A year of books

2011 has been filled with books from young adult, to classics, to historical fiction. This year is also the first time I've captured every book experience in this blog. I'm thankful that I get to share it with everyone else. Whenever I find a good read, I always make my friends read it. I'm excited for another year (fingers crossed) full of books! :-)

I don't own Twenty Boy Summer by Sarah Ockler but I love the heart made of sea glass. The Last Letter from your Lover by Jojo Moyes is an eye-catcher. I love the vintage feel of The Diplomat's Wife by Pam Jenoff.

I have these books in different editions. I would love to have these beautiful covers too!

Either because I love how scenes were written or it's simply full of beautiful quotes, I highlighted as much lines as I want!

I got The Diplomat's Wife from Booksale for only 75 bucks! It was an unexpected find and cheap, most of all, a good read! The Great Gastby was only 150 bucks from Fullybooked. Best timing since I was broke that time. Haha!

Jojo Moyes and Pam Jenoff are great writers. They paint with words and makes you feel you're part of the story. Delectable reads! I just hope the movie will be faithful to the novel.

At First Sight made my throat close up, my chest heavy, and my eyes sting. The Sky is Everywhere evoked longing, loneliness, love and mellow vibes. The Last Letter from your Lover simply made me feel alive and in love.

I love the authors' writing style, the prose and the plot.

My top 3 reads of 2011. I want to read them over and over again, to pore over the beautiful words and to meet the characters that are full of life.

2011 has been a great year, book-wise. Excited for the books I'll be reading in 2012. :-)

"So many books, so little time"

Day 18 - A book that disappointed you

Forget You by Jennifer Echols

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

"Why can't you choose what you forget... and what you remember?"

Zoey is the perfect daughter, the perfect student, and the perfect girlfriend to popular boyfriend Brandon. She has a perfect life until she finds out her dad knocked up his twenty-four-year old girlfriend then her mom had a nervous breakdown. No one knows about her mom's stint except her dad, Zoey, the cop who found her mom, and Doug Fox. Doug Fox has juvie history, part of the swim team, and seems to hate Zoey, the way he scowls at her. Then the accident happens. When Zoey wakes up the next day, she realizes she can't remember what happened minutes before the car crash. Doug suddenly shows up in her living room, concerned and touchy while Brandon is avoiding her.

I really really liked the plot. The way Zoey is thrown about when she is missing the all important memory that could explain why Doug can't stay away from her and why she seems too like it too. I guess I was expecting a different outcome from the turn of events. I was disappointed of the way the characters' were thrown to each other, it was shallow and flat. Sex is also overrated in the book. But Doug got under my skin. When I found out what really happened before the car crash, it just didn't come through. Overall, it lacked the soul the tagline portrayed.

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Current read: Those Who Save Us

Those Who Save Us by Jenna Blum

I saw this on Booksale but didn't get it. I looked it up on Goodreads then went back for it the next day! Good thing it was still there. I'm still on the first few chapters. This is a bit new to me. I've read World War II novels but none from the enemy's side, the Nazis. I've read impressive reviews about this book and I have a gut feeling that it's a good read. Will do a review soon. Happy reading everyone :-)

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Day 17 - Favorite quote from your favorite book/s

It's really hard for me to choose only one so I've picked the best quotes I wrote down from different books.

"And would you rather sir, that your sister could recite by rote the principal rivers of Russia and China or those other shreds of useless knowledge that are nowadays so much the fashion? ...What I call education is not which smothers a woman with incidental accomplishments, but that which instead encourages in her the power and habit of thinking." - Julia Barrett, Presumption

"There are days when you really just need to know there is going to be someone on your side, even if you're the one screwing up." - Theresa Alan, The Girl's Guide to Global Guys

"It isn't the big troubles in life that require character. Anybody can rise to a crisis and face crushing tragedy with courage, but to meet the petty hazards of the day with a laugh - I really think that requires spirit." - Jean Webster, Daddy Long Legs

"It isn't the big pleasures that count the most; it's making a great deal out of little ones - I've discovered the secret of happiness, Daddy, and that is to live in the now. Not to be forever regretting the past, or anticipating the future; but to get the most that you can out of this very instant." - Jean Webster, Daddy Long Legs

"To want things is to be constantly disappointed." - Suzanne Weyn, Reincarnation

"Only fools think they have all the answers." - Suzanne Weyn, Reincarnation

"The whole of man's life on the face of the Earth can be summed up by that search for his Soul Mate. He may pretend to be running after wisdom, money, or power, but none of that matters. Whatever he achieves will be incomplete if he fails to find his Soul Mate." - Paulo Coelho, Brida

“Imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia. (...) You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how you'll escape it one day, and how awesome it will be, and imagining that future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present.” - John Green, Looking For Alaska


What's your favorite? Hope you liked it! x

Day 16 - Favorite female character

This is long overdue I know, so will make this short and sweet.

Lennie Walker from The Sky Is Everywhere by Jandy Nelson

Why? Not only do I love the prose, I love how Lennie writes poems on every flat surface available and leaves them scattered across town. She writes about her sister, the new boy in honor band, her grief, and it's so poignant. Everything she does and everybody around her makes her this vibrant character, a living prose herself. I can almost feel her own grief. Even though there are times I dislike her for what she did, I believe I'd do the same thing if I was her. I love how much she loves her sister, how she read Wuthering Heights 23 times, how I can feel her every emotion through her poems. She's so raw.

Who's your favorite heroine? x

Christmas Wish List

This year's wish list is a bit far-fetched maybe, but no harm in dreaming! Or lusting. I'm still wishing for winter.

Because I'm having 1920s withdrawals. Well, mostly.

1. A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway

2. The Paris Wife by Paula McLain
and/or 3. Paris Without End by Gioia Diliberto
4. Farundell by L.R. Fredericks (another 1920s novel)
5. Game of Thrones Box Set


6. 48 Laws of Power and Seduction by Robert Greene

Just figured I need to start reading something like these by now.


7. A Short History of the World by J.M. Roberts


8. To finish reading The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton, and,

9. An old-fashioned bookshelf.


What's in your wish list? :)
Happy Holidays everyone!!! x

Books Read: The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Gatsby's love for Daisy is what led them to tragedy. Before the war he was a soldier, a man with nothing to leave behind. The he met Daisy in Louisville. He was seduced by Daisy's world that he loved her. But then Gatsby left for the war and Daisy had to do the right thing, to secure herself of a stable future. She found that in Tom Buchanan. They lived in a house with sprawling lawns facing the water in East Egg, Long Island. Gatsby made himself into the man he thought Daisy would leave everything for. He lived across from her in West Egg and threw parties. The prose is highlight worthy, especially the latter chapters. Narrated by Gatsby's neighbor, Nick Carraway, it shows how lives are tangled together that one cannot escape it fully. But Gatsby did, and it wasn't his decision to.



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