Hi everyone! I know we’re in a brand new year and it seems a bit of drag to kick it off with the word ‘fail’ on this post’s title but that’s the truth.

Exactly a year and two days ago, I set out to do the 2010 TBR (To Be Read) Challenge, that is to read 12 books in 1 year which translates to 1 book per month. Sounded so easy right? Not for yours truly as a combination of laziness and other things to do kept me from succeeding in the challenge.

How did I do? Well, here’s the final tally:

1. Makamisa: The Search for Rizal’s Third Novel by Ambeth Ocampo
2. FAT by Rob Grant
3. Dead Air by Bob Larson
4. Military Errors of WWII by Kenneth Macksey
5. Holy Blood, Holy Grail by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh & Henry Lincoln
6. The Associate by John Grisham
7. A Season of Grace by N.V.M. Gonzalez
8. Po-On by F. Sionil Jose
9. Treasure Island by Robert Louis
10. Inspirational Thoughts and Stories of Bloggers from All Over the World
11. The Birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant
12. The Seat of the Soul by Gary Zukav

Yes. That’s three out of the 12 books in the list that I got to read in the last year. However, there’s some consolation, as I’ve managed to finish some books that were not in my 2010 TBR list.

Those books are:

The Time Traveller’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger, check out my review here.

Nowhere to Run by Judy Westware. Damn good auto-bio book.

4 books in a year? Terrible isn’t it? Well, the good thing about a new year is the spirit to start anew and set out new goals nearly pardons your shortcomings from the previous one.

So, in the spirit of the new year and of new year’s resolutions, I am going to join again this year’s TBR Challenge and have another crack at it.

Good luck to me and all the other book lovers out there!

Of course, Happy New Year to everyone!

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• January 8, 2010 -- 2010 TBR Challenge (3)

The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

It is one of the most original love stories I’ve ever read. But it’s not filled with mushy stuff that makes you think it is just another cliche of its genre.

The author’s portrayal of Henry and Clare as a couple struggling to keep their love, marriage and lives as normal as possible makes you torn between wishing you could also time travel or pray that you’d not be able to do it at all.

I grew up with an infatuation for time travelling. There were many times that I’d wish that I could do it myself, go back further in time, to see for myself what was it like during World War II, the discovery of fire, the invention of the telephone, etc or into the future to see if we’d really invent the lightsaber or go live in space colonies.

But this novel removes all the "oohs" and "aahs" of time travel and mix it in with an average person’s daily struggle and journey just to make it through the day.

The horrors of seeing your past mistakes and sufferings replayed right before your very eyes. The pain and joy of seeing your family or friends that have passed away in your present as they were in your past. The life-altering discovery of the time, place and manner of your death, you’d believe that Jesus is indeed the man for facing it all.

The novel is a brilliant and unique approach to telling the love story of its two main characters, Henry DeTamble and Clare Abshire. Two lovers bound by fate for each other until the very end.

Instead of flashbacks to tell their pasts and foreshadowing the future, the author cleverly uses an ingenious device; time travel which is also at the heart of the of it all.

Indeed, the novel deserves a place in every book shelf and the author, the praises she receives and continues to.

Get the book from Amazon: The Time Traveler’s Wife

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• August 20, 2010 -- New Titles in Literature and Fiction at Amazon (0)

The last two weeks have been amazing. I was able to finally finish reading The Birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant. Yay! It took me three months of erratic reading to finish the book. I’ve got the review in the drafts and would post it real soon.

After that, I picked up Nowhere to Run by Judy Westwater. My girlfriend read it first and convinced me to read it immediately. I did and I found it hard to put the book down, finished reading in just three days. Now I’m looking for a copy of Judy’s other book, Street Kid.

Currently, I’m reading Gary Zukav’s The Seat of the Soul. It’s a non-fiction book dealing with mysticism, evolution, human thought and reincarnation. Brainy and philosophical stuff I tell you. After reading Chapter 1, it reminded me of my TBR 2010 reading list. And it’s not a pretty picture.

Here’s the progress so far:

Here’s my original list for the 2010 TBR Challenge:

1. Makamisa: The Search for Rizal’s Third Novel by Ambeth Ocampo
2. FAT by Rob Grant
3. Dead Air by Bob Larson
4. Military Errors of WWII by Kenneth Macksey
5. Holy Blood, Holy Grail by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh & Henry Lincoln
6. The Associate by John Grisham
7. A Season of Grace by N.V.M. Gonzalez
8. Po-On by F. Sionil Jose
9. Treasure Island by Robert Louis
10. Inspirational Thoughts and Stories of Bloggers from All Over the World
11. The Birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant
12. The Seat of the Soul by Gary Zukav

Good progress right? I think I could finish The Seat of the Soul in a week. Especially how I could not settle with how it views evolution. Then, I plan to read Ambeth Ocampo’s translation of ‘Makamisa‘ Rizal’s third novel, it’s a short one. A day or two with it and I’m done.

The most challenging I think would be Holy Blood, Holy Grail. But that’s for another post for another time.

I won’t ask. I know a lot of those who also joined the 2010 TBR challenge must have already made great progress or have finished their list already.

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99% of the books I’ve read get moved from the shelf on my desk to the old cabinet outside my room. It serves as a sort of archive for all the piles of paperworks, magazines, pamphlets, school papers and books I’ve accumulated over the last five years of college.

I can’t remember if I’ve thrown away a book I’ve finished reading. Perhaps it ended up in my sister’s room or somewhere in the house. To recap, my general rule is, once I’ve finished reading a book, it leaves my room. It lessens the clutter and helps in trimming down the weight on my aging study desk.

I can’t stand to throw away a book. Even if it’s a trade paperback not worthy of a second read. Even the books I have an e-book version of are still with me. It’s old school but I am the sentimental type anyways, especially with books.

But it seems that I belong to a dying breed of book lovers as industry experts are saying that printed book sales are on downhill while e-books are on the rise. It’s all part of the ‘minimalist’ lifestyle that is slowly gaining popularity in Europe.

Susannah Straughan of Blogcritics.org tells of this lifestyle that seems to have resulted in throwing away printed books:

Earlier this week, The London Evening Standard, ran a piece called “Living the iLife”, which promised to clue us in on what “today’s smart movers” were doing with their laptops.

The unfortunately named Mark Prigg describes the radical, stripped-down lifestyle of young, London-based entrepreneur Hermione Way. Apparently, she is one of the “digital minimalists” who are perfecting the art of living without clutter and running their lives from a selection of gadgets — MacBook, iPad, iPhone. She has already junked her CDs and DVDs and says “I’m in the process of chucking out all my books as I can read them on my iPad.”

A room with no books on the shelves. The thought of it unsettles me. Sure I want to own a Kindle device but throw away all of my books and replace it with e-book equivalents? No way!!!

Just like Ms Straughan, I still:

appreciate the deep satisfaction of owning, living amongst and — yes, Guardian columnist Charlie Brooker — smelling books. You cannot enjoy a meaningful, lifelong relationship with a collection of digital files — no matter how good the contrast of the e-ink screen.

How about you? Would go down the similar path to a minimalist living and trade all your books for an e-book reader and have your library digitized?

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• August 21, 2010 -- Review: The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution (0)
• June 28, 2010 -- Jumping from one book to another (1)
• July 6, 2010 -- June’s Best Selling Books According to Wall Street Journal (0)
• January 20, 2010 -- Book reading progress….or the lack of it (1)

Low book sales are giving the publishers tough times but some authors are still raking in the Benjamins by the millions.

Forbes has done a survey to find out which authors have made it big from June 1, 2009 to June 1, 2010. And here they are:

James Patterson – $70 million. He is under contract to write 17 books until 2012 for an estimated $100 million. No ebooks for this author as there’s not even a computer in his office as he writes his novels in the longhand.

Stephenie Mayer – $40 million. Though she did not publish a book this year, her Twilight series and the films based on it placed her on the 2nd spot of the list.

Stephen King – $34 million. The horror and suspense bestseller is in 3rd helped by $8 million from backlist sales.

Danielle Steel – $32 million. Part of the romance bestseller’s income for this year includes the $1 million settlement from her former assistant convicted of embezzlement.

Ken Follet – $20 million. His highly acclaimed novel “The Pillars of Earth” has been turned into a TV series in the US.

Dean Koontz – $18 million. He has 44 New York Times bestselling novels under his belt.

Janet Evanovich – $16 million. According to Forbes, her selling power is comparable to James Patterson (about 20 million of her titles sell annually).

John Grisham – $15 million. His first crack at the tween market with “Theodore Boone: Kid Lawyer” has received mixed reviews.

Nicholas Sparks – $14 million. He has sold 55 million books and movies made from Sparks’ books have grossed $300 million, says Forbes.

J. K. Rowling – $10 million. She may be down at 10th place but make no mistake. She’s become the 1st billionaire author thanks to her Harry Potter books.

I have one confession though, of all the authors in the list, I’ve only read a book by just one author: John Grisham’s The Appeal. But it’s a perfect excuse to go get a book or two by all of them.

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The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution by Richard Dawkins

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Reading this book is like going back through all my classes in biology, genetics, and evolution; all in one sitting. Well not literally because of my busy schedule, it took me two months to read the entire book.

Going back, Richard Dawkins presents the case for evolution and the evidences for it in a simple, witty, fun and realistic way. Even a friend of mine who had no formal science training and just a few units of biology was immersed with reading only a few pages of the book. By the time he gave the book back to me, you can see it in his eyes that he had a clearer understanding of evolution, well the significance of tree rings and how we use them to date fossils to be precise.

What I really enjoyed about this book is the way Dawkins took on the skeptics, deniers and critics of evolution with concrete evidences and how these have been blinded by their own beliefs and misconceptions.

He cleared up a lot of misconceptions about evolution. Once such misconception goes on like this:

“I’ll believe in evolution when a monkey gives birth to a human baby.”

To which Dawkins responds so straightforwardly in Chapter 6, page 155:

“Once again, humans are not descended from monkeys. We share a common ancestor with monkeys. As it happens, the common ancestor would have looked a lot like a monkey than a man, and we would indeed probably have called it a monkey if we had met it, some 25 million years ago. But even though humans evolved from an ancestor that we could sensibly call a monkey, no animal gives birth to an instant new species, or at least not one as different from itself as a man is from a monkey, or even from a chimpanzee. That isn’t what evolution is about. Evolution not only is a gradual process as a matter of fact; it has to be gradual if it is to do any evolutionary work. Huge leaps in a single generation – which is what a monkey giving birth to a human would be – are almost as unlikely as divine creation, and are ruled of for the same reason: too statistically improbable. It would be so nice if those who oppose evolution would take a tiny bit of trouble to learn the merest rudiments of what it is that they are opposing.”

And the book has plenty more cases to refute and debunk those who oppose and deny evolution. The same cases and examples are also the book’s points of strength in explaining how evolution works to the lay man. The book has done one thing brilliantly, prove that evolution is a fact. An undeniable fact.

Buy a copy from Amazon

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I know this book blog has been largely ignored by yours truly, but not my books. So there’s not much to worry. I’m half-way through reading The Birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant expecting to finish it by September.

Anyways, here’s to break the silence by sharing with you the latest releases in Literature and Fiction over at Amazon.

Last Night at Chateau Marmont: A Novel – From The Devil Wears Prada author Lauren Weisberger, the novel tells the story of how a happy couple – Brooke and Julian Alter struggles to keep their marriage when Julian’s low-level recording career suddenly jumps to fame. Julian is dragged on tours by his manager and publicist while Brooke tries to balance her career and being a supportive wife. Marriage and the price of success are all found in this novel.

The Improper Life of Bezellia Grove: A Novel – It’s the 1960′s in Nashville, where young Bezellia Grove is growing up in well-off family with a father who spends his entire time at work and a mother obsessed with status who liberally unleashes a mouthful on their hired black helpers Maizelle Cooper and Nathaniel Stephenson. Things get sticky when Bezellia develops feelings for Nathaniel’s son Samuel. They were kept safe from each other so Bezellia gets involved with another young man from a family her parents wouldn’t approve of. The family loses its fortunes when Bezellia reaches college, which expanded her horizons while secrets are revealed. A tale of love in the midst of a family in turmoil and a cultural upheaval by Susan Gregg Gilmore

The Atlas of Love: A Novel – Jill becomes both pregnant and single at the end of one spring semester, her two closest friends band together to raise the child as one family. Juggling graduate school, parenting and living together in Seattle. Things go into a tailspin in ways none of them expected. A story of how three lives were bound together and changed forever by a baby named Atlas. This debut novel by Laurie Frankel has already got good reviews.

These are my top three picks from the list, the ones I found most interesting. They are now included in my ever growing wishlist. Do you have other new titles to recommend? Share them in the comments please.

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• June 28, 2010 -- Jumping from one book to another (1)

Curious as to what books were selling hot this past month? The Wall Street Journal has come up with their own list and here it is:

FICTION
1. “Sizzling Sixteen” by Janet Evanovich (St. Martin’s Press)
2. “The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner” by Stephenie Meyer (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers)
3. “The Overton Window” by Glenn Beck (Threshold Editions)
4. “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest” by Stieg Larsson (Knopf)
5. “Family Ties” by Danielle Steel (Delacorte Press)
6. “Dark Flame” Alyson Noël (St. Martin’s Griffin)
7. “The Kane Chronicles, Book 1: The Red Pyramid” by Rick Riordan (Hyperion Books)
8. “The Lion” by Nelson DeMille (Grand Central Publishing)
9. “The Help” by Kathryn Stockett (Amy Einhorn Books)
10. “The Passage” by Justin Cronin (Ballantine Books)
11. “Whiplash” by Catherine Coulter (Putnam)
12. “Theodore Boone: Kid Lawyer” by John Grisham (Dutton Books)
13. “Frankenstein: Lost Souls” by Dean Koontz (Bantam)
14. “Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Book 5: The Last Olympian” by Rick Riordan (Hyperion Books)
15. “The Spy” by Clive Cussler and Justin Scott (Putnam)

NONFICTION

1. “Sht My Dad Says” by Justin Halpern (It Books)
2. “The Why of Work” by Dave Ulrich, Wendy Ulrich (McGraw-Hill)
3. “Women, Food & God” by Geneen Roth (Scribner)
4. “Medium Raw” by Anthony Bourdain (Ecco)
5. “Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Do-It-Yourself Book” by Jeff Kinney (Abrams)
6. “Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang” by Chelsea Handler (Grand Central Publishing)
7. “Delivering Happiness” by Tony Hsieh (Business Plus)
8. “Spoken From the Heart” by Laura Bush (Scribner)
9. “The Big Short” by Michael Lewis (W.W. Norton & Co.)
10. “The Wimpy Kid Movie Diary” by Jeff Kinney (Abrams)
11. “StrengthsFinder 2.0″ by Tom Rath (Gallup Press)
12. “Uncharted TerriTori” by Tori Spelling (Gallery Press)
13. “War” by Sebastian Junger (Twelve)
14. “The Last Stand” by Nathaniel Philbrick (Viking)
15. “Empire of the Summer Moon” by S.C. Gwynne (Scribner)

“Theodore Boone: Kid Lawyer” by John Grisham really got my attention so I Googled for it and most of the reviews I’ve read give it a below-average rating. It seems that Grisham is not yet ready for a younger audience.

Though it has not completely killed my interest, hopefully I could fish a copy from Book Sale or some other used books store.

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• January 2, 2010 -- Hello world! Welcome to my book blog! (9)
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Have no fear, I’m still reading books. It’s just that in the past two months, I can’t get myself to focus on reading just one book. As can be seen on the side bar, I have two books that I’m “officially” reading.

Sun Tzu’s The Art of War is actually a re-read, the first time I’ve read it was about 6 years ago during my junior year in high school. I’m re-reading it as a refresher and to help me in my social commentary blogging.

The second book, The Birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant is a super slow progress. I’m currently stuck at Chapter 11 wherein the book is going deeper into the politics of story, which took place in Renaissance Florence, Italy. Right around the time Niccolo Machiavelli was still alive!

So it’s probably because of my short-attention span and extreme interest in history, politics and philosophy that made me drop ‘Venus’ and pick up Machiavelli’s The Prince from my bookshelf. And I can’t help but smile to see that the two books are intimately connected.

Both books deal with the politics of 14th and 15th century Florence, Italy! The Prince dealing strictly with the politics side, while The Birth of Venus provides a personal and intimate glimpse of the politicians’ lives even though it’s just fiction.

Now I have a feeling that the other books in my collection also share some intimate link or another. Hopefully though, all of this would help me finish these two books I’m currently reading so that I can move on to the others.

I’m sure you other book lovers had a similar encounter like this before. Having two or more books that are not in the same series yet they share some intimate connections with each other. Care to share the story?

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• September 15, 2010 -- Updates on my 2010 TBR Challenge (0)
• May 30, 2010 -- Things that distract me from finishing a book (1)
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• January 10, 2011 -- Failing the 2010 TBR Challenge (1)

Apart from the busy school work as a student-volunteer, consultant to various student organizations and being a "big brother" to many friends, my short-attention span has prevented me from finishing a book I’ve started to read.

I’ve joined the TBR Challenge of 2010 and at present, I’ve only finished reading two books in the list. The third one, "The Birth of Venus" by Sarah Dunant is stuck at Chapter 11. Remember that I’ve started reading this last March which was two months ago!

Now what could’ve distracted me from steadily reading this book? Let me list down the culprits:

Facebook – It had never occurred to me that I’d be so hooked on a social networking site, ever. Being an introvert and a geek, joining one was never big on me. When Friendster was still king, I was among the last of among my friends to join the site. Now, practically 1/3 of the time I’m online is spent on Facebook, playing games, checking out the latest posts from my friends and promoting my online publications.

Naruto Shippuudden – both the anime and manga series have become a staple digital consumption. It can’t be helped. I’m a solid Naruto fan and the series is top notch!

Online newspapers – Half of my RSS feeds are from news web sites as I continue to write about politics, social issues and commentary.

Movie marathons – On a lazy day, when there’s not much to do online, I spend the day away watching DVDs with my girlfriend. When we have the money to spare, we go to the mall to watch the newest movies.

TV – Despite being online for more than 8 hours a day, I still spend a great deal of time watching TV. Mythbusters, CSI: Las Vegas and New York, HBO and Star Movies are my daily TV fare.

Other books – This is the context of finishing the books on my TBR list. If I wanted to finish it on time, I have to prioritize what’s on the list. Unfortunately though, I keep on picking up books that are not on the list.

Come to think of it, the only time I get to read a book is when someone else is using my laptop or the connection is so slow I can’t do anything online.

Perhaps I should trim down the time I spend on the things that distract me from finishing the books I’m reading. It’s a matter of self-control and channeling the passion for books and reading into something more positive and productive. Like finishing my TBR list.

So which would be scratched from my daily routine? Facebook? Movie marathons?

How about you guys? What are the things the distract you from finishing a book you’re reading?

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