Coffeespoons

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...

My bookshelf. Top 2 rows are books I've read; bottom two rows are my TBR, except for that half-filled section. Those are books I've read and the empty space is reserved for books I'm going to finish reading. Clean bookshelves, that's what. Life has been extremely busy for the past month, what with all the deadlines at work, planning my son's birthday bash, and cleaning up the house in preparation for the relatives coming for my sister's wedding. Everything got so crazy that I wasn't even inclined to read, so I've only finished one short YA book this month and barely got 12 pages into Jonathan Safran Foer's Everything is Illuminated . Not his fault, I assure you. One thing I'm happy about, though, is that I was able to clean and fix my bookshelf. For the most part, my bookshelf is always a mess, since I kept accumulating books and putting them everywhere, or the kids put their stuff in it, or the kids and I take out stuff and don't pu...

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...

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...

I was aiming to keep it simple this year, but couldn't help signing up to the Whodunit Reading Challenge , sponsored by the wonderful site, Gathering Books . To quote from the original post, ...to start 2011, we embrace books that are shrouded in secrecy, suspense, and mystery (and crime, too) The challenge runs from January until June 30th, and there are 4 levels of participation: Novice Profiler: 1-2 books Crime Detective: 3-5 books Mythic Crime Buster: 6-8 books Criminal Genius/Mastermind: 9 books and above I'm signing up for the Crime Detective level , so I shall now scour my TBR for at least 5 suspense, mystery, and crime stories. I have to make this challenge coincide with my 2011 reading plan , which is to read primarily from my TBR. Then again, I've just looked around at the books on my desk and below my dresser, and I think I can easily find five.  The beautiful thing about this challenge is that the books can be for any age group--children, ...