My growing family.

My bookshelf just keeps on growing. I bought another book right after landing. I was gonna buy that Kohl eyeliner by Nivea but I got this instead, plus that Bio Oil from South Africa to keep the skin ultra-hydrated (story of a lady shopper!):

The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom

Though I have read much more books than the average population, I still don’t consider myself as a bookworm. I could get lost in a bookstore, yes. I certainly get that rush in my stomach as my eyes scans through the book titles on display. But the problem is, I love books the way I love shoes. For several occasions I buy them even if I never get to wear them. As long as they look pretty in my shelves, I am happy.

Dear friends, don’t hate me. You know who you are.

Addition to my bookshelf.

I bought a new book today, partly because I believe my knowledge is going down the drain rather quickly, mostly because I find this one very interesting. As a student, I never loved studying. But reading is a like a second nature since I was a child. I am fond of general knowledge, mostly about facts rather than about fiction. So when I saw this book on display, I picked it up and turned the pages excitedly. I only had to read a random page to convince me to purchase it. When I turned to page 28, this was what I read:

Where does Chicken Tikka Masala come from?

Glasgow.

Britain exports chicken tikka masala to India. Invented in Glasgow in the late 1960s, chicken tikka masala, or CTM, is Britain’s most popular dish.

🙂

Since Christmas is just around the corner, this book would make a perfect gift to anyone who loves learning like your teachers or your smart bestfriends.

Happy reading, bookworms!

Another book in my shelf that needs attention: Cuba Libre by Elmore Leonard. I decided to adopt it when I saw it lying on the road without its owner. Must be owned by a White person. They have this habit of abandoning books when they are done reading them.

An addition to my books collection.

I have learned about this book about 2 months or so from my guilty pleasure of a website, chuvaness.com. It is your typical happy ending love story novels, you know, boy meets girl, girl loses boy, girl and boy meets again and they live happily ever after. It is definitely not my type of a book. The Twilight series by Stephanie Meyer makes me gag. I am a very realistic person, to put it simply. But I do love magic realism and all other fictions. I will adore Gael Garcia Marquez for as long as I live and I was biting my nails through every pages of The Lord of the Rings trilogy by J. R. R. Tolkien. Perhaps I am just a drama queen by heart. I love my fair share of broken hearts, loss, tragedy.  How can I give up the way reality bites me in the back and me hitting it back in its face? All that makes life so much sweeter. Making it appear all too easy will come off to me as boring. But like every other Filipino, I love my own no matter what. She is already a bestseller in the Philippines with a lot of good press going on so that’s a good start. A “Bestseller” tag may not always promise incredible writing, but it is good enough for me. There are great many Filipino authors out there already, with Bob Ong being on top of that list, hopefully this lady is going to be a pleasant read too.

Samantha Sotto, surprise me! 🙂

My Eleven Minutes.

I finished reading yesterday Paulo Coehlo’s Eleven Minutes. Like I always do, I did it in one sitting even when my eyes grew too tired even just to stay awake (how much more to read) simply because I do not have the patience to think about how it was going to end while I sleep. Or perhaps I subconciously love to torture myself.

I really wish I am not having premature aging of my brain because this book did not sweep me off my feet. I was glued from page to page for the first half as I read about the self-discovery of Maria (the main character) of sex and love and to her loads of (mis)adventures of prostituting in a foreign land. And of course, we share the painstaking price of being all on our own so I have a lot to relate with her story.

I felt like Maria was my confidante for a while as she shared to me the discovery of her own sexuality (the big O to be exact), which was something I could never bear to open up to my girl friends or even to my “shrink.” I also felt butterflies fluttering in my stomach when her first love approached her to borrow a pencil after waiting for every hour of many months for that moment to happen. Like I always did in my past, she suddenly acted silly and made him go away. We dreamed and crossed our fingers together when she flew to Switzerland in the hopes of finding a husband, of making it big, and in simply to make her bland life a little bit more fabulously complicated. But fate turned against her and she was ushered into prostitution. Dreams falling apart, depression, and a few of struggles followed.  But she was a strong and smart girl (thank you Paulo for presenting her as such). Instead of crying out helplessly and blaming the heavens for it, she made lemonades out of her lemons. This was exactly what I wanted her to do.

Then came the love of her life. Or was it really? This was when the book started to fail me. I am not a fan of fairytale love so sorry. I did not even find the wicked stepsisters, the bad guy or the witch. Life is too good to Maria. A prostitute’s life should be more challenging and colorful than that. Even my life is more challenging and colorful. And love at first sight? Yeah right. If this book has used magic realism, I would have forgiven it. The ending was also kind of similar to what I always see in Drew Barrymore movies or the last episode of Sex and the City–too good that it could not have been true. Please do not make me elaborate further because I do not want to murder this international bestseller.

Paulo Coehlo was entertaining nonetheless…with  a lot of intellectual insights about a woman’s life that I very much agree with.

Rating: 3 stars out of five.

Sweet sucker.

I bought this book in a book sale in Brisbane–10AUD for 3 books. Not a bad bargain at all. In fact, I have fallen in love with it. I usually never read a book without a “No. 1 Bestseller” on the cover. And if I do, I always regret reading it. This one is an exception. It was funny without having to tell a joke. It was romantic without having to mention the word love. It was entertaining and informative without having to drag on a character.

Most importantly, I could see myself in the lead character of the story–unapologetic, adventurous, realistic, strong yet fragile, and afraid to fall in love for the sake of self-preservation. Most importantly, it was very simply written, it presented the world as it was, yet, it was so elaborate. Even if it did not have all the drag and the drama in most novels, it can get you hooked from cover to cover.