Communal Bookshelf

Does your house have a communal bookshelf? If not, is your bookshelf centrally located so everyone has access to it?
I do not have a communal bookshelf other than the few books that sit on the coffee table in the living room. Living in a city condo doesn’t afford to show off all my books in [...]

Last Call for Reading: Help Me Decide

Have you fulfilled (if any) your reading goals this year? As the days of 2009 are numbered, and that the holiday seasons imply considerable disruption to reading routine, do you have an immediate list of books that you’d like to finish before year-end? Willful abstinence from joining reading challenge affords a flexibility to peruse books [...]

Nobel Prize for Literature

While I do not doubt the literary merits of Nobel prize of Literature winners, and the honor is awarded to an author from any country who has, in the words from the will of Alfred Nobel, produced “in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction.” Maybe it’s the ideal direction [...]

Social Reading

How much of your reading do you share with others (outside of blogging?) Do you belong to a book or library club? Do you trade books with friends? Do you tell others what you’re reading?
Reading used to be a private enterprise because my attachment to books and tireless perusal were such bewilderment to friends. Books [...]

Bookish Companion, a Matt’s Musing

A sudden thought takes hold of my mind, thus a Matt’s musing.

We made love the next morning. It was Saturday and we had a long, leisurely breakfast in the diner around the corner. I enjoyed weekends and the chance to have breakfast with Corey. We nosed around in bookstores that afternoon. Corey looked both intellectual [...]

Taking Notes

Do you take notes while reading – either for your reviews or for yourself? How/where do you make these notes (on the page, post-its, scrap paper, notebooks etc)?

I take my reading notes very seriously because it is the act of conversing and interacting with the authors and their words. Notes are testimony to my personal [...]

Belated Report on Read-a-thon

Everyone must be recovering from the 24-hour read-a-thon as the blogsphere is awfully quiet. Yesterday morning at 5, the aroma of the pot of dark-roast coffee kicked off my read-a-thon. I finished the second half of Fixer Chao, a brilliant debut by Han Ong, and wrote a review of it. That was an encouraging beginning [...]

Questions for Authors

If you could ask your favorite author (alive or dead) one question … who would you ask, and what would the question be?
The recalcitrant self in me strikes again because I simply cannot resist asking just one question. The inquisitive mind will disclose some of the questions that still make me contemplate every now and [...]

Weeding Out Books

When’s the last time you weeded out your library?
I haven’t been weeding out books from my collection as much as I have wanted. I have been accumulating books I have read all summer, after the last weeding during spring break. I tend to let books sit around until they have gravitated in me. By gravitation [...]

How to Approach Book Lists, a Monday Musing

This past week, Borders re-released it’s 100 Favourite Books of All Times. Do you vote in these kinds of polls when they arise? Do you look through the list, or seek out books featured?
I’m not aware of such a poll, at least not Borders in the United States. Although any list of favorite titles [...]