8 posts tagged “books”
"Set against the backdrop of 17th century Holland, "Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister" tells the story of Iris, an unlikely heroine who finds herself swept from the lowly streets of Haarlem to a strange world of wealth, artifice and ambition. Iris's path quickly becomes intertwined with that of Clara, the mysterious and unnaturally beautiful girl destined to become her sister. While Clara retreats to the cinders of the family hearth, Iris seeks out the shadowy secrets of her new household--and the treacherous truth of her former life."
The
story of Cinderella has always been my favorite fairytale, but after
reading "Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister" I will never view
Cinderella's story the same way again.
This book is not your typical retelling of the cinder girl's story. It's not your generic fall-in-love-and-marry-the-prince-happily-ever-after. In here, we're not even sure if the prince and Clara, a.k.a. as Cinderella, really fell in love with each other.
In this story, it's not all about the girl thrown to slavery, it's about her family and another family, composed of a mother, who would do anything to survive and move up society's ladder, and her two daughters, one as dull as a lamp on the brink of being extinguished and the other as bright as a star on a clear night.
This is a tale that's not about pumpkins turning into carriages and mice turning into escorts nor about a glass slipper left behind. It's about our preoccupation with physical beauty and human weaknesses.
Jodi Picoult's novels are more than interesting. They do not draw you into other worlds, but makes you take a look into things that are either taken for granted or people don't dare to look at.
In this part romance, part courtroom thriller and part social commentary, Picoult drives her readers through a family's tale of dysfunction, betrayal and redemption.
What enticed me in picking up the book "My Sister's Keeper" was it reminded me of a CSI episode that I watched where the "victim" was a girl, conceived the way Anna was, and whose seeming sole purpose was to give body parts to his brother with cancer. But "My Sister's Keeper" is far more complicated than the kidnap-murder case of CSI that I watched.
Here is a story of a family who battles with death every single day for 14 years and is in the midst of moral and ethical dilemma with regards to their two daughters. The story is not just told through the eyes of Anna, the "giving" daughter who seemed to only exist in relation to her sister Kate, but as well as through the eyes of Brian, the father, a firefighter who can save everyone else's life but his daughters'; Sara, the mother, a former lawyer that opted to just represent her children everywhere, every time, even in the court of death; Jesse, the brother, frustrated for not being worthy to save his sister and thus became obssessed with controlling something as uncontrollable as fire; and Campbell and Julia, Anna's lawyer and guardian ad litem, once lovers and now are caught in the Fitzgerald's war with Kate's leukemia and Anna's struggle to still be part of that war without being the only weapon.
Once I started reading the book, I wasn't able to put it down. I couldn't wait to know what happened to the characters. Picoult has written these characters in a way that there was no room for me to be judgmental of them, but a lot of space for hopes for them to grow.
I hoped for Kate to get the organ she needed to live, yet I also hoped for Anna to gain control of her body. I hoped for Jesse to feel he's worth something even if it didn't mean being a donor to his sister. I hoped for Brian and Sara to keep their family intact and not lose any of their daughters. And I hoped for Campbell and Julia to workout their issues from the past, not just for themselves but for Anna.
I had all these hopes for the characters, but the ending of the book was something far different from what I hoped for and nothing that I expected.
Sidenote:
From Wikipedia: There are plans by New Line Cinema to turn My Sister's Keeper into a feature film, to be released sometime in 2008. Nick Cassavetes is attached to direct it. It will star Cameron Diaz as Sara and Alec Baldwin as Campbell. Dakota and Elle Fanning were originally set to play the sisters but Dakota changed her mind when she found out she would have to shave her head to play the leukemia-suffering character of Kate. Elle dropped out along with her sister, and they were replaced with Sofia Vassilieva and Abigail Breslin.
Awww... The Fanning sisters would have been perfect for this movie!
But with regards to the fiction books that I own, that's another story. That I can lend, just be sure to return them or else...
The fiction books that I like can be divided into
six categories:
First one would be is written by Asian authors. For the longest time, "The Kitchen God's Wife" by Amy Tan has been a favorite of mine. I liked it more than "The Joy Luck Club", which is the more popular book, but I like all the her works anyway.
The next category would be stories about the paranormal, vampires and witches. Here comes Stephen King and Anne Rice.
The next one would be works by Neil Gaiman. I like reading his novels though apparently most people would prefer his graphic novels/comic books.
Next would be courtroom drama such as Jodi Picoult's novels, which is my thing for the moment.
And then there are the mystery novels. Seriously, I like shows that involves crime solving, and I like that in my books as well.
And last but not the least would be adult fairytale, which Sean says is a weird name for a genre because adult and fairytales don't mix. I'm into fairytale retellings such as the
novels of Gregory Maguire.
So, right now, if you'd ask me what to recommend for reading I'd probably saying "My Sister's Keeper" by Jodi Picoult and "Confessions Of An Ugly Stepsister" by Gregory Maguire because I just finished the two. Hehe ^^;
These are the top 106 books most often marked as “unread” by LibraryThing’s users as of 10/2/07. Bold what you have read, italicize those you started but couldn’t finish, and strike through what you couldn’t stand. Add an asterisk to those you’ve read more than once. Underline those on your to-read list.
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude*
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
A Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad*
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes: A Memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States: 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere*
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-Five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers
***most of the stuff here, I know about but haven't read... grabe, andami ko pa palang hindi natatapos basahin. haha...
I just want to share my book collection:
i received this e-mail from myayala.com:
Hi MARIE ANNE CABALO ESCOBAR from us at nationalbookstore.com!
Your order with transaction number <517160099283> has been APPROVED!
Please expect delivery within the next 2 to 4 working days upon approval of your transaction, and depending on the availability of the item/s. Provincial shipping takes 5 to 7 working days, while international shipping takes 2 to 3 weeks
two to four working days upon approval of transaction and depending on availability of the items. hmm... i sure do wish they have stocks of the books i've ordered so that i can get them by january 4...
by greg behrendt and liz tuccillo
he's just not that into you if he's not asking you out
because if he likes you, trust me, he will ask you out
/ an excuse is a polite rejection. men are not afraid of "ruining the friendship"
/ don't get tricked into asking him out. if he likes you, he'll do the asking
/ if you can find him, then he can find you. if he wants to find you, he will
/
just because you like to lead doesn't mean he wants to dance. some
traditions are born of nature and last through time for a reason.
/ "hey, let's meet at so-and-so's party/any bar/friend's house" is not a date. even if you live in new york.
/ men don't forget how much they like you. so put down the phone.
/ you are good enough to be asked out.
he's just not that into you if he's not calling you
men know how to use the phone
/ if he's not calling you, it's because you are not on his mind.
/
if he creates expectations for you, and then doesn't follow through on
little things, he will do the same for big things. be aware of this and
realize that he's okay with disappointing you.
/ don't be with someone who doesn't do what they say they're going to do.
/
if he's choosing not to make a simple effort that would put you at ease
and bring harmony to a recurring fight, then he doesn't respect your
feelings and needs.
/ "busy" is another word for "asshole." "asshole" is another word for the guy you're dating.
/ you deserve a freaking phone call.
he's just not that into you if he's not dating you
"hanging out" is not dating
/
guys tell you how they feel even if you refuse to listen or believe
them. "i don't want to be in a serious relationship" truly means "i
don't want to be in a serious relationship with you" or "i'm not sure
that you're the one." (sorry)
/ better than nothing is not good enough for you!
/ if you don't know where the relationship is going, it's okay to pull over and ask.
/ murky? not good.
/ there's a guy out there who will want to tell everyone that he's your boyfriend. quit goofing around and go find him!
he's just not that into you if he's having sex with someone else
there's never going to be a good excuse for cheating
/
there is no excuse for cheating let me say it again. there is no excuse
for cheating. now you say it. there is no excuse for cheating.
/ your only responsibility;ity in someone else's lapse in judgment is to yourself.
/ cheating is cheating. it doesn't matter whom it was with or how many times it happened.
/
cheating gets easier every time it's done. it's only hard the first
time, when one feels the sting of morality and the guilt of betraying
someone's trust.
/ cheaters never prosper.
/ a cheater only cheats himself, because he doesn't get to be with you.
he's just not that into you if he only wants to see you when he's drunk
if he likes you, he'll want to see you when his judgment isn't impaired
/
it doesn't count unless he says it when he's sober. an "i love you" (or
any semblance thereof) while under the influence of anything stronger
than grape juice won't hold up in court or in life.
/ drinking and
drug use are not a path to one's innermost feelings. otherwise people
wouldn't smash empty beer cans against their skulls or stick their fingers in fire to see if they can feel anything.
/ if he only wants to see you, talk to you, etc., when he's inebriated, it ain't love---it's sport.
/ bad boys are actually bad.
/you deserve to be with someone who doesn't have to get loaded to be around you.
he's just not that into you if he doesn't want to marry you
love cures commitment-phobia
/
"doesn't want to get married" and "doesn't want to get married to me"
are very different things. be sure about which category he falls under.
/ if you have different views about marriage, what else are you not on the same page about? time to take inventory.
/ if you don't feel like you're rushing, why are you waiting?
/ there's a guy out there who wants to marry you.
he's just not that into you if he's breaking up with you
"i don't want to go out with you" means just that
/ you can't talk your way out of a breakup. it is not up for discussion. a breakup is a definitive action, not a democratic one.
/ he doesn't need to be reminded that you're great.
/ there's a guy out there who's going to be really happy that you didn't get back together with your crappy ex-boyfriend.
he's just not that into you if he's disappeared on you
sometimes you have to get closure all by yourself.
/ he might be lying in the hospital with amnesia, but more likely he's just not that into you.
/ no answer is your answer.
/ don't give him the chance to reject you again.
/ let his mother yell at him. you're too busy.
/ he wasn't good enough for you.
he's just not that into you if he's a selfish jerk, a bully, or a really big freak
if you really love someone, you want to do things to make that person happy
/ life is hard enough as it is without choosing someone difficult to share it with.
/ you deserve to be with someone who is nice to you all the time.
/ you already have one asshole. you don't need another.
make a space in your life for the glorious things you deserve.
/ have faith. what other choice is there?
