The Chronicles of Narnia

What I was not able to mention in my previous blog post was that the thing that brought me back to book buying and readings was, finding this huge bargain of The Chronicles of Narnia books 1-7 at a Book Sale, for only 40 pesos per book! (Less than a dollar each.) 

Inspired by my great find, I decided to once again comb the second hand book stores for even more bargains. But nothing came up except for Weekend by Christopher Pike, and The Horse Whisperer by Nicholas Evans, something that I haven't read and which I hope is good, because its not my normal genre of interest and I only got it to keep an open mind about books in general.

I have read up to Book 4, Prince Caspian, when I took a break and shifted back to Pikean horror. Narnia books are children's books.

Weekend by Christopher Pike

When I was in high school, I devoured horror books (especially vampire books), mysteries / whodunnits and thriller books. I enjoyed reading Stephen King, R. L. Stine and Christopher Pike at a time when most of my friends read teenage chick lit and other trash about dating boys. Now that I look back at it, the books that I read were still very teenage-y with a lot of references on dating, but there's still some interesting aspect in them like a monster or a killer destroying everything and love prevailing over the rest. I avoid romance novels like the plague, they're something that spinster aunts love to read. But I still get my dose of romance - in books with very unromantic covers, lol!

One night after work, I fell back into my old habit of searching for second-hand pocketbooks in the mall. I found something that made me feel nostalgic in an instant - a book by Christopher Pike. Mind you, I didn't go to high school when Christopher Pike became a bestselling author; he was popular back in the '80s and '90s, and this book, called Weekend, was published in 1986, a year after I was born. Still, I am a lover of old second-hand books; I had very little money as a student, and I always chose the thickest, cheapest novels that I could buy with my money. Maybe that's one of the reasons why I chose horror over romance - I get more pages in a book, the book gives me an adrenaline fix (and not make me sleep), and thus, I get more value for my money.

When I got back to reading Christopher Pike again, it was like the good old days when all I worry about was algebra, bringing a cute shoulder bag for all of my school stuff, and finding a good book to read. Yet it wasn't as good as I remembered it to be.

Dr. Quinzel and Dr. Arkham

A few days ago, my boss lent me his Harley Quinn comic books. I got to read them during my commute time (while waiting for a ride in a coffee shop - another story) There was a scene in an issue where Harley got fired by Dr. Arkham himself, when she set the Joker free. Somehow this seemed like an anachronism to me, because Dr. Arkham seems like a very old person, from when Arkham Asylum was first built, presumably in an older time than when Harley and the Joker existed.Speculation led to the Dr. Arkham firing Harley to be Arham Jr. C tries to set things right:

The Foundation and Earth - thoughts on two planets

 

Failure can bring one's confidence down a few notches. I know this for a fact because when I flunked out of law school, I began to doubt my abilities - even the ability to finish reading books with actual words on them. For a number of months, I stayed away from novels, until one time when the cab line was so long and I and my boyfriend didn't have the patience to stand in line. I bought two science fiction novels (I read science fiction, horror, fantasy and mystery books for fun) and I am now halfway through one of them, The Foundation and Earth by Isaac Asimov. I'm taking so long reading it because I only read during my lunch hour and any available idle time.

Books, nails and Conan at home

I always tell my friends to go to bookstores that are away from academic and financial areas. People in the know haven’t gone to these bookstores, and one is bound to find a good buy in these hard-to-reach places. I happen to be close to such a bookstore, a branch of National Bookstore right behind our neighbourhood. They have a bargain rack, and I got a pretty neat stack of sale books! Lately I’ve been particularly interested in craft books with colourful pictures, (a relaxing change from all the words I got exposed to in law school), and these are the books that I got:

From the top: Wedding Flowers (50 pesos), Holistic Herbs (50 pesos), Decorative Frames (30 pesos), Painting Ceramics (30 pesos), Painting Glass (30 pesos)

Cheap, aren’t they? I had to come back to the bookstore because they charged me 127.50 for a 50-peso book. At least they corrected themselves.

Catcher In The Rye by J.D. Salinger

Speaking of banned classics, I have a (hard) copy of Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. Truth is, I never thought much of this book. I read this when I was already in law school, and seeing as how I've encountered plenty of controversial pieces of literature in the past, this was something mild. Not that I think bad of it.

 

I could've taken my own photo of the book cover, but I was lazy :P

I found it cute how the blogger who wrote the article on the banned classics depicted this novel:

Audio Book Craze

apparently the novel has a movie version

 Apart from photography, I have found another distraction: audio books. This is an offshoot of law school, when I had to listed to audio codals in my iPod during commute, to remind me of lessons for the evening's class. I think I am beginning to prefer listening rather than reading books, especially that it enables me to use productively the time I spend commuting to and from work and other chores, which I use a considerable amount of time for. I am also looking at getting classical music for my iPod: just music with no words, most probably made with violin and piano. My boyfriend listens to gaming pod casts and all sorts of popular music. I guess this illustrates how different our tastes are, even when we have a lot of things in common. =)

Schizophrenia

We sometimes eat lunch at the Promenade, usually pasta from Xocolat. Yesterday I was at Promenade again, eating pesto pasta and leafing through a magazine. I read an article about a woman who battled schizophrenia. She is now in her thirties, but she was diagnosed with the mental illness sometime in college, when she had been nineteen, a budding writer working with the University paper and with a bright future ahead of her. Somehow things went to a downward spiral when the disease took control of her life. She had parents, friends, and a community who accepts her, but when the voices became insistent, they all left and she was left alone.

Today at Digg I again saw an article on Schizophrenia. It described the same symptoms, and a woman who has battled the disease, albeit not the same woman described in the magazine article. The experience was likewise the same: a person who seemingly has everything and who loses everything all because of the voices in their heads.

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

I've been making a conscious effort in reading classic novels, and for the longest time, waiting for when I'd finally get my hands on a copy of 1984 by George Orwell in a second-hand bookstore. No such luck, so far, but I managed to find A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess in a stall near the grocery.

I've never seen the film, but the novel was quite interesting. It tells of Alex, a teenager living in a presumably futuristic setting. At fifteen, he and his teen aged friends go around at night mugging people on the streets and generally being rascals.