The Joy Luck Club

I was fourteen when I first read Amy Tan’s Joy Luck Club, which was required reading for our Afro-Asian Literature class in sophomore year in high school . I remember reading the book, watching the film in class, and then writing a paper analyzing the tenets of Confucianism and Taoism as applied to the stories in the book.

I had to dig out my yellowed copy of Joy Luck Club last month, because our book club was scheduled to read it in time for a discussion that was synced with Repertory Philippines’ staging of the theatrical adaptation.

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Best and Worst

And I’m back! Finally, order has been restored in my little corner of the world. I apologize for the sporadic blogging — the year had a crazy start: I’ve been battling with a bad allergy for over a month (subsiding now, thank goodness, after a small fortune spent at the drugstore and a huge pile of specialized creams and beauty products); one of my biggest campaigns kicked off at work; and the family marked a major event: my 48-year old uncle’s wedding!

I feel like the year is just beginning on my blog (and technically, it is…), so here’s a recap of my best and worst reads for 2010:

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10 interesting things about Marianne Villanueva

Last Saturday, I was holed up at Libreria again with fellow Flippers and book bloggers for a meetup with author Marianne Villanueva, arranged by Rocket Kapre. The Flippers were supposed to have a breakfast meeting, but I went home well past midnight from the previous night’s office party, got an hour’s sleep before dragging myself out of bed for the dawn mass, and then went back to sleep. I was alarmed when Gege’s text woke me up at 10am, when we were designated to meet! I threw on a shirt, shorts and flipflops (and I forgot my camera, too!) and hightailed it to Cubao, just in time for lunch at Ali Mall.

I was still bleary eyed by the time we went back to Libreria, but the discussion was well underway, and I think I was barely coherent while I was nursing a couple cups coffee. Unfortunately I had to hightail it again back home to Makati for a change of clothes for a girls’ night out with my high school friends, but I did get my copy of The Lost Language: Stories signed, and enough interesting factoids about the author to make me want to read the book!

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Early Christmas Surprise

An early Christmas surprise came on the day before the prom — my Flips Flipping Pages exchange gift got delivered to the office.

Every year our book club holds a gift exchange for members who want to participate, and this is the third year I’ve joined. We assign the gifters and the giftees, set the budget, post our wishlists, and it’s up to the generosity and resourcefulness of the gifter to get the books on the giftee’s wishlist. We’ve been doing it for three years now, and it’s always a huge success. Some gifters even manage to find books the giftee is having trouble finding!

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Flips Flipping Pages Bloody Prom Night 2010

When we were brainstorming for the Flips Flipping Pages 2010 Christmas party, we couldn’t help but look back at last year’s heinous murder mystery Christmas party, and we were thinking about how we could top that. Not easy, when we had a Flippers “dying,” a full-blown investigation, an orchestrated blackout, and some more casualties last year.

I don’t remember how we got to the concept of prom, but let me just say, I wasn’t thrilled — prom was an unpleasant experience and so was the grad ball that followed the year after.

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