check it out; the second was to read. And boy, did I read. So, I concur: it's a good place for book lovers to hang out.  I will never make it as a food blogger. My inclination when my food arrives is to put it in my mouth. It only occurs to me to snap pictures after I've eaten maybe half of the dish. So, this isn't Coffeespoons turning into a food blog. Rather, this is Coffeespoons finding its voice again and finding time to write again. And since book cafes are becoming a thing here in Metro Manila, I thought it would be a fitting confluence to talk about reading and book cafes in a blog called Coffeespoons. I am a red-blooded reader. That means you tell me that there's a cafe that has a lot of books and purports to have an atmosphere that readers will love, I am there. But I've always been intrigued by the concept of a...

Yesterday, I gave an overview of my reading year in 2014 (with charts!). It was mostly data, so here's the part where I talk about actual books that I loved this year: my yearly ten best reads. Been doing this since I started the blog in 2009, and if you're interested in finding out what books made it to my list each year, feel free to check out my best reads of the year label. Anyway, on to my most enjoyable reads of the year. "Enjoyable" is how I qualify my best reads, given that the term "best read" is such a subjective matter and highly susceptible to mental, psychological, and emotional status at the time of reading. So, if the book leaves me with a glow during and after reading, or made me say internally (occasionally externally, too), "Holy shit, this is awesome." then that usually makes it to my best reads list. And without further ado, in the order in which I read them during the year... Locke & Key (the entire series) ...

Below is a Facebook conversation I had with a few friends about the #weneeddiversebooks hashtag last May 2. Yesterday, the topic was brought up again on Twitter with a different set of people. A friend mentioned this conversation, and someone who wasn't in it originally asked what we talked about. Now since I really hate that discussions like these get buried on Facebook, I'm posting it here so that it's easy for me (or anyone who's interested) to find it. To minimally protect the privacy of the people originally in the discussion, I've only left their initials. --------- Posted by Honey de Peralta, May 2, 2014 I have what might seem like a really stupid question, seeing as how I've also been promoting the hashtag, but who exactly is the "We" in the "WeNeedDiverseBooks" hashtag? Because it originated as a reaction to the BookCon all-male, all-white panel for kidlit writers. So I get it why US and Western readers and writers s...

So, here's the presentation I showed during my section in National Book Development Board's Limbag Kapihan for writers. In it are the results for the Filipino Reading Habits Survey I conducted last Feb. One caveat I will emphasize: this is an informal survey, and I am no statistician. I am, however, a very curious individual, and I like facts and statistics. Hence, the survey. The rest of the caveats you'll find in the presentation. The first few slides are mostly pictures of the different activities Filipino readers are up to, at least those within my zone of awareness. And I think while I was showing these, my main message was: Can we please stop saying that Filipinos aren't readers? Please. Look at the pics. Look at the sites. Look at the stats. I mean, sure, our readership isn't like the readership in other countries, but I would say it's a stretch to say Filipinos don't read or don't read a lot. Anyway, I'll let the presentation sp...

Partial result of Question 4 In case you're a Filipino reader in my network and haven't seen this yet, well, here it is: The Filipino Reading Habits Survey Here's the introductory spiel of the survey to explain who is doing this and why: Hello. I'm Honey de Peralta, a former editor, some-time author, full-time publisher, and all-time reader. I'm doing this Reading Habit Survey in preparation for a panel discussion organized by the National Book Development Board - Philippines on March 3. In it, I'll be sharing what I know about the Filipino reading groups but also Filipino readers.  And so, I'd like your help in representing Filipino readers well. If you could take 5-10 minutes to take this survey, I'd really appreciate it. I'll be closing this survey on Feb. 28 and will be sharing the results with the public (via my blog, http://fantaghiro23.blogspot.com) on the evening of March 3. I'm hoping it'll give us and other members of t...

Happy Birthday, Coffeespoons. ( img src ) It's been five years to the day since I started this blog. Though I've progressively gotten worse at maintaining it (only 10 posts last year!), I'm keeping the blog. Coffeespoons was born at a time I rediscovered my love for reading. I was starting to become bored with my job, which counterintuitively didn't leave me with a lot of time for reading (I was a high school English teacher), I was taking up my masters in Anglo-Am lit, and I joined online book groups and an online/offline book club . In other words, I filled whatever emptiness there was with books. So it only seemed logical to start a book blog. There is less emptiness in my life now, mainly because my work never bores me. Exhausts me, yes. Challenges me, leaves me reeling, but at least I'm not bored. Hence, the infrequent posts.  But through Coffeespoons and the many other things that came before and after it in my reading life and advocacy, I ...

Quantity-wise, 2013 wasn't an awesome reading year for me. Read the least number of books in the five years that I've been counting the books I read per year. It was a measly 34 . Still, at the beginning of the year , I did think of reading less. Or more accurately, not to pressure myself to read a lot for the sake of reading a lot, what with the increasing demands of work and family and, oh, life. And though I did sign up for a challenge at the beginning of the year, somewhere towards the middle, I figured I'd just read what I wanted to read. I think not having a lot of time does that to you. So though quantity-wise, it wasn't a great year, I'm kind of happy with what I've read this year. Mainly because each minute spent reading was a hard-fought minute. Hard-fought. I carried books around for days without reading them, on the off-chance that I could get a free and relaxed minute to actually read. I spent more time in our bathroom than I had right to, jus...

Filipino Friday is an online meme which started in the Filipino Book Bloggers  website, but is now used as an online activity in preparation for the Filipino ReaderCon . This is the prompt for this week's Filipino Friday: Hello, Reader! Let’s get to know you, and more importantly, what kind of reader are you? Laura E. Kelly released an infographic about Reader species — under what Domain/Class/Family/Genus/Species do you fall under? Give examples, and feel free to talk about why you belong to that species. Who knows, you may find readers in your own genus. ;) From Laura E. Kelly I've never liked being labeled, even though I may be the easiest person to label. I recall seeing this infographic before. I went through it and found too many cross-overs that seem to be addressed by the over-all term "cross bred reader mutt." I frankly think most readers are mutts. But in the interests of finding something within the species, I'm going to go with th...

Because I've avoided John Green for a long time... since everybody seems to be talking about him... and the thing with authors or books that everyone's talking about... is that sometimes you want to avoid them... after all, if a LOT of people like them... that means they appeal to the masses... which means that it appeals to a pedestrian taste... but you don't want to be associated with anything pedestrian... because you're different, damn it, and you're smart... you think... smarter than the hoi polloi... so you avoid the book/author... until you can't because... you're actually curious... and you end up buying the book... but at the back of your mind, you think, "There must be something wrong with this book... and I'm going to find it. And call it out for everyone to see... or agree with a really smart detractor... because we smart folk need to stick together... and ...

One of the videos in Fully Booked's What's My Story? campaign. I gush about John Williams' Stoner .:) In the country I live in, there are two major bookstore chains. One has been around for more than 50 years, devotes a large part of its business to selling school and office supplies, and definitely has wider penetration. The other is less than 20 years old, has a more diverse selection of titles, but caters to clientele with larger disposable incomes. I'd say both do their part in pushing a reading culture in my country. Whereas one has ventured into publishing popular local titles and selling a lot of other titles for cheap, the other provides its customers titles not usually found in the other store and actively engages its reading community. Now, I'm very big on engaging the reading community. As a reader, I like to watch what companies in the book industry do to engage their readers. As a heavy user of social media, I also like to watch these compani...

The Princess and the Goblin , McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales , My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me , Kikomachine #1 , Hark! A Vagrant , Building Stories See these books (not my messy desk behind them)? I dipped into these lovelies last year, but I never got to finish them. For a few of them, such as My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me , McSweeney's Mammoth Book of Thrilling Tales , and Hark! A Vagrant , I did more than dip; I was halfway in. Was reading each of those a little at a time, until I was either distracted by work or by other books. A big part of this year's reading plan, then, is to ensure that I finish these books. Based on what I've read, these are all books worth my time. Besides, I'd like to get them off my messy desk. What else constitutes my reading plan this year? Well, because I purposely did not join any reading challenges last year, explicitly stated or otherwise, I'm going to swing the opposite ...

Forty-five minutes before the clock strikes 12 here, and 2013 steps in. So, I've enough time to finally post my ten favorite reads from 2012. I actually read a lot of good books this year , but it's been a custom on this blog to post 10 of my favorite books for the year. My main criteria for choosing these books: I ponder on them until now and still have warm feelings when I see them. The Family Fang by Kevin Wilson - I found this story of a family of performance artists hilarious and moving, especially with the kids having to deal with their crazy parents. The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides - I loved Middlesex, but this one, my God. It is beautiful. The language, the characters, the description of the house and community. House of Mirth by Edith Wharton - I still feel bad about Lily Bart. She was a rebel, but things just didn't work out her way. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot - This is the book that made me want to read mor...