Some Books On My TBR List

There is really something exciting about discovering new books and authors. They become part of your reading life. Damyanti, an author and a friend here at WordPress said she is curious about my “to be read” list  of books. I guess, they’ll get me through next year’s book challenge at Goodreads. I  will only list those which I am excited to read until the end of the year.

1. Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales – excited to start reading this. There is a story behind every tale that he tells.
2. Ken Follet: Night Over Water – I’ve always been a fan of this great  writer. I have a complete set of his Kingsbridge series and I love Pillars of the Earth best. I have his other books as well.
3. The Bone Collector: Who would not be thrilled to find another book by Jeffrey Deaver? Accordingly, it is one of his best.
4. Down Where My Love Lives by Charles Martin. I discovered him two years ago I think and read most of his books. According to Goodreads, “it  is a bittersweet yet triumphant love story—a tale of one man’s spiritual journey through the darkness of despair into the light of hope”.  Most of his books deal on triumphs, faith and they are spiritual too.
5. Anthony Doerr’s About Grace. First encountered him in All The Light We Cannot See,  a Goodreads Choice 2014 Winner.
6. The Throwaway Children by Diney Costeloe. – My first book of Diney Costeloe, the story of two sisters sent first to an English, then an Australian orphanage in the aftermath of World War 2.
7. Matilda by Roald Dahl – Most of you have probably read this already. Matilda is a child who is a book lover.
8. Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan – been curious about this since it was published.
9. Promise Me by Richard Paul Evans. RPE is my favorite author. This is one book that I didn’t have before.
10. I  Am David by Anne Holm – This has been on my wishlist for so long. David’s entire twelve-year life has been spent in a grisly prison camp in Eastern Europe. He knows nothing of the outside world.

I also have two classic books by Ernest Hemingway, For Whom The Bells Tolls and A Farewell To Arms. 

Some  books on this list are e-books.  Have you read any on this list?

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Of Love And Shadows by Isabel Allende

I have some of her books sitting on my shelf for the last ten years or so but I never was compelled to read them –  The House of the Spirits was published in 1982, Of Love and Shadows in 1984, Maya’s Notebook in 2011 and A Japanese Lover in 2015. The last two are e-books. I have previously read Maya’s Notebook and In The Midst of Winter but I have clearly forgotten the stories. I went back to Goodreads and I have given them both four-stars before.

Since I am done with my Goodreads’ challenge this year, I am choosing what books to read first without having to think that I have a challenge to meet. Some lazy days of reading, I guess.  Finally, it is about time I have to consider other authors  again like Isabel Allende. She  is a Chilean- American author who was born in Lima, Peru. She has written over 20 books translated from Spanish. The last time I enjoyed stories from that part of the world was when Nissa gifted me with two books by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, a Colombian novelist, sadly though, before I finished Love In The Time of Cholera, they were both destroyed by flood Ondoy back in 2009. They were never replaced but I like to reread One Hundred Days of Solitude.

Going back to Allende, I am presently reading Of Love and Shadows.  Still in the first few chapters of the book. Would you believe, I found a movie adaptation of the book  with   a voice translation. I’m gonna explore that some other time maybe.

Last night I was distracted playing Wordscapes on my tab. I am on level 121 and I don’t want to lose my earned points just to look for clues. It is hard but challenging.

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While Reading David Copperfield

It seems like this is a slow read for me. I am only about 37.7% done and I’ve been at it for almost three days now. No, there is nothing wrong with the book, in fact I love the story but I get so sleepy when I start to read.

Last night, I thought of reading for at least two hours before bedtime but I was asleep at 7 pm. Gosh, the other two nights were disasters because no matter what I did, my mind was awake. I had the radio on to a music station for two straight nights but it was a no go.

Maybe, this is part of getting and growing old. Sometimes, the ritual changes.

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The Next Book On My TBR

Know why I haven’t been posting lately? I am trying to get done with my challenge at Goodreads for this year, a total of 120 books, much less compared to the years before.

I make it a point to include at least one or two classics in every reading challenge that I do every year. I reread Pride and Prejudice at the start of the challenge  and this would be my second book this year. I’m done with an eclectic mix of YA books, historical novels, fiction, a couple of  memoirs, another book by Nora Ephron called I  Remember Nothing, Michelle Obama’s Becoming, three books about Korea and two poetry books of my beloved author Mary Oliver, Upstream and Devotions. 

To think that the title David Copperfield was quite familiar to me since I was in high school but I never got the chance to read it.  This time it has pride of number  as my 118th read this year.

It was first published in 1849 and is quite long with 882 pages, an equivalent of  two books averaging more than 400 pages. I am giving myself the challenge to finish a well-known and a long classic story. According to some reviews, it has  autobiographical elements about Charles Dickens’ life.

The last two books would probably be Eve by William Paul Young and  Finishing Touches by Patricia Scanlan.  This would be my second book of Young, the first one being The Shack which I enjoyed a few years ago. After these, I’ll be free to choose those short fiction and other historical novels.

What have you been reading lately?

 

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The Tin Man And Other Stories

It’s been a while! And that means it’s been three days since I last posted here.

There is nothing much really except I got caught reading some books that I just could not put down.  Would you believe, in all the years that I am into reading and  discovering new authors, this is the first time I encountered a story like this. Tin Man by Sarah Winman is vastly different from the young adult books that I used to read before. It tells about alternative lives, two boys and a girl caught in a love triangle. The first part of the narrative tells the story of Ellis who wanted to be an artist but his father was opposed to it. It tells the story of two teenage boys who fell in love briefly then Ellis got married and Michael became the best friend of his wife Annie.  The poignant remembrance, the memories kept in between the years. The second part tells the story of Michael  and being caught by that dreaded disease. It tells how he treasured those early days of his friendship with his best friend Ellis, the impact of grief, love lost and loneliness.  It is actually a short book but made an impact to a reader like me.  I also read some excerpts on Timeless Moments by Michelle Kidd, another new author in my list.  I started earlier with Stephen Orr’s Time’s Long Ruin but I got confused by the character so I switched to another book called Welcome to Harmony by Jodi Thomas. It is actually the first book in a series.  I wish I could find the other books.

When books reign in your world for a while, you forget to update your blog….haha 🙂

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Saturday Delight

On my way home from SM Megamall where I bought a bottle of Vitamin D, I chanced upon this freshly harvested cassava and bought more than a kilo. I’ve always craved for this when it is in season. Cooked simply boiled in coconut cream, it is so yummy.

Are some of you familiar with this? I wonder if it is also grown in other Asian countries like ours. Some also make cassava cake out of this. But that is more difficult to do than simply boiling it.

Oh my, I just finished my 106th book for this year’s Goodreads challenge. Only 14 more books to go then I am done. It’s been a while since I read a biography. Most that I encountered were memoirs, written by the authors themselves. This one is about the life of an unknown Kennedy and her struggles.

Knowing more about the Kennedys. This time a daughter who was hidden from the world because of mental illness. When I read the book Johnny We hardly Knew Ye a long, long time ago, I was fascinated by JFK’s political career and it was a good read. Rosemary was loved by her family, she was given all those choiced schools and caregivers so she could live a life close to normal. She reached a ripe old age of 86. It was nice reading about how the Kennedys survived the ordeal of having a mentally challenged daughter compared to her gifted and intelligent siblings.

Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter

She was the oldest daughter born to Joseph Kennedy, Sr. and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, sister to Pres. John F. Kennedy and to the senators Robert and Ted Kennedy. She was intellectually disabled and had a separate schooling from other students.

I’ve always been an admirer of the Kennedy clan and  I enjoyed looking at all the pictures included in the biography.

One good read for this year’s challenge.

 

 

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Reading About Books

And I still love reading about books.

There is that excitement you get to feel when you find a book about books, library or a bookstore for that matter. You are curious what other people read.  Though I am excited to read it, I really don’t know what to expect since it is a first novel but first novels sometimes are really big on surprises. It’s The Bookshop of Yesterdays by Amy Meyerson, an American author.

I am reminded of one of my favorite books, The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón. When the subject is about books, I am always curious how the story is presented. I enjoy those stories that describe how they feel about reading old books  and those considered classics. Some readers are challenged by books which are not very popular and well read. Some stick to one particular genre or collect one particular author. I did that before, collecting books by authors the likes of Leon Uris, Robin Cook, Rosamunde Pilcher, Richard Paul Evans, Nicholas Evans (I miss his books), Richard North Patterson and Luanne Rice to name a few. I have lots of their books but most of them are paperbacks. The ones we have of James Patterson are mostly hardbound and. Richard Paul Evans’ books come in nice and smaller than average hardbound.

I get to read e-books in between especially at night since I  won’t need a well-lighted room to read them.  I am still in the middle of reading The Seven Storey Mountain by  Thomas Merton. He is one of most influential Catholic authors of the 20th century. The prints are so small in a thick book but I recently found an e-book copy of it. Hooray!

So many TBRs on my night table but I kept those new ones  in a higher cabinet to protect them this rainy season.

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Finding A Korean Book At Last

The last two or three years of my reading challenges, I was  enamored with a few books I’ve found featuring Asian authors. Since I met Nadia Hashimi, Khaled Hosseini, Amy Tan and Lisa See to name a few, I keep looking for others. Then I finally found this seemingly lovely book of  a Korean-American author.

Pachinko, is an epic historical novel following characters from Korea who eventually migrate to Japan. It is the first novel written for an adult, English-speaking audience about Japanese Korean culture. Wikipedia says that Pachinko is a type of mechanical game originating in Japan and is used as both a form of recreational arcade game and much more frequently as a gambling device, filling a Japanese gambling niche comparable to that of the slot machine in Western gaming.

Pachinko

It is actually my first time to read about Korean culture. I didn’t even know that Korea was under Japanese colonial rule from 1910 to 1945. It is a lengthy book all of  496 pages and I’ve only finished 20% of it but I am loving the story. A deeply engrossing novel, a lovely historical fiction.  Looking forward to  reading the rest. It’s my 86th read this year and I have completed 71% of my Goodreads book challenge.

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Catching Up

For the past days, I finished two books, one is actually a Christmas story that happened a century ago. I wonder why, sometimes I am hooked with those stories of survival, of family, of friendship and love. When a horse and a buggy were the only means of land transportation, when winter was the most harsh climate you could ever encounter, when people depended  on their own lands to make both ends meet….love those!

I recently found this engaging book set in New York back in the sixties. It’s entitled Park Avenue Summer by Renee Rosen.

I just love it. I didn’t know that it was  based on Helen Gurley Brown’s life as seen from the perspective of her secretary who is fictional in character. Helen Gurley Brown was an American author, businesswoman and publisher. She was the editor -in-chief of the Cosmopolitan magazine for 32 years.  It’s nice to be able to see in pictures the actual characters in a story. It adds to the appeal of the book. This is actually my first book of Renee Rosen. I’ll try to look for some of her other books. It also reminds me of the book The Devil Wears Prada which I have read and watched a few years ago. When you find something nice to read, you are inspired to read more.

 

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And More Books

Saw this on “my memory”  app at FB yesterday.  I can’t help but repost it. The value of reading….priceless.

I marked this quote when I started another book yesterday. It’s by  Martin Luther King.

Faith is taking  the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.

Gosh, I just love, love this book. For a first time author, Amy Markstahler is pretty good. Love, family life, second chances – they’re all here. I cried at the scene when Tyler gave a eulogy on the death of Elsie’s dad. That was so sweet. Another book that I read in one day. It was that good. I was clearly surprised seeing that the author just followed my review at Goodreads. I hope I could find more stories like this.

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