Three Days After

Ah finally, internet connection is back.

After several follow ups and repetitive requests to have it back, Globe reconnected our internet access. They said they did maintenance the past three days. Another said, their tower in our area has gone kaput on us. Which is which? At least they were polite enough to say power will be back in three days and that is at around 10 am today. I went online at 9:30 am and the internet  is back. Hallelujah 🙂

When you are used to having internet connection at all hours of the day, it seems so hard without it.  The world gets smaller because you are not even updated with the weather reports online.  Good thing, there are no  low pressure area seen although a typhoon named Soulik (international name) is about 1,890 kms. east-northeast of Luzon but the weather bureau said it won’t enter the Philippine area of responsibility.  At the moment, we are having drizzles  and thunderstorms would most likely occur again late this afternoon. Hopefully, it won’t bring too much rain.

Would you believe I finished three books in three days that we didn’t have internet connection? Yes, one book a day…haha! I discovered another author.

I thought it was another book by Lincoln Child minus his partner Douglas Preston but Lee Child is a brother of Lincoln Child.  His real name is James Grant, a British author  who writes thriller novels, and is best known for his Jack Reacher novel series.

The Visitor is one such book, fast-paced, deeply satisfying and really hard to put down. I like it better than some of the books I read before by Preston and Child.

It was followed by a feel good romance book. Yes, you read it right, I read romance books too once in  a while and this one is pretty good. Another first from the author T.K. Leigh. I am sure this won’t be the first time I will read a book of hers.

“The Other Side Of Someday is a fun, sexy story of looking for Mr. Right in a world full of Mr. Wrongs, when Mr. Right could be just next door”. 

As usual I jotted down some quotes from the book:

“May you find beauty in the world that surrounds you, even when things aren’t going your way. May you have a sense of adventure, whether it be dancing in the rain or bungee jumping.

Experience everything the world has to offer. May you find something you love doing and be able to make a life out of that passion because life without passion isn’t a life worth living. May you confront your fears head-on and not cower in the face of adversity. Most importantly, may you love. Love hard and without abandon. Love with no regrets. Love like there’s no tomorrow. For so many people, there isn’t a tomorrow. Don’t take it for granted.” 

I’d like to say, having no internet was a bit of a blessing to be able to read these wonderful stories.

 

 

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On Books And Sunrise

The sun showed its face for a while then the clouds obscured it. Will it be another rainy day? I really hope not. My plants need to breathe, see the sun too.

Just done with The Lost Sister by Tracy Buchanan. A different kind of story about a family separated by ideologies  but in the end love prevailed. Imagine yourself living in a cave at some point in your life and embracing something not normally accepted in society. Imagine yourself  looking for a long-lost sister that you didn’t know about in the first place until your mom told you in her dying  breath. Imagine growing up fed by lies and untruth. Such make the book a wonderful read.  If you love something a bit emotional showing some strength and weaknesses of the characters involved, this book is it. Since this is my first read of Tracy Buchanan, I don’t have any other of her books to compare it with.

I am presently reading The Simple Wild set in Alaska by K. A Tucker.  I’ve read a couple of books about Alaska before and I liked them both. I hope this one is good too.  It’s my second book of  K. A. Tucker. Seeing the five stars on Goodreads, I hope it will deliver.

 

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Finally

I’m done reading a hundred books in more than seven  months. I love this challenge  because I discovered so many authors and lovely books in the process.

I remember accepting the challenge back in 2011 and every year I committed to read at least a hundred books minimum but I always end up reading close to two hundred at times.  This year I started with a classic  Little Women  by Louisa May  Alcott and ended with a thriller called City of Endless Night by Preston & Child. It’s time to take a break and just enjoy reading at a leisurely pace.

I remember these lines while I was reading Catcher In the Rye a long time ago and even wrote them in my journal.

“What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn’t happen much, though.”  J.D. Salinger

But then it is enough that yesterday an author acknowledged my review on her book.  Nice, isn’t it?

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Dancing On Broken Glass

Take a good look at this photo. isn’t it wonderful? And before I read the first page of this book, I was so taken by the book cover. That small pair of slippers did it.

I finished reading this last night, my 97th read this year. It’s Ka Hancock’s first book. It’s a story of an enduring love between a cancer survivor and a man with a bipolar disorder.

“Lucy Houston and Mickey Chandler probably shouldn’t have fallen in love, let alone gotten married. They’re both plagued with faulty genes—he has bipolar disorder, and she has a ravaging family history of breast cancer. But when their paths cross on the night of Lucy’s twenty-first birthday, sparks fly, and there’s no denying their chemistry.”  

Secondly, I was caught by the lovely and arresting title. They made their marriage worked despite the odds They dreamed of a family before Lucy  got the dreaded disease but when she got pregnant after her bouts with cancer, she was determined to keep the baby in spite of her doctor’s advice to abort it.

“Her heart is beating inside me. She moves inside me. She gets the hiccups inside me. Aborting her now is no different in my mind than waiting until she’s born and smothering her with a pillow, or throwing her in the lake on her third birthday, or shooting her in the head when she’s twelve.” 

I love all the characters in the story – family ties, friendship, a loving and supportive community. It explores the depth of fear and grief, losing a loved  one,trying to move on.

It made me a little emotional, crying while reading it and at the same time overjoyed that I found this lovely book.

 

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Time To Say Goodbye July

Gosh, where did July go?

And it is slowly melting into the month of August. July….the  uneventful days, the days meeting new friends,  cloudy, stormy and rainy and sunshine in between.  Yes I know, another 31 days to go before the  start  of  the BER months. Not really looking forward to  August since I am pretty sure it’ll be  another stormy month for us. But there is something nice about the changing leaves in the calendar. You wish that dream you had would finally come true. You wish that your health would finally go back to normal. And you wish that everything falls into place. Does it ever though?

Saying goodbye to July and saying hello to August.  My monthly ritual of a blog. Something that would summarize the days and the month about to end and  maybe something more of a surprise in the coming days of August.

I am almost at the finish line of my Goodreads challenge for this year. I just viewed my profile at Goodreads and it says I have about  923 ratings (3.74 average), 289 reviews, # 56 top reviewers and around 1,023 books read since joining, back in 2011.  A well-traveled journey in reading so to speak. I tend to favor historical fiction and memoirs. I love learning about other people’s lives. History has that appeal that contemporary books don’t have.  My most read authors are Robin Cook and James Patterson with 28 books each followed by Luanne  Rice and Richard Paul Evans with 22 and 21 books successively. Kristin Hannah and Rosamunde Pilcher come next with  16 books each.  I didn’t even know that Goodreads has these features, a total number of all books you’ve read through the years. I only follow the reading challenge each year. I follow 19 authors and I have 58 friends but not all of them are readers. some are just there with  updated profiles but no list of books read.

When I talk about books, I can’t seem to stop. Happy August month everyone!

 

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A Notorious Reader

Maybe “notorious” is not really the right word, more like a voracious reader. Insatiable, greedy, always excited about new books.  As I have always said, I love the smell and texture of new books. The anticipation is there and so is the excitement  to read. I always put plastic covers on my books and I usually use book marks since I don’t want the pages folded. I neatly arrange them in the shelves by authors and title of the books but my best books are usually placed in the highest shelf. Weird isn’t it?

Life of a bookworm, always holding a book in hand or enlarging the prints of the e-books and changing the background.

I normally read at night or before I take a thirty-minute siesta at noon. Most of the time, my books are left  on my chest and go to sleep still wearing  my reading glass. Oreo loves to play with the latter when he sometimes jumps atop the bed and see it. I caught him this afternoon with his mouth on the frame. Naughty, naughty Oreo.

I am trying to find more classic books that I haven’t read yet. Would you believe, I started reading Anna Karenina last year I think but I only finished half of it. It’s too long and my eyes couldn’t take  the small prints. I already read about a third of Goodreads’ list of 100 books you have to read before you die.  Yes, they have those books too and they based their survey on readers’ choices. I have a copy of Dracula by  Bram Stoker. It’s been in our shelf  for so many years now but I haven’t attempted reading it. And it is included in those 100 list of books. I used to have a complete list of the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon but some of them were destroyed by the flood.  Hopefully, when I am done with the challenge I’ll be able to find extra copies of those books.

I still have so many books on my wish list:

1. Witness to Hope by George Weigel (A Biography of Saint Pope John Paul II)
2. Anne Frank Beyond the Diary: A Photo Remembrance
3. The Bell  Jar by Sylvia Plath
4. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
5. Happy All The Time by Laurie Colwin
6. I Am David by  Anne Holm
7. Caught In the Quiet by Rod McKuen
8. With Love by Rod McKuen
9. In The Dark Before Dawn by Thomas Merton
10. The Honorary Consul by Graham Greene

Those are just ten, right? But there are many more.

Here’s a lovely quote I found on Brainy Quote.

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Goodreads’ Reading Challenge 2018 (An Update)

I am getting addicted with  Sydney Bauer’s books. I found three of hers, the first one which I blogged about a few days ago  was published much, much later than the one I have just finished and the third book I am reading at the moment. It seems to be a series but stand alone stories involving a criminal lawyer defending those who are accused of crimes they didn’t commit. The courtroom scenes and the way they gather evidences are so interesting. I have always loved “courtrooms” since I first encountered Lean Uris’ book called QBVII.  Conspiracy, racial bigotry, fast-paced  action scenes. Move over John Grisham, she’s it for now.

 Alibi  is my 94th read and I’m done with about a third of the book. Suspense thrillers, how lovely!

Yeay, six more books to go and I’m done. Plenty  months more to add those classics which I have yet to find.

 

 

 

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