Best and Worst 2013

At Flips Flipping Pages, our January book discussion is automatically allotted to revealing our best and worst reads for the year, and it’s always a great way to get recommendations from other book club members.

We had our Best and Worst discussion last Saturday at the UP Center for Women’s Studies library. The center is the UP system’s hub for advancing gender, sexuality, and LGBT rights & empowerment, and its library is small but cozy and well-stocked with a growing selection of books.

While I read a good number of books last year (218 to be exact), I had very few five-star reads. Among my top reads for last year, I had a shortlist of three, and I had a hard time choosing among them.

One of my best books was It’s A Mens World by Bebang Siy. This book will always be special to me, because it was one of the first winners of the Filipino Readers’ Choice Awards, and also one of the first books to carry the seal. I had been saving it for our book discussion (March 2013) and I was duly impressed. Candid, insightful, nostalgic, and laugh out loud funny, it’s the sort of book that stays with you long after you’ve finished it. It’s also the first book discussion we’ve had that involved performances from our members (and it isn’t the last — there are shenanigans in store for the end of this year!), and it definitely was an enriching experience for all of us.

Second was very late in the game, The Godfather by Mario Puzo, the FFP book for December 2013. We don’t normally have book discussions during our Christmas party, but my work load had tapered off by then, and since it wasn’t a book I would pick up and read on my own, I decided to give it a try. This is the book that surprised me the most last year — I have never seen The Godfather movies and the only reason I know “We go to the mattresses” is because of the movie You’ve Got Mail (don’t laugh). I didn’t expect to get so engrossed in the book (totally crushing on Michael Corleone), much less finish it, and I was on a Godfather high all through the week leading up to our Mafia Christmas party. I ended up being La Padrina during our Mafia War game, and totally kicked ass. Hahaha. Oh, and I won Bookworm of the year, too!

After much hemming and hawing, I ended up choosing Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury as my best book for the year. I had read it as part of the FFP sci-fi read-along. Read-alongs have emerged as a popular side activity for our book club on top of the monthly discussions — a book or a set of books (a series, several books from the same genre, etc.) are selected, and it’s open to whoever wants to participate. It was the first time I joined a read-along and the first Bradbury I’ve ever read. I settled on “Fahrenheit 451” as my best book because it’s the book that affected me the most: it presented a real horror to me. Reading is such a huge part of my life, and the thought of living in the world depicted in the book was something I had trouble accepting. “We need to be bothered once in a while,” the book says, and that’s exactly what it did to me.

Amazingly, all three books were book club selections, which only goes to show the rewards of belonging to a book club. Since I joined FFP in 2007, not only have I made friends for a lifetime; my range of reading material has just expanded exponentially (yes, I blame you guys!), and I’ve discovered so many wonderful, wonderful books.

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So, here’s the compiled list Best and Worst reads from the members present at the discussion:

BEST

• The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce
• Rashomon by Ryonosuke Akutagawa
• Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
• Looking for Alaska by John Green
• Wonder by RJ Palacios
• Chicken with Plums by Marjane Satrapi
• Uh Oh by Robert Fulghum
• How to Sharpen Pencils by David Rees
• Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Sugar
• Night by Elie Wiesel
• The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss
• The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster
• My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult
• Saga by Bryan Vaughn
• Blackout / All Clear by Connie Willis
• Hhhhh by Laurent Binet
• It’s a Mens World by Bebang Siy
• Walong Diwata ng Pagkahulog by Edgar Calabia Samar
• Smaller and Smaller Circles by F.H. Batacan
• Doctor Sleep by Stephen King
• REAMDE by Neal Stephenson
• The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
• Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan
• 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami

WORST

• Talking to Girls About Duran Duran by Rob Scheffield
• The Island of the Day Before by Umberto Eco
• 50 Shades of Grey by E.L. James
• The Stranger by Kyra Davis
• Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
• Surreality by Carissa Villacorta
• Allegiant by Veronica Roth
• She’s Dating the Gangster by Bianca Bernardino
• Snow Flower and Secret Fan by Lisa See
• Book Doctor by Esther Cohen
• The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut
• The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight by Jennifer E. Smith
• Soulless by Gail Garriger
• Eight Muses of the Fall by Edgar Calabia Samar (translated by Mikael de Lara Co and Sasha Martinez)
• Mga Kuwento ni Lola Basyang by Severino O. Reyes, edited by Christine S. Bellen & Rebecca T. Añonuevo
• Dark Origins by Anthony Zuiker
• The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
• Pepe: The Lost Years of Rizal by Ron Mendoza and Arnold Renia Cruz
• Endlessly by C.V. Hunt and Peter Heyrman

***Please note that all the books in this list are personal selections by individual members.

Ready for 2014!

Went home loaded down with loot, as usual.
Gege’s annual just-add-book present, this year an FFP mug and various instant libations, is awesome.

Haze and I even got a surprise birthday cake! Happy birthday to us! Thank you dear Flippers. We love you!

Segue to my birthday – it’s this week and I’ve pledged my birthday to Sambat Trust. I’ve got an ongoing fundraiser, and you’ll make me really happy on my birthday if you help me reach my target goal: http://bit.ly/1izjfLR. Any amount will be greatly appreciated, and I will be forever grateful. Your help will go a long way towards giving local communities better access to books.

(click image to open fundraiser page)

I’m hosting a birthday giveaway very soon (on my actual birthday), too — and donating will give you more chances to win.  ^_^ Check back again soon for the giveaway. Hint: boxed set!

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Special thanks to the UP Women’s Center Library for hosting us (enjoy your new books!), Rhett de Jesus for discussion photos, and Gege Sugue for moderating the annual Best & Worst discussion.