Book Reviews – Page 30

Hearing voices, seeing corpses

A.S. Santos’ Student Paranormal Research Group (SPRG) series was a wonderful discovery last year, starting with “Voices in the Theater.” It came highly recommended by my friend Honey, and was also a finalist in the 2^nd Filipino Reader’s Choice Awards, so it was one of the first titles I purchased on my Kobo Glo, followed closely by its sequel, “Corpse in the Mirror.”

Published by Flipside, the SPRG series is a young adult paranormal series featuring Samantha Davidson, who has the uncanny ability to hear other people’s thoughts, as well as voices of the departed and unearthly. She’s just moved to the Philippines and enrolled in university, where she joins the newly assembled SPRG.

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The Hogwarts Library (Birthday giveaway!)

Squee!!! I finally got my hands on the Hogwarts Library this weekend, and it’s a real beauty!

The Hogwarts Library is the first boxed set of the new editions of Quidditch Through The Ages, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, and The Tales of Beedle the Bard. Clothbound and elegant, they come in a red slipcase emblazoned with the gold Hogwarts crest. Paper is thick and smooth and a lovely cream color.

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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.

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Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children

Last year, I had a chance encounter with YA author Ransom Riggs when I was scheduled for an interview Tahereh Mafi, and luckily got to interview them both. I had read, “Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children” a few months before then, and I purposely cleared a spot on my reading list for the sequel, “Hollow City,” as soon as I got the book this weekend.

The Miss Peregrine series centers around peculiars, people (often children) with odd physical traits or abilities. To protect them from the world, peculiars are often found under the care of a matriarch, called an ymbrine (such as Miss Peregrine), within the sanctuary of a time loop. The peculiars are in danger, not just from the humans who treat them like circus freaks, but also from darker elements: hollowgasts (hollows) and wights who are hunting them down.

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Gayle Forman in Manila

This weekend, I had the privilege of meeting New York Times bestselling author Gayle Forman, who was on her Philippine tour.

Gayle Forman is the author of the critically acclaimed “If I Stay” and its sequel “Where She Went,” and a second duet of novels, “Just One Day” and “Just One Year.”

“If I Stay” features Mia, a seveteen year old with a happy family, the boy of her dreams, and a promising future in music when tragic accident strikes. Mia finds herself caught in the in-between, contemplating the choice between life and death. The story continues in “Where She Went,” told from the point of view of Mia’s boyfriend Adam who grapples with life in the aftermath.

In “Just One Day” good girl Allyson Healey is on the last day of her European tour when she meets Dutch street actor Willem and goes with him on a whirlwind tour of Paris, twenty-four hours that irrevocably change Allyson’s life. The companion novel, “Just One Year” chronicles how their Paris interlude affects Willem in turn.

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