Guilty pleasure

Oh no. What have I done.

I looked down. At the pen and paper in my hands.

Yet another list of book titles drawled out in my lazy script. Dozens of titles and authors lined up in pieces of paper. No, nothing harmless about that.

Where are the other lists? Lost in my black hole of a bag, lost in the folds of my notebook, lost in the depths of my over-thinking mind.

It's a mannerism, a coping mechanism, above all, a guilty pleasure.

The OCD in me is itching to tick off one book after the other because... that's what lists are for! I cross out one, two if I'm lucky, but never did I follow through.

But my carefree spirit says otherwise and tells me to just give in to my bibliophilic instincts. Let it take over me and, without so much as a second glance, I will know which trove is destined for me.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, I feel like a hopeless case. All I have are endless titles and names rather than pulpy paperbacks. I'm swimming around in an ocean of lists.

Sometimes I think I'm more frustrated with the fact that I can't have all the books I want soon enough.

In the words of Matthew J. Bruccoli, scholar and F. Scott Fitzgerald biographer : "You don't buy books as an investment. You buy them because it gives you pleasure to read them, to touch them... to see them on shelves."

Is there anyone out there who feels the same way?

Separation anxiety

When I look at my book shelf, all I see is: SEPARATION ANXIETY. The missing titles among the row of books is that obvious I could actually see those two words.

It does feel good to share shove my books into my friends hands. For them to read it and like it is another thing to boost my bibliophilic ego.

But I do miss my books after a while and it worries me that they might never come back. I fervently hope not. That would break me.

My books are important to me. They each carry a piece of me - a memory, a place, a time, a person. They've been with me through a certain point in my life and I clung to them for my dear life.

Maybe one day I could let them go, set them free. Pieces of me in the hundred paperbacks, millions of words, out there in the universe.

Now they're selfishly mine. Living pieces of me scattered within a 300 mile-radius, maybe?

Top New Year's resolution: Read more. Write more (other than work).

You think when you get older you'd read more classics, more philosophical works, more non-fiction. Genres  beyond your years because at the age of 21, you want to prove how intelligent and wide reader you are. (There's just so many 20 books you need to read in your 20s list, 30 books in your 30s, I plan to read some of it) But instead, you get stuck in Young Adult and you're not even ashamed. Way better than getting caught reading 50 Shades of Grey in public, or even in your e-reader cause nosy people can still read the large font, you guys.

September's slut

We sit through days willing the Earth to rotate faster, wishing Mondays turn to Fridays, to skip the tawdry parts that have become essential in our lives. Still, we look back and realize how fast time flies. Days that dragged on now seemed weightless.

I barely had enough time to cozy up with September when it's about to fold into itself again until next year. My relationship with September is more than a dodgy one night stand - though it was great. We went on a date at The Night Circus, gave me a bouquet of orange Hemingways, had a bottle of Bradbury talking about What happened to Anna K. all night. As we lay side by side, Maugham playing softly on the background, I felt The Unbearable Lightness of Being. ;)

September books from MIBF, Booksale & J. <3

Lust

Having a day at your own pace. Being able to read at breakfast, a book on your left hand, the fork on the other, and taking little sips of coffee in between. I live for these things. When I finally get out of bed after hitting snooze three times on a Monday morning, it's what I look forward to. We can't help but live for the weekends. We drift through days.

I love my work - don't get me wrong - even if sometimes I feel like I'm being thrown at the open sea, leaving me to swim my way back to shore. I can barely keep my head above the water, but I keep on treading. At the end of the day, when my toes finally feel the smooth sand, there's nothing left to do but wade to dry land. And it's fulfilling, to save yourself.

Then I'm left alone with my mind for one and a half hour ride home. I look forward to those times, when I can watch the streetlights moving in a constant stream of light. Look at people's shadowed faces, bowed heads swaying almost rhythmically to the moving car. Once, I buried my nose up a book, only stopping on the short distance between streetlamps, enveloping the car in darkness. Most times, thoughts pour in. Memories. Dreams. Life. It becomes the air I breathe, filling me up before I breathe them back to the world in quiet whispers.

The thing is, I don't know what I'm talking about. When I wrote (typed) the first sentences, I don't know where I'm headed. I weaved words one after the other and it's such a delicious feeling to be doing so. Not constructing sentences, but writing them, flowing from my fingertips. Exhaling words into the world.

I'm not sure if I made any sense. I just wanted to write, to create, to appreciate words. I find I want a lot of things, turning me into a million pieces. I want to move, want to be here and a hundred places all out once. To see the fiery colors of autumn. To fold in to myself. To feel lost then found. I want to bite into the world. I want the imprints of the world on my skin. To not feel limited but infinite.

"I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in life. And I am horribly limited." - Slyvia Plath

A bibliophile's dream

Every bibliophile's dream is to have a room full of books - four walls covered from floor to ceiling - like Karl Lagerfeld's, but most of us don't run House of Chanel. Though I'm lusting over his library, I prefer cozy sunlit spaces with a comfy couch or a wing chair for a reading room-slash-home library. Looking at books, and spaces for books, over at weheartit makes me happy as a feather floating in the breeze.

Curling up in bed with a good book tastes delicious just by thinking it, especially when it's drizzling.

Still, nothing beats having a room you can shut the world out and lose yourself in another. It'll be your sanctuary, a shrine for books and reading, your two-cents worth of escape - sweet all the same.

Until then, I'll be daydreaming. Or dreaming, given the hour.

PS. Every bibliophile also dreams to visit Shakespeare & Co in Paris and stay a week or two at the apartment above and help in the bookstore by day. Maybe I'll put that in another post.

Goodnight!

Book event: MIBF 2012

As promised, I brought my little brother to the Manila International Book Fair at the Mall of Asia SMX Convention Center last Saturday. We're the two bookworms in the family, thought it was only fitting that we go. It's our first time so imagine our faces when we entered this huge hall full of books! The weekend crowd had not come in yet but there were already lot of people by 11. Bought the books we mostly wanted before going out to grab some lunch. Went around the department store cause they're having a sale. When we came back at the book fair at 4pm, the place was packed!

A bit disappointed that I didn't get all the books on my list. The Unbearable Lightness of Being and the book my brother was looking for was out of stock at the Fully Booked booth. I had to get The Night Circus at the mall branch. But thank the book gods for the 20% discount!

Our MIBF loot!

Just wanna hibernate with these.

What my 9-year old brother likes to read.

I was mostly overwhelmed by all the books and the people that I didn't got in my zone. My brother is elated and he's almost finished reading all his books. Didn't get to take photos of the event cause I have a sucky phone camera. Today's the last day of the book fair. Heard there were more freebies! Can't wait for next year!

M-day Wish List

I'm fond of making wish lists that I don't, in some weird way, stick to. I always end up getting things not on my list - afters hours of wandering in bookstores, some books just show themselves to me at the last minute - that I never tick off anything. These few books (from a three page-list) are way up on my list! Thinking which one I should get for myself (IF I have moolah).

The Time in Between by Maria Duenas
A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
The Paris Wife by Paula McLain
The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt by Caroline Preston
The Soldier's Wife by Margaret Leroy
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Between the Lines by Jodi Picoult & Samantha Van Leer
The Art of Seduction by Robert Greene
The Elements of Style by William Strunk & E.B. White
Zen in the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury

It's a long weekend at MNL. Catching up on my reading. Will visit Booksale soon!

Excuse my 'Rules of Civility' withdrawals

Grand Central Station circa 1935-1941/Courtesy NYC Municipal Archives

“In our twenties, when there is still so much time ahead of us, time that seems ample for a hundred indecisions, for a hundred visions and revisions—we draw a card, and we must decide right then and there whether to keep that card and discard the next, or discard the first card and keep the second. And before we know it, the deck has been played out and the decisions we have just made will shape our lives for decades to come.”

“It is a lovely oddity of human nature that a person is more inclined to interrupt two people in conversation than one person alone with a book.”

“If we only fell in love with people who were perfect for us...then there wouldn't be so much fuss about love in the first place.”

“Anyone who has ridden the subway twice a day to earn their bread knows how it goes: When you board, you exhibit the same persona you use with your colleagues and acquaintances. You've carried it through the turnstile and past the sliding doors, so that your fellow passengers can tell who you are - cocky or cautious, amorous or indifferent, loaded or on the dole. But you find yourself a seat and the train gets under way; it comes to one station and then another; people get off and others get on. And under the influence of the cradlelike rocking of the train, your carefully crafted persona begins to slip away. The super-ego dissolves as your mind begins to wander aimlessly over your cares and your dreams; or better yet, it drifts into ambient hypnosis, where even cares and dreams recede and the peaceful silence of the cosmos pervades.”

“I've come to realize that however blue my circumstances, if after finishing a chapter of a Dickens novel I feel a miss-my-stop-on-the-train sort of compulsion to read on, then everything is probably going to be just fine.”

“Whatever setbacks he had faced in his life, he said, however daunting or dispiriting the unfolding of events, he always knew that he would make it through, as long as when he woke in the morning he was looking forward to his first cup of coffee."

“That's the problem with living in New York. You've got no New York to run away to.”

Inspiring. Gad, I adore Amor Towles.

Will work for books

Novelists write a great deal about paperbacks with creased spines, falling pages, missing covers, and the readers think it's beautiful, romantic even, and it says a lot about the character's personality. I love the thought of it, but in reality I'm pretty fussy about my books. 

I like my books..


- Plastic covered. I have a thing for plastic-covering. I even have my own step-by-step procedure which I follow religiously!
- Signed with my initials & the date I got the book. For gifts, I include the name of the person who gave it to me.
- Marked with highlighters for quotes
- Dog-eared, in small folds, if a highlighter is not in hand
- Not creased, the spine and the cover. But there are exceptions to the rule, like books I got from Booksale. I love them the same!

PS. I keep the receipts and use them as bookmarks! 

I feel like I'm such a dork!


Every one of my books holds a certain memory, a feeling, time, place, persons. I'm not one who goes around getting every book that I want. I have to work for it and I give up certain things, like clothes and shoes and make up! Haha! But nothing beats the feeling from a good read! 


How do you like your books? :)

Stealing away

A quick segue from work. Been feeling down lately, like I carry the weight of the world. Cliche, yes. But it drives me to sudden burst of tears sometimes. It's the worst feeling ever, to not know, to be helpless, but at the back of your mind you know you brought this upon yourself.

Do you know what makes me happy? Books.

Seeing books. Holding books. The smell of books. The smell of paper. Reading books. Reading words. Drinking prose. The elation of discovering a book, a different world,  beautiful characters. The fulfillment of finding a great read with just intuition. The feeling when you reach the epilogue, like jumping off a cliff. Closing your eyes when the words are so beautiful. Closing your eyes so you can imagine.

Then I remember, that's all I need. My family, my friends, my love, my books.

Books and lusts

Currently reading: Rereading, actually. I have the Penguin classic edition, but don't you love this cover? Have you seen the movie?

Thinking about reading: Was supposed to get this book but I ended up with 501 must-read books!

New on bookshelf: Both were on sale when I bought them! 500 bucks for 2 hard bounds. Great finds! 

Perfect for my bedside table :)

Lusting over:

Hello, May!

A lot of things to look forward to in May!

- I turned my shoe shelf into a bookshelf because my desk can't hold everything any longer. Loved the result. Though I still need to find more space for new books.

- Work! Words, words, words, because I'll be writing for a living! And a notebook so I can write random or work related stuff.

- Dad's arriving from London via HK tonight.

- More books! First up in my list: George Martin or John Greene

- A cup of coffee every morning to wake me up for work :)

- Summer rain, I hope! The heat's becoming unbearable. It rained a while ago, though it only lasted 5 minutes.

- To write more.

- An adventure!

Nostalgic week

- Finished reading Before I Fall, book review coming up!

- Reread The Man Who Loved Jane Austen and wishing I could also be sucked in back to 1810 and meet Jane Austen or have my own Mr. Darcy

- Went on a 4-day vacation with friends at Ilocos where time seemed to stand still - old churches, museums, spanish colonial houses, cobble stone streets, kalesas! I'm in love!

- Wishing, praying, hoping, that Filipino writers would write more historical fiction. I don't know if there are many but I only know two, Dead Stars by Paz Benitez Marquez (my all time favorite) and May Day Eve by Nick Joaquin. We have a very rich history and I would love to read it in print. For the meantime, I'll be saving a spot on my bookshelf.

- Here's some photos from my Ilocos trip!

Paoay Church is included in the UNESCO World Heritage List.

The Filipino painter. Juan Luna's ancestral home. He painted the Spolarium.

This grand house sits in Calle Crisologo in Vigan where spanish colonial houses were preserved. I wonder how beautiful it was then, who lived in it, what's the story of the house.

During the Spanish colonial time, rich Filipino families lived in Calle Crisologo. The families preserved their ancertral houses throughout the centuries.

The Bantay Bell Tower was built in 1591 as part of the city's defense. Bantay means "to guard" or "to protect". You can climb to the top of the tower where the view is breathtaking.

- I want to travel back in time so I can see how the Philippines looked then.

- Trying out bullets for my updates! How's your week been? :)

A book is a good excuse for an escape.

The sun, the sand, sundresses, iced tea, YA and historical fiction. A good book will keep you company and lets you have something to daydream about. It's a summer escape on its own :)

I'd gladly have summer flings with these reads:

1. Breathing - Cheryl Renee Herbsman

2. A Map of the Known World - Lisa Ann Sandell

3. Sharing Sam - Katherine Applegate

4. Love You Hate You Miss You - Elizabeth Scott

Escape, travel, dream. Read.

Just keep on doing what you love doing the most.

Day 22 – Favorite book you own

My heart goes out to every book I own.


Every book is a door that leads to beautifully written words and poignant characters, you wish it would swallow you whole and you were them. Every book holds a certain feeling or place or person, your bookshelf has your memories folded in paperbacks. x

Threelogy

Sorry about the lagged posts. I'm having off days but will try really hard to keep up from now on! Since I haven't posted anything for days, I'll cram three in one! ;)

1. Mini library
It's already semester break so I've been stuck at home. Plenty of time to do nothing, which bugs me a little. But then again, it's a much deserved break after all those stress. Anyways, I've been cleaning my room for days now, rearranging stuff around. I stack my books in different places in my room for a cozy feel, I want to be surrounded with things that I love. I had nothing to do so I tried to see what it'll look like if I placed them all in my bookshelf.

Sans the ones my friends borrowed and some left at my dorm. I want to fill every flat surface of my room! Fingers crossed.

2. Current read
Last Sunday, I got to buy myself a book! Yey! I have a long list of books to buy but whenever I'm at the National/Powerbooks/Fully Booked, I get overwhelmed with so many books I forget my list. I have this instinct too! After walking around the store a couple of times, I usually end up buying a book that I impulsively see like it's meant for me. And it's on sale! :)

The Last Letter from your Lover by Jojo Moyes

I'm only past eight chapters. So far, I'm loving the plot and the writing style. I love everything that has a bit of history in it. The Last Letter from your Lover is set on the 60s and the present. It's romantic without going overboard. I'm expecting a lot from this book! Though it's really unexpected, you really don't know where everything is headed. Keeps you at the edge, you wouldn't want to put it down. That's what makes it a good book. Prolly will post book quotes/feature about this next time :)

3. Day 10 - Favorite Classic Book: Pride and Prejudice & Persuasion



Allow me to be so indulgent to choose two :) Written by my favorite author, Jane Austen. Pride and Prejudice is the book that got me reading again. I adored the thought of Mr. Darcy, brooding and handsome. I fell in love with 19th century Europe, the balls, the dresses, the language.

Persuasion reflects the romantic in Jane Austen, and me. Captain Wentworth's coldness towards Anne Elliot when they met after eight years, his subtle ways, his letter after finding out his sentiments towards her are still the same was enough to captivate me. You have to read it yourself. If you've read it, read it again! :)

Photos are mine. x

Book feature: The Sky Is Everywhere

They were always the Walker girls, the girls, Len and Bailey, Bailey and Len. Two sisters that were opposites of each other yet complements perfectly. Then Bailey dies of a broken heart, leaving Len alone with her poems that she scatters around town. This is a story about loss - how it brings persons together, how it separates them, how we find love in it.

Jandy Nelson is a brilliant writer. She turned the novel into a 311-page poem. Mix in music, poetry, and a forest bedroom? Delicious read.

“Okay, close your eyes,” I say. “I'll lead you.” I reach up from behind him and cover my hands over his eyes and steer him down the path.

There is a bedroom. A whole bedroom in the middle of the forest.

“This is unbelievable, how is this here?”

“There's an inn about a mile away on the river. It was a commune in the sixties, and the owner Sam's an old hippie. he set up this forest bedroom for his guests to happen upon if they hike up here, for surprise romance, I guess, but I've never seen a soul pass through and I've been coming forever... I write at that desk, read in that rocker, lie here on this bed, and daydream. I've never brought a guy here before though.”

He smiles, sits on the bed next to where I'm lying on my back and starts trailing his fingers over my belly.

“What do you daydream about?” he asks.

“This,” I say as his hands spreads across my midriff under my shirt. My breathing's getting faster - I want his hands everywhere.

- The Sky Is Everywhere

Day 09 - A book you thought you wouldn’t like but ended up loving

I'm picky when it comes to genre and Paulo Coelho doesn't fall under my type. I'm not crazy for Brida but I found myself highlighting quotes from the book. Paulo Coelho makes his readers reflect about life. I didn't expect that kind of effect on me.

Some highlighted quotes:

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.

None of us knows what might happen even the next minute, and yet still we go forward. Because we trust. Because we have Faith.

Whenever you want to find out about something, plunge straight in.

Brida had the feeling that what she was struggling for in life was exactly this, to be able to sit one day and contemplate just such a sunset.

True love allowed each person to follow their own path, knowing that they would never lose touch with their Soul Mate.

Never stop having doubts. If you ever do, it will be because you've stopped moving forward.

x