Bookmarked! makes a cameo

A few  weeks ago, I got an email from a reader inquiring if I would be interested to review her new chick lit novel, Confessions of a Call Center Gal, which was released on Amazon this month.

I told Lisa (whom, by the way, I have never met or made any contact with before) that I was okay with an electronic review copy to load on my Nook. I remember downloading the file from her email message and I remember confirming the receipt and telling her I’d read the book within the next couple of weeks.

Fast forward a bit. So I’ve been reading the novel, and today, at lunch, I was halfway through the book when my eyes virtually popped out of their sockets and I nearly (nearly!) dropped my Nook — I couldn’t believe what I was reading!

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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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Giveaway: Sign Language Vintage Alphabet Stamps

I can never go into a bookstore and come out empty-handed. Even when I challenge myself to hold off on buying books, the stationery junkie that I am can’t help wandering in the supply aisles and I end up spending a small fortune on stuff I tell myself I’ll eventually find use for. Just the other day I got myself a binding machine, but I’m getting ahead of myself; that’s another story! Haha.

Anyway, last month, I was over at one of my regular bargain bookstore haunts and found this:

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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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