For the Love of Tintin

tintin

One of my fondest memories of our grade school library is the hunt for Tintin comics. When I was in grade school, our library had the whole set, but everyone wanted to read them, so while they were marked “for room use only,” (maybe because copies kept disappearing) they were still not very easy to find, as most girls (well, including me and my friends when we found them) stashed them in secret hiding places around the library, often behind what we supposed were the books nobody ever read.

In case you’re not familiar with the series, The Adventures of Tintin is a comic strip series created by the Belgian artist Hergé, a.k.a.  Georges Remi (G.R. backwards is R.G., which sounds like Hergé), dating back as early as 1929, originally in French. It is one of the most popular European comics of the 20th century, translated in over 50 languages, with 200 million books sold worldwide. It features the reporter Tintin, who has a knack for stumbling upon mystery — and more trouble than his white fox terrier, Snowy, would care to get entangled in.

I loved the series when I was younger, and I still love it today, and so when I started earning my own money to build my book collection, Tintin comics were high on the priority list. I’ve been acquiring pieces slowly, because they’re not exactly cheap. Today they’re around P400 ($8) at Fully Booked and National Book Store, and P450 ($9) at Powerbooks so as much as I’d love the complete set, I’m just happy I’m past the halfway point. Tintin comics were never cheap, but at the rate they were selling a decade ago, I want to kick myself for starting this late.

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The 39 Clues adventure continues with 4th book

book41As the 4th installment of The 39 Clues series hits bookstore shelves this month, thousands of kids around the world embark on another leg in the quest for the Cahill family treasure.

Beyond the Grave by Jude Watson is the latest book in the action-adventure series that has taken the world by storm, released alongside The 39 Clues Card Pack 2: Branch vs. Branch, a new wave of randomly assorted collectible game cards, to span Books 4, 5, and 6, plus the simultaneous audiobook edition of “Beyond the Grave” which includes exclusive bonus material.

With over 3 million books in print, the series’ interactive reading experience is a hit with kids worldwide, with more than 500,000 online game users from 191 countries on The 39 Clues website (www.the39clues.com), and more members joining each day.

The 39 Clues features 11-year old Dan and 14-year old Amy Cahill, who discover that they belong to the world’s most powerful family. When their grandmother Grace passes away, they are made to choose their inheritance: one million dollars each, or the first clue in the quest for the legacy of the Cahill family. Choosing the key to their family’s source of power, Dan and Amy embark on a thrilling quest, with the rest of the Cahills hot on their heels in a race to a reward beyond measure.

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Love, love, love

tequiero

For some reason, a bunch of books I’ve read recently has been about love. So in an attempt to hack off a chunk of the reading backlog, this post will tackle four books that revolve around this theme, namely: Aspects of Love by David Garnett; Oliver’s Story by Erich Segal; Forever by Judy Blume; and Shakespeare in Love: The Love Poetry of William Shakespeare (books # 91-94 of 2009).

aspectsAspects of Love is the novella on which the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical of the same title is based. I’ve never seen the musical, but I remember reading about it when it was staged by a local production here in the Philippines, so I was curious about the book.

Aspects of Love deals with different forms of love, involving the web of relationships that involve the sultry actress Rose Vibert; her young admirer Alexis Dillingham; his uncle, the wealthy gentleman George Dillingham; George’s mistress, the fiery artist Giuletta Trappani; and Rose and George’s daughter, Jenny.

It was a quick read for me, but I wasn’t fully invested in it because I felt that it was merely narrating a story and didn’t really break the surface of what the characters were supposedly feeling. It was hard to empathize with the characters because the brevity of the novella (which spans 17 years) didn’t really give you much to work with, and it really reads as if it were meant for another medium, such as the stage, or even film.

I imagine it works better as a musical, as the characters can break out into song and act out their feelings. My officemates seem to love it though, as the book is currently making the rounds at work.

The next two books are two I’ve wanted to read for some time now, both mooched from Tina.

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Falling in love again

cover image from Carlos Ruiz Zafon's site
cover image from http://www.carlosruizzafon.co.uk/

Reading a good novel is like falling in love. There is that first contact, where you sample the first few pages with some reserve, testing the waters to see if the book has potential. You get drawn in and you savor the book with reckless abandon, pouring your heart out in the experience, wanting it to never end.

It does end, inevitably. But unlike most love affairs,whether the novel offers a happy ending or not, your heart doesn’t get broken, and you get to bask in the afterglow of having read a damn good book.

That is exactly how I felt when I read Carlos Ruiz Zafon’s The Shadow of the Wind (let’s call it SOTW for short) last year, which I count as one of the best novels I have ever read. Thus when I heard Zafon was releasing The Angel’s Game (Book #90 of 2009), I was a bit apprehensive as I wondered how it would live up to SOTW.

Of course, that didn’t stop me from calling Fully Booked and reserving a copy (as if people were shipping out to the nearest book stores and buying it in panic) as soon as I got the alert that it was in stock already (June 4th). And that didn’t stop me from braving the rain to get my hands on the book that very same day.

Tonight I finally finished the book, and I am bumping it up the review list (ugh, major backlog) because I know a lot of people are waiting to hear about the book, especially my American readers who will get their copies on the 16th (they’re selling the UK edition here, but I heard Zafon is touring the US – 10 bookmooch points for a signed tpb or hardcover of SOTW? *groveling* and you can send it to my aunt in California, too!)

And because I know these people will read the book too, I promise to keep it spoiler free. Review after the cut.

You can read the first chapter at the Orion website.

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Meet Cliff Janeway, the crime-busting book lover

bookedtodieFlipper and BookMoocher friend Triccie recommended John Dunning’s Cliff Janeway series to me when we were raiding the Book Sale warehouse last year, but it slipped my mind until I got a copy of Booked to Die that my mom brought home from the states, among the load of books she bought from the estate sales she went to.

I was finally able to read it  (and a couple of other books) while I was getting my hair rebonded (the best reading time I’ve had in months!) a couple of weeks ago.

Booked to Die (Book #89 of 2009) is the first book in the Cliff Janeway “Bookman” mystery series by John Dunning. In this book, Cliff Janeway is a homicide detective investigating the murder of a bookscout in his home turf: Denver, Colorado, and the prime suspect is a longtime nemesis whose face he is itching to rearrange. He takes matters into his own hands, and it causes him to lose his badge.

Cliff Janeway is, in all aspects, one tough cookie, but he also happens to be a hard-core bibliophile, an avid collector of first-editions whose apartment could easily pass for an annex of the Denver Public Library.

Finding himself without a job, Cliff Janeway takes on a new career, and does something he has always dreamed of doing: putting up his own antiquarian bookshop: Twice Told Books.

Janeway appears to have settled into a more peaceful life, but as several rare (and outrageously expensive) books turn up, the body count in the local book trade rises, and Janeway’s cop instincts bring him on the trail of a murderer who will kill for a good book.

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