Category: Book Reviews

The Saga of Larten Crepsley: Birth of a Killer


A bunch of my favorite authors have been releasing comeback books lately (Jonathan Stroud with The Ring of Solomon, Jasper Fforde with The Last Dragonslayer, Cornelia Funke with Reckless), and I’ve been hedging on reading them. I’ve been resisting buying them all on impulse (at least until the next bookstore sale) because my expectations are set higher for these authors and I still need to condition myself (in case I get disappointed, yes, I’m paranoid that way).

Darren Shan, the author of Cirque du Freak, the only vampire series I’m a fan of, has had a couple of books out recently. I’ve passed up The Thin Executioner and the new release of Procession of the Dead for the moment, mostly because the Demonata series was a hit and miss for me and I haven’t even finished it yet. But I had gotten (as promised) Birth of A Killer: The Saga of Larten Crepsley as a present for one of the junior members of our book club (Paolo, who is every bit of a Cirque du Freak fan as I am), and because I haven’t seen him yet, I couldn’t resist reading the book first before I turn it over to him.

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Kitchen Princess

When I went over the books I read in 2010, I realized I only read one manga volume all year (and not a very good one at that). So at the start of the year, I decided to get my manga fix early on — I finished reading nine volumes of Kitchen Princess in January!

I discovered Kitchen Princess (manga by Natsumi Ando, story by Miyuki Kobayashi) a couple of years ago after I got the first volume on Bookmooch. Initially I just wanted to try it out, but I enjoyed it so much I wanted to read the rest of the series.

I couldn’t find the other volumes on BookMooch or the local bookstores, but well, an e-reader opens up a whole lot of possibilities.

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Soledad’s Sister

I’ve seen some of Butch Dalisay’s work in the movies and I’ve read his newspaper column every so often, but I must admit that I’ve never read any of his stories, and I thought I’d start this year. I normally try out authors by starting out  with their shorter works, and I’ve got a copy of Dalisay’s Old Timer and Other Stories somewhere in my Everest of TBR book. But I’ve always wanted to read Soledad’s Sister, not just because it was shortlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize in 2007, but because I read the back-of-the-book summary and it seemed quite interesting to me.

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Banana Heart Summer

For those who love to love and eat
For those who long to love and eat

I fell in love with the book Banana Heart Summer by Merlinda Bobis as soon as I read the title of the first chapter of the book (quoted above). Those words, strung together, told me I was going to like the novel —  I’ve always subscribed to the idea of a correlation between loving and enjoying food.

Banana Heart Summer is a Filipino novel published locally by Anvil Publishing (internationally by Delta), which tells of a summer in  Bicol (right at the foot of the Mayon volcano) in 1960. Twelve-year old Nenita,inspired by the myth of the banana heart (Close to midnight, whent the heart bows from its stem, wait for its first dew. It will drop like a gem. Catch it with your tongue. When you eat the heart of the matter, you’ll never grow hungry again), leaves home to become a helper in the house next door so she can earn her mother’s love and put food on her hungry family’s table.

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The much-dreaded 2666

Earlier in the year, I started reading Roberto Bolaño’s 2666.

I was eager to read it because I’ve heard book club friends raving about it, and I’d splurged on a lovely hardcover copy because I wanted to be in the mood to read such a long book. I’d also signed up for the Chunkster Challenge because it seemed to be a promising start. And I’d designated it as the B book in my A-Z Challenge!

I’m not even sure if I should count 2666 as one book, because technically there are five books in this hefty volume. 2666 was Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño’s last work; he died shortly after the first draft was presented to the publisher. His original intention was to publish the books individually, but then he passed away and the heirs decided on compiling all the parts in one massive volume, the English translation of which was named by Time Magazine as the Best Book of 2008.

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