Reading something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue
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.
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.
![Author Photo - Gayle Forman[1]](https://sumthinblue.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Author-Photo-Gayle-Forman1.jpg)
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.
The Book Bandit (a.k.a, Me) is back (*evil laugh*) — I just made away with some major loot at the National Book Store Warehouse Sale, ongoing at the 4th floor of National Book Store Quezon Avenue.
A couple of years ago, I discovered Julius Chancer completely by chance at the Manila International Book Fair at a publisher’s rep booth, and being a Tintin fan, I was instantly attracted to the cover art. Upon closer inspection, I saw it was an omnibus of “The Rainbow Orchid” adventure, and I knew I wouldn’t find it in the bookstores — I felt it was too good to pass up. I inquired about the book and they told me it wasn’t for sale, and I wheedled and wheedled until they finally agreed to sell it to me (It wasn’t cheap. Haha). I’d been meaning to read it, but with all the moving around my books have been doing in the past couple of years, it got lost in the stacks and only resurfaced as I was packing some books for storage after last year’s monsoon.
Written and illustrated by Garen Ewing and published by Egmont (incidentally, also the publisher of Tintin), The Complete Rainbow Orchid won the Young People’s Comic Award at the 2013 British Comic Awards.
