Year: 2010

The Pigeon (Patrick Suskind)

I’m a big fan of Patrick Suskind’s novel Perfume, and I never thought I’d come across another one of his works, until I got a notification from my Bookmooch account that a copy of his novella, The Pigeon, was available for mooching. It turns out another local moocher (and a reader of this blog!), Iya, had just put up a copy in her inventory, and I wasted no time mooching it (Thank you Iya!!!).

Suskind is one of the most interesting [living] authors I’ve encountered — there is very little information about him available; he has shunned the literary scene, and he doesn’t grant interviews or allow photos of himself to be taken.

Perfume is Suskind’s best known work, but has also written the bestselling play Double Bass; the novellas The Pigeon, The Story of Mr. Sommer, and Three Stories and a Reflection; as well as a 2006 essay collection entitled On Love and Death.

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The Mysterious Benedict Society


I’ve been really curious about the Mysterious Benedict Society series ever since I saw the first book on the bookstore shelf. I lucked out on a copy of the first volume last year, and then got the second volume as a Christmas present from an officemate, and at the start of the year, I figured it was about time I read the books.

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Counting

birthday-cupcake

Because I’ve just gotten through my 2009 backlog, I realize the end-of-the year summary is in order.  I’ve been blogging for over a year now, and I can’t believe how fast it’s gone! Blogging been an awesome experience (and I was a finalist for the Philippine Blog Awards, too!) that led to new friends and new discoveries, and I’m sure this year will be even more fun.

Here’s 2009, in figures… and photos!

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The last of the 2009 backlog

After a month and a half of moaning and groaning, I’ve finally reached the end of my backlog — the last four books I read in 2009, for a grand total of 244.

I realize the problem now– reading the 244 books is easy; reviewing every one of them is another matter. I’d be happy if I can blog half as fast as I read, but try as I might, it’s a tall order. I can multi-task reading, but blogging about them takes my full attention, and I try to squeeze it in when I have time to spare, a luxury I haven’t had much of since the year started. I’m definitely not complaining; blogging has its own rewards, and I’ve enjoyed a whole year of blogging about the books I’ve read; but I think I’ll have to strategize better to achieve my next goal: to catch up on blogging my January and February readings by March.

Here are the last four books for 2009 (and a big sigh of relief from me!), all of them comic in nature. As you may have noticed, I steered clear of text-heavy books towards the end of the year, and this is the last batch of them:  Chas Addams’ Half Baked Cookbook by Charles Addams; Fruits Basket by Natsuki Takaya (leftover from the October 24-hour readathon); and the first two volumes of the detective Conan manga, Case Closed 1 and 2 by Gosho Aoyama.

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Flippers name their best and worst for 2009

After a very hectic January, we finally pushed through with the Flips Flipping Pages new year tradition: the Best and Worst discussion. Due to conflicting schedules, we had to push it down to the first week of February, but we had a grand time nonetheless, going over our best and worst reads for 2009 at the mezzanine level of National Bestsellers (thank you NBS!)  in Robinson’s Galleria.

This is the second year we’ve done this sort of discussion — it’s basically a show and tell of our best and worst reads for the past year, starting off the year light before plunging into the subsequent book discussions of the year. And we’ve got a bunch of great discussions lined up, too — The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon this Feb. 20; High Fidelity by Nick Hornby in March; The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins in April; an artsy book in May; The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula LeGuin in June; comics and graphic novels in July; and some more interesting discussions lined up for the rest of the year.

What made it to the Flippers’ best and worst? Find out after the cut!

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