“Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is a proof that humans are capable of magic”
-Carl Sagan
STACK. I need more closet place (and time, of course!). I’ve recently added to this stack my UK version of Black Heart by Holly Black, The Discomfort Zone by Jonathan Franzen, and Eat Your Peas by Cheryl Karpen. :)
You might smack me with all the redundant intro’s but—I’m still sorry for all the sparse updates! A flurry of (non-work and work-related) events are taking over my life lately and they are eager to pull me away from my online havens. Not from my books, though! To join my other babies (which I know were silently whimpering for the lengthy week of ‘abandonment’ I just did to them) are these:
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Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey by Chuck Palahniuk. I think I need a dose of Palahniuk’s trademark mind-squeeze-inducing stories, I terribly miss it. :) I think this one’s about a serial killer.
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Less than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis. My first of Ellis, lots of people are shooing me away from this for some reason—and it’s not that it’s a badly written book. Anyhoo, I decided to try it. USA Today said it’s The Catcher in the Rye of the MTV generation—we’ll see about that. From Amazon: Set in Los Angeles in the early 1980’s, this coolly mesmerizing novel is a raw, powerful portrait of a lost generation who have experienced sex, drugs, and disaffection at too early an age, in a world shaped by casual nihilism, passivity, and too much money a place devoid of feeling or hope.
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Divergent by Veronica Roth. Finally.
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Numbers by Rachel Ward. I like the premise of this book, even if (or especially because?) it sounded a lot like Death Note. After her mom’s death, the girl protagonist can see the dates predicting deaths of people with brute accuracy—when she looks them in the eye.
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Pandemonium by Lauren Oliver. Sequel to the dystopian love story Delirium. Hope it’s better than the first book!
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The Name of the Star by Maureen Johnson. This is going to be my first MJ novel. I bet it would be nothing like her awesome shorts! It’s a thriller set in London, full of humor, suspense…and ghosts. :)
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Cinder by Marissa Meyer. Everybody knows I love fairytale reimaginings. Meyer offers the world one of her own, with a cyborg Cinderella in the forefront. How. Can. I. Say. No. To. This?! I hope Cinderella is not a damsel in distress in this one. :D
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The Future of Us by Jay Asher and Carolyn Mackler. Ah, I love time-bending tales. Two youngsters could mysteriously see their future—spouses, careers, status updates—in Facebook, at a time when Facebook was not even invented yet. “As they grapple with the ups and downs of what their lives hold, they’re forced to confront what they’re doing right—and wrong—in the present.” Sounds promising. :)
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The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. Been hearing a lot of good things about this book! Chris Schluep’s blurb says, “Erin Morgenstern’s dark, enchanting debut takes us to the black and white tents of Le Cirque des Reves, a circus that arrives without warning, simply appearing when yesterday it was not there. Young Celia and Marco have been cast into a rivalry at The Night Circus, one arranged long ago by powers they do not fully understand. Over time, their lives become more intricately enmeshed in a dance of love, joy, deceit, heartbreak, and magic.”
Anyone who’ve read these? Thoughts?
I’ve gathered a multitude of new babies over the past few weeks, but of the newest bunch these are the triplets that are receiving all my love:
- I ❤ Geeks: The Official Handbook by Carrie Tucker. Status: read, but I go back to it just for kicks. It’s an impulse purchase—upon seeing the heart and the word “geeks,” I couldn’t control myself. I knew I have to buy it. Imagine my shock when I learned it’s actually an “understanding-your-guy” book! Fortunately, it’s not exactly similar to those run-of-the-mill self-help guides for dating and stuff…it’s more like a condensed encyclopedia of geekiness and nerderies (brief histories of videogames, graphic novels, anime, etc., excerpts from interviews and the like) with a little bit of relationship thingies thrown in. I guess that’s kind of expected, since it’s written by a “self-proclaimed nerd who has stared straight into the eyes of COOL and refuses to blink.” It’s a really fun book, I think nerdfighters here will like it. :)
- The Absolute True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie. Status: read. It’s about a fourteen-year-old Indian who goes to an all-white high school; it’s about poverty, racism, love, and friendship. AND I TELL YOU, IT’S ALL KINDS OF AWESOME. The writing, the cartoons…everything! Why hasn’t anyone recommended this book to me before?! Review to follow. :p
- Going Bovine by Libba Bray. Status: to read, next in queue (next to Farenheit 451, which I’m currently reading) because of my fangirlfriends’ ceaseless raving.They say it’s a quirky novel with bits of Norse mythology in it. *shrugs* I like that kind of stuff. :p
After these three, I promise to go back to my previous book hauls. I’ll finish A Song of Ice and Fire, and all that Murakami books. Yeah, I promise.
Murakami’s Oeuvre. I haven’t even finished this stack yet, and already here’s another one. They’re all Murakami’s books! I won them in a design/illustration-making contest at Nowness. Before joining the contest, I already have my own copies of the eight books on the top. I think I’ll give them to my friends who haven’t tried reading any of Murakami’s work yet. :) So yeah, my Tumblr weather in the coming days will be soused with Jap lit (mostly reviews cross-posted from my GoodReads—I’ve read most of my Murakami when I still didn’t have a Tumblr).
A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE! I finally have the complete set, thanks to my friend’s brother. The books are a part of the prize he won in an HBO Asia contest (I don’t know what kind) and he gave it to me. I’m always blabbering excitedly about the TV series outside of Tumblr—guess he noticed that. :) Thank you very much, kuya Ryan!
