It's all in my head

You guys!!! These are my Booksale finds! :))

I went to 7 branches in Metro Manila with Flery, and honestly I had more fun walking from Malate to Makati for Booksale over walking around an air conditioned mall in Divisoria (more on that on another post)!

• Seventeenth Summer was written in 1942, and it inspired Michelle Dalton’s Sixteenth Summer which I really liked. Since Seventeenth Summer was unavailable anywhere electronically, it has since then been on my mental list of books I watch out for. So there we were in Booksale, with myself holding a book I was about to buy, when for some reason I was drawn to look at the pocket books section (which I hardly ever do), and bam! There it was! I literally shrieked when I saw it (and shrieked 5 times more later). I didn’t even look at how much it was, not until I got home. 
• The Summer I Turned Pretty has quite the story. It’s the very first good book I found at the very first Booksale branch I went to in Manila, one that was pretty near the place I was staying at, and freaked when I saw it. However, I had to think about buying it because a) the cover was rather dirty, and b) was I really going to spend 145 pesos on YA romance? So I put it back. But then when I walked to another Booksale branch, they had the second book, It’s Not Summer Without You (but someone else was already bought it while me and my aching heart just stared). When Flery and I got home, she said “Imagine if you got to buy both books. You’ll only need the last one to complete the trilogy.” So I went back to buy it, and went to more Booksale branches to find the last two. Obviously we were unsuccessful. Anyway, thanks to my trusty wet wipes, the book now looks pretty clean!
• If I Stay is the prequel to my all-time favorite YA romance book Where She Went, and I really did not expect to find it because I didn’t know that the mall I went to had a Booksale branch. I wanted to buy myself shoes, but then just in case, I asked the guard if they had Booksale. And they did! I was alone when I found it, but that did not stop me from going “Oh my god!” when I found it! :)
• These three Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events books… Man, I cannot believe I have them. I own those beautiful babies, and I am only 8 books away from completing the 13-book series! I already have The Reptile Room and The Bad Beginning (which I got for Christmas). 
  We went to Booksale at the Mall of Asia, and I found a hardbound copy of The Reptile Room. I didn’t pick it up immediately because I already had one back home, but then I got to thinking of getting it for Marry. When I went back to the children’s section, the attendant took it out and hid it behind the counter. Since I was a shameless tourist, I took a peek and saw a list of books that customers pay to be reserved. It was so unfair. I suppose that’s why we don’t have a lot of good books down here in Davao. </3

I spent around 860 PHP+ for books that total up to 2247 PHP when bought at bookstores. I saved 1387 PHP. Good job, me! :)

January

The Velveteen Rabbit, Margery Wiliams
The Old Man and The Sea, Ernest Hemingway
Big Fish, Daniel Wallace
Last Night I Sang To The Monster, Benjamin Alire Sáenz
Someday This Pain Will Be Useful To You, Peter Cameron
The Devil and Miss Prym, Paulo Coelho

February

The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Stephen Schbosky
The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien
The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera

March

I am The Messenger, Markus Zusak
Struck By Lightning, Chris Colfer
Delicacy, David Foenkinos

April

If I Stay, Gayle Forman
The Downside of Being Charlie, Jenny Torres Sanchez

May

The Last Lecture, Randy Pausch
Speechless, Hannah Harrington

June

My Life Next Door, Huntley Fitzpatrick
Graffiti Moon, Cath Crowley
The Silver Linings Playbook, Matthew Quick
A Sorrow Beyond Dreams, Peter Handke

Aside from John Knowles’s A Separate Peace, I’ve also been reading Peter Cameron’s Someday This Pain Will Be Useful To You. I’ve read quotations from Someday multiple times on my dash, and the first time I came across it I just thought it was such a beautiful title for a book. Why wouldn’t it be? Ovid said it first.

I’m trying to grow out of young adult romances this year (I read 91 books in 2011 but more than half of those were young adult romances. Terrible.), and to ease myself into more grown-up themes I’m reading these bildungsroman books. I read The Great Gatsby over the holidays and literally I just didn’t get it. It wasn’t like the Nicholas Sparks middle-aged couples’ problems I was used to, but then it’s not like Nicholas Sparks writes literary masterpieces, right? Hopefully later this year I’d be able to call myself a well-read person, and be able to understand all the implications in The Great Gatsby—one day, I swear, I’ll have reasons of my own on why F. Scott Fitzgerald was a great writer.

I wanted to write about this quotation I really like:

The main problem was I don’t like people in general and people my age in particular, and people my age are the ones who go to college. I would consider going to college if it were a college of older people… So I get impatient. For some reason I think you should only say something if it’s interesting or absolutely has to be said. I had never really been aware of how difficult these feelings made things for me until an experience I had this spring.
A horrible experience.

I’m in love with articulate narrators. Love ‘em love ‘em love ‘em.

I’m just gonna talk a little about the second half of the paragraph.

A little birdy (wtf) told me that not ranting on Facebook is a sign of maturity, and usually I agree with that, but these past couple of months I’ve been shutting up about shit I’m not supposed to talk about and it’s literally been eating me up. I guess it just feels so liberating when I finally release how I feel. It’s easy if it’s just me, or someone who’d understand. But if you’re up against adults acting like kids, you have to be the adult and be “mature” about it. I know I’m nearly nineteen, but I was never “eased into” adulthood. It sucks, because you’d think I’d be so used to this kind of life, but no. I still try to experience things I’ve missed out on. That’s why I’m immature as fvck. I’m tactless, and loud, and annoying, and I really want to change that.

Today started out well. I was early for my 7:40 AM class, which as I said before I’ve been having a lot of trouble attending. But then we had a quiz at my Cross-cultural Communication class, which I’m betting I passed…halfway. It’s completely my fault, of course. I should’ve studied all night. But I wasn’t able to. Why? Because I was in bed from 1PM til 7AM (Yeah, I wake up at 7AM for a 7:40 class lol) this morning, nursing a cold. It was just horrible. I was supposed to go to school before 5PM to attend mass but it was so damn cold outside—for my sick self, that is. 

All (Thursday) afternoon I read Gayle Forman’s latest book, Just One Day on a computer while I was curled up in bed. I rotated the desktop 90°—smartest decision EVER. We’ve been having the laptop sideways whenever we’re reading/watching something in bed for a while, and we’ve finally figured out how to do rotate the display! :) 

So anyway, it was so good. I loved it when they were fighting. I love it when couples fight in books. There’s something about authors describing how a girl can love and hate a boy at the same time, or vice-versa. This is probably because I’ve undergone the same thing for a year. LOL. Okay. Ignore that sentence. Anyway, I didn’t read the summary on Goodreads. I just skimmed through it to make sure it was about young people. I don’t read about middle-aged people’s romances, not anymore. It’s just so messed up. About halfway through though, SPOILER ALERT: the guy vanishes, and just as I did with New Moon, I skipped through the book until I got to the bit where the guy comes back, which is about the last two pages of the book /SPOILER. So I saved my bookmark and closed the window. 

My book/blog friends Marry and Paolo have recommended a lot of books to me that I haven’t read because when I would ask them if the series is over yet they would shut up. I don’t want to die tomorrow not knowing how a book series ends. So at the thought that SPOILER ALERT: Willem and LuLu are in a good place, /SPOILER I discontinued for a bit. The “companion” book, Just One Year, is set to release in the fall. Gah, I can’t wait. 

I’m all better now, if you’re wondering. A liter of Tropicana OJ always does the trick.