Reading something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue
Just a little over a month before Christmas, and there are oodles of great books out! I’ve been trying to avoid bookstores for a past few weeks because the temptation to do some early Christmas shopping (for myself) is too overpowering.
But just in case you want to make this old bookworm really happy this Christmas, here’s the wishlist:
Last week, I finally bid farewell to a bunch of books that were damaged in the flood, after my feeble attempts at resuscitation. One of my shelves got submerged in the knee-deep flood that entered our house, and most of the books that were on the lower layer got damaged. I am thanking my lucky stars that I never considered storing my Harry Potter collection downstairs.
Prior to this, while I was in Singapore, my mom had already thrown away a batch of paperbacks that were an indistinct mess after the flood. When I got back, I still had a couple batches of soggy hardcovers drying out next to to the fridge (where it’s warm), weighing about thrice their original weight due to the water absorbed by the pages.
Last week, my cousin (who’s completing her internship at the Philippine General Hospital) warned me about the dangers of keeping active mold spores inside the house and I was getting paranoid, as my mom and sister were both nursing a bad cold, so I decided to conquer the pile once and for all.
I know this is way overdue, as I finished Catching Fire three weeks ago. But the book fair, the two storms (and the great flood) that hit the country, my trip to Singapore (more on that on a future post!), and rearranging the house (ugh, reshelving my books, and still resuscitating those that went under during the flood) have kept me pretty busy and this is the first weekend I’ve had to myself in a long time.
If you’ve just discovered my blog, well, I read Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games (Scholastic Press) about a month back, and to my surprise, it slaked that craving I had for a really good read, and about time too, as I’d spent more than half of the year looking for a book to wow me.
Several days later, I got ahold of the I had newly-released sequel, Catching Fire, and finished it just before I had the thrill of watching the Hunger Games Live Action Role Play (LARP) at the Manila International Book Fair, organized by Scholastic and National Bookstore with the New Worlds Alliance.
(Spoiler free!)
Continue reading “Catching Fire (and the HG fever continues!)”
A couple of weeks ago, I was surprised to find out I was a finalist to this year’s Philippine Blog Awards, an annual event in the Philippine blogging community that honors outstanding Filipino blogs and bloggers.
I knew I’d been nominated, but I never thought I’d make it as a finalist in the culture and arts category, as it’s only been ten months since I started book blogging, and hundreds of other blogs were nominated for the various blog categories nationwide.
Due to the nature of my work, I frequently encounter top bloggers who have carved out their names in their own niches, in the blogosphere, and even in mainstream media. I’ve always admired their devotion to developing new content for their blogs, and wished I had half as much dedication in me, although I never thought about actively blogging until this year.
Finally I’m back blogging. Pardon the lull out here, I actually started this entry last weekend, but I’ve been out of the country for the past week and upon our return I was floored at the chaos left by the floods to actually finish this entry.
My Filipino readers need not ask what I’m referring to, I’m sure we were all affected by typhoon Ondoy (international name Ketsana) in some way. To my readers outside the country, you’ve probably heard in the world news that there’s been a bad patch of natural calamities in this part of the world (including the tsunami in Samoa and the earthquake in Indonesia, which was felt all the way to Singapore and nearby areas).
Here’s my story:
Saturday started out innocently — it had rained a fair amount the night before and was still raining when my cousin Dianne came to pick me up for the perfume making workshop we had scheduled as a pre-discussion activity for the Flips Flipping Pages’ September book discussion, which I was supposed to moderate.
Dianne and I went over to Jupiter St., to the company conducting our workshop to reschedule our reservation, as the roads were getting flooded and Flippers from all over the metro were reporting their status. We met Flipper Andrea who was already there, and just decided to have breakfast at a nearby Starbucks.
