Year: 2010

Filipino Friday: Reading Habits

The Filipino Book Bloggers have been doing Filipino Friday posts for some time now, and I’ve been dropping in from time to time but Friday’s often quite busy for me so I tend to see the posts belatedly. Tonight’s the first Friday I’ve been home early in a long time, and  I’ve been mulling about what to blog about tonight when I saw Jhzunagev’s Filipino Friday Post over at Darchwonders (a recent blog discovery that I’m really enjoying so far) and it seemed about time I joined in.

Chachic, the founder of Filipino Book Bloggers, presented the option of answering the whole Reading Habits meme, so here, I’m revealing all my deep dark reading secrets!

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The Spook’s Apprentice

I’ve had a copy of Joseph Delaney’s The Spook’s Apprentice for a couple of years now, and only remembered it last week, when I was digging through my shelves of TBR books for some books to read for Halloween. I remember I looked through a list of books that other Harry Potter fans were reading post-Harry Potter, and this book, the first in a series called The Wardstone Chronicles, came highly recommended.

I hadn’t planned on a Halloween theme for the 24-hour Readathon, but I got home late that day from seeing the Galeón de Andalucía at the South Harbor and had no time to pre-select books for the Readathon. Since the pile of scary books was already sitting on my desk, I just grabbed a bunch of them so I could sign up in the nick of time.

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The Pop-up Book of Phobias

I finally got my copy of The Pop-up Book of Phobias (created and written by Gary Greenberg, illustrated by Balvis Rubess, pop-ups by Matthew Reinhart) from BookMooch, just in time for Halloween. If you’ve tuned in since the last 24-Hour Readathon, you’ll know I’m on a scary book kick, so you’ll be seeing a lot of scary books here from here on out!

I first discovered this book in the library of our BookMooch fairy godmother Triccie (she’s opening a bookstore this week: Libreria at the Cubao Expo!), who has an enviable (yes, I drool everytime I’m over at her house) collection of pop-up books! I wanted my own copy  for my small — but growing! — pop-up collection, and just my luck, a copy came up on BookMooch a few months back!

This pop-up book showcases popular phobias, i.e. irrational, intense and persistent fears of certain situations, activities, things, animals, or people, in macabre 3D images. The cover photo at the very top of this post is the spread on acrophobia, or the fear of heights.

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Haroun and the Sea of Stories


I’ve always wanted to try Salman Rushdie, so I included him in my list for the A-Z Challenge. I have a bunch of his books in my perpetually insurmountable TBR pile, and I’m falling behind in the challenge, so I resolved to pick up the pace so I can finish by the end of the year. Having not read any of Rushdie’s books before, I decided to go with Haroun and the Sea of Stories first, so I can take on his more complex works later on (maybe next year?).

Written in 1990, Haroun and the Sea of Stories was Rushdie’s first novel after his highly controversial Satanic Verses (earning him an Islamic death sentence and causing multiple deaths from violence related to the book). Told from the point of view of a young boy named Haroun, the novel is an allegorical children’s book dedicated to Rushdie’s son, Zafar.

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24-Hour Readathon: End of Event Report

Here we go! It’s the end of the 24-Hour Readathon, and I’m posting my report.

I actually joined the Readathon at the last minute this year, because I realized I couldn’t let the year go by without me joining at least one Readathon. I hadn’t counting on making it home in time for the event, and I did, so I hurriedly grabbed some books from the shelf, took a photo, booted up my lappy and joined the Readathon. And I’m so glad I did. The Readathon is a really fun event that fosters the community spirit across the globe, and I’m always happy to be part of it.

October 2010 marks my 3rd readathon, and I’m looking forward to the next one.

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