Books

Books I bought over the past month

(From Fully Booked at Gateway)
-- The Yiddish Policeman's Union, Michael Chabon
-- Dreams from My Father, Barack Obama
-- Freakonomics, Stephen Levitt and Steven Dubner
-- Blink, Malcolm Gladwell

(From Books 4 Less at Pearl Drive)

-- The Big Love, Sarah Dunn

-- 9 Steps to Financial Freedom, Suze Orman

-- The Bonfire of the Vanities, Tom Wolfe
I got a paperback copy for 99 bucks. I don't know if I'll end up reading it, but I'd heard great things about it especially from Michael Lewis' Liar's Poker.

-- The Amateur Marriage, Anne Tyler
I haven't read any Anne Tyler yet, but Nick Hornby keeps selling her in his interviews, so when I saw this, I got it.

-- The Confessions of Max Tivoli, Andrew Sean Greer
The book has a unique pretext, a man who lived his life in reverse, but what really got me was the opening line from the book: We are each the love of someone's life. Now that's a hook. Don't you want to read what happens next?


Books I read over the past month

-- Possession, AS Byatt
This was a long book that just came chugging along. It was about a pair of young university researchers who uncover a love affair between their Victorian-era subjects. It can be a breeze to read if you're the type who enjoys reading Ambeth Ocampo (I do) or who loves i-Witness documentaries about the secret lives of our national heroes (ditto). The love story the researchers discover unfolds like a telenovela (mala-A Love Story ni Aga at Maricel actually yung dating nung kwento), and the researchers conveniently fall in love in the end. It's interesting to note that AS Byatt was the same author who railed against Harry Potter books a couple of years ago.

-- Freakonomics, Stephen Levitt and Steven Dubner
-- Blink, Malcolm Gladwell
These were alright, but I enjoyed Gladwell's The Tipping Point better than either book.

-- Dreams from My Father, Barack Obama

-- The Big Love, Sarah Dunn
I got suckered into buying this chick lit book because of the setup: a couple throws a dinner party, the guy goes out for mustard, and calls the girl from a payphone to tell her that he's in love with someone else and is not coming back (and to not wait for the mustard). It was an effortless, mindless read, with a sprinkle of chuckles here in there (although it got too cute in parts). It's a welcome respite after the last several books.

-- 9 Steps to Financial Freedom, Suze Orman
I'm a huge Suze Orman fan. I try to catch her show on weekends just for the "Can I Afford It?" segment. Tapos mag-chi-cheer ako if Suze approves. Para akong timang.


My Reading Queue (in no particular order)
-- Yellow Dog, Martin Amis
-- The Yiddish Policeman's Union, Michael Chabon
-- No One Writes to the Colonel, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
-- The Confessions of Max Tivoli, Andrew Sean Greer
-- The Bonfire of the Vanities, Tom Wolfe
-- The Amateur Marriage, Anne Tyler
-- A Wild Sheep Chase, Haruki Murakami
-- Beloved, Toni Morrison
-- The Hours, Michael Cunningham
-- A Battler's Laissez-Faire, PL Wombwell
-- Foucault's Pendulum, Umberto Eco
-- Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
-- The Gift, Vladimir Nabokov
-- Pale Fire, Vladimir Nabokov

I've had some of these books for a couple of years now, pero bili pa rin ako ng bili :p

Labels: books

- posted by jaemark @ 7/15/2008 12:40:00 AM