Posts tagged powerbooks

It’s been a while since I last fired a series of bullets in this godforsaken Cormac McCarthy-esque landscape of a book blog, so I figured I’d post one now. Not that anyone actually noticed that it’s been a long while since nor that anyone wondered why my last couple of posts were about films based on books and not about books, period. The last unordered list I posted was of the books that I fortunately rescued from the deluge that was our fourth-floor apartment’s bathroom faucet’s totally unexpected four-in-the-morning wake-up call; the one before that was of the books I rescued from the bargain bin of Powerbooks on the first day of the bookstore chain’s crazy-amazing month-long sale; and a list before that was of the books I got from a Fully Booked branch up north where I sought refuge after I rescued myself from a literal daylight robbery near to where I usually eat fried chicken and fries. Apparently, I’m great at rescuing. And this past week saw me rescuing more books, from book sale tables and long-forgotten spots on bookstore shelves, and—again—myself, from the claustrophobic cubicle of boredom. Enter: another stack of bullet points. Light Boxes by Shane Jones. A slim but not inexpensive novel, which I finished while lining up for An Education at Cine Europa last Saturday night, about former balloonists waging war on the month of February. Go figure. Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner. When I’m not busy incriminating myself on Twitter, I may be power-searching for and bidding on books on eBay. This one, purportedly containing one of the longest sentences in Western literature, is my latest catch. The Broom of the System by David Foster Wallace. Included in the Penguin Ink series of reprints featuring cover illustrations by famous tattoo artists, this is the amazing first novel by the author of the more amazing Infinite Jest. The Hundred Brothers by Donald Antrim. A novel about a hundred brothers. Postmodern hilarity ensues. Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist by Rachel Cohn & David Levithan. I first read this on my office computer, by way of a pirated e-book version which I, being an electronics engineer in a company chiefly concerned with electronics engineering, cleverly renamed, Voltage and Current Calculations. Of course I had to get the “real” version. Thumbsucker by Walter Kirn. A novel about “the King Kong of oral obsessives” by the author of Up in the Air. Money by Martin Amis. One of the two books I got for only Php50 at the National Book Store stall at the Manila International Book Fair at the SMX Convention Center in SM Mall of Asia last Saturday. The Tent by Margaret Atwood. The other book I got for only Php50 at the National Book Store stall at the Manila International Book Fair at the SMX Convention Center in SM Mall of Asia last Saturday. V. by Thomas Pynchon. V is for very rare. Also from the aforementioned book fair, but purchased at well over Php50. V is for very expensive. A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan. A significant portion of this novel is told through a series of PowerPoint slides. Also, Egan is significantly sexy. The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman. For weeks I practically had to pester Fully Booked to carry copies of this book. Evidently, my pestering has come to a satisfactory conclusion. C by Tom McCarthy. Imported from Singapore by the lovely Ysa. Tom McCarthy, I’d like you to meet Man Booker.

It’s been a while since I last fired a series of bullets in this godforsaken Cormac McCarthy-esque landscape of a book blog, so I figured I’d post one now. Not that anyone actually noticed that it’s been a long while since nor that anyone wondered why my last couple of posts were about films based on books and not about books, period. The last unordered list I posted was of the books that I fortunately rescued from the deluge that was our fourth-floor apartment’s bathroom faucet’s totally unexpected four-in-the-morning wake-up call; the one before that was of the books I rescued from the bargain bin of Powerbooks on the first day of the bookstore chain’s crazy-amazing month-long sale; and a list before that was of the books I got from a Fully Booked branch up north where I sought refuge after I rescued myself from a literal daylight robbery near to where I usually eat fried chicken and fries. Apparently, I’m great at rescuing. And this past week saw me rescuing more books, from book sale tables and long-forgotten spots on bookstore shelves, and—again—myself, from the claustrophobic cubicle of boredom. Enter: another stack of bullet points.

  • Light Boxes by Shane Jones. A slim but not inexpensive novel, which I finished while lining up for An Education at Cine Europa last Saturday night, about former balloonists waging war on the month of February. Go figure.
  • Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner. When I’m not busy incriminating myself on Twitter, I may be power-searching for and bidding on books on eBay. This one, purportedly containing one of the longest sentences in Western literature, is my latest catch.
  • The Broom of the System by David Foster Wallace. Included in the Penguin Ink series of reprints featuring cover illustrations by famous tattoo artists, this is the amazing first novel by the author of the more amazing Infinite Jest.
  • The Hundred Brothers by Donald Antrim. A novel about a hundred brothers. Postmodern hilarity ensues.
  • Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist by Rachel Cohn & David Levithan. I first read this on my office computer, by way of a pirated e-book version which I, being an electronics engineer in a company chiefly concerned with electronics engineering, cleverly renamed, Voltage and Current Calculations. Of course I had to get the “real” version.
  • Thumbsucker by Walter Kirn. A novel about “the King Kong of oral obsessives” by the author of Up in the Air.
  • Money by Martin Amis. One of the two books I got for only Php50 at the National Book Store stall at the Manila International Book Fair at the SMX Convention Center in SM Mall of Asia last Saturday.
  • The Tent by Margaret Atwood. The other book I got for only Php50 at the National Book Store stall at the Manila International Book Fair at the SMX Convention Center in SM Mall of Asia last Saturday.
  • V. by Thomas Pynchon. V is for very rare. Also from the aforementioned book fair, but purchased at well over Php50. V is for very expensive.
  • A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan. A significant portion of this novel is told through a series of PowerPoint slides. Also, Egan is significantly sexy.
  • The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman. For weeks I practically had to pester Fully Booked to carry copies of this book. Evidently, my pestering has come to a satisfactory conclusion.
  • C by Tom McCarthy. Imported from Singapore by the lovely Ysa. Tom McCarthy, I’d like you to meet Man Booker.
Not only is today the one day in David Nicholls’s bestselling novel, One Day, in which two star-crossed lovers (soon to be played by Jim Sturgess and Anne Hathaway in a film adaptation directed by An Education’s Lone Sherfig) meet every July 15 from 1988 through 2007, it is also the start of Powerbooks’s out-of-nowhere month-long Power Sale.  The promotional materials warn potential buyers of “blow-you-away prices.” Guess what. They’re not kidding. From now until August 15, customers of the specialty bookstore can avail of selected books with discounts of up to 80%, a fancy percentage which practically translates to a special “This copy only: P49.95” price tag on a number of titles, including these books I had the good fortune of finding not two hours ago.  Black Swan Green by David Mitchell. I couldn’t find a copy of Mitchell’s most popular novel, Cloud Atlas, and at only 20% off, the hardcover edition of his latest, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, is still too expensive for my purchasing power, so I settled for this paperback instead, which I gather is also among his best works.  Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can’t Avoid by Lemony Snicket. “Life is a turbulent journey, fraught with confusion, heartbreak, and inconvenience. This book will not help.” Sold.  Memoirs of the Extraordinary Life, Works and Discoveries of Martinus Scriblerus by Alexander Pope and John Arbuthnot. I like that this is a satire of pseudo-intellectualism co-written by the author of the famous line, “Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind,” but not nearly as much as I like that its title is, at least to me, delightfully reminiscent of James Hogg’s The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner. End Zone and Valparaiso by Don DeLillo. I am not a huge fan of Mr. DeLillo. Heck, no.  Bullet Points by Mark Watson. With a blurb by Stephen Fry (“Woody Allen and William Boyd have a bastard love-child and his name is Mark Watson.”) and a cover illustration by Tom Gauld (as recognizably quirky as any of his works on several books by the late Jose Saramago), this book earned its own bullet point in this post even before I read its title.  Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh. Lackluster title. Misleading name for a male author. One of TIME’s 100 Greatest Novels of All Time. I’ll be the judge of that.  How Proust Can Change Your Life by Alain de Botton. I have never read a page written by Marcel Proust in my entire quarter-century of existence. Perhaps I never will. For one thing, his most famous work, In Search of Lost Time, reportedly has one-and-a-quarter-million words. I think I’d rather read Mr. Botton’s edifying words, which I guesstimate in this book are far fewer than in Mr. Proust’s masterpiece, for now.  The Clothes They Stood Up In and The Lady in the Van by Alan Bennett. Bennett’s The Uncommon Reader was brilliant. This is simply me making like the protagonist of that book.  How to Read a Novel: A User’s Guide by John Sutherland. Supposedly for optimum enjoyment of all of the above.

Not only is today the one day in David Nicholls’s bestselling novel, One Day, in which two star-crossed lovers (soon to be played by Jim Sturgess and Anne Hathaway in a film adaptation directed by An Education’s Lone Sherfig) meet every July 15 from 1988 through 2007, it is also the start of Powerbooks’s out-of-nowhere month-long Power Sale. 

The promotional materials warn potential buyers of “blow-you-away prices.” Guess what. They’re not kidding. From now until August 15, customers of the specialty bookstore can avail of selected books with discounts of up to 80%, a fancy percentage which practically translates to a special “This copy only: P49.95” price tag on a number of titles, including these books I had the good fortune of finding not two hours ago. 

  • Black Swan Green by David Mitchell. I couldn’t find a copy of Mitchell’s most popular novel, Cloud Atlas, and at only 20% off, the hardcover edition of his latest, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, is still too expensive for my purchasing power, so I settled for this paperback instead, which I gather is also among his best works. 
  • Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can’t Avoid by Lemony Snicket. “Life is a turbulent journey, fraught with confusion, heartbreak, and inconvenience. This book will not help.” Sold. 
  • Memoirs of the Extraordinary Life, Works and Discoveries of Martinus Scriblerus by Alexander Pope and John Arbuthnot. I like that this is a satire of pseudo-intellectualism co-written by the author of the famous line, “Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind,” but not nearly as much as I like that its title is, at least to me, delightfully reminiscent of James Hogg’s The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner.
  • End Zone and Valparaiso by Don DeLillo. I am not a huge fan of Mr. DeLillo. Heck, no. 
  • Bullet Points by Mark Watson. With a blurb by Stephen Fry (“Woody Allen and William Boyd have a bastard love-child and his name is Mark Watson.”) and a cover illustration by Tom Gauld (as recognizably quirky as any of his works on several books by the late Jose Saramago), this book earned its own bullet point in this post even before I read its title. 
  • Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh. Lackluster title. Misleading name for a male author. One of TIME’s 100 Greatest Novels of All Time. I’ll be the judge of that. 
  • How Proust Can Change Your Life by Alain de Botton. I have never read a page written by Marcel Proust in my entire quarter-century of existence. Perhaps I never will. For one thing, his most famous work, In Search of Lost Time, reportedly has one-and-a-quarter-million words. I think I’d rather read Mr. Botton’s edifying words, which I guesstimate in this book are far fewer than in Mr. Proust’s masterpiece, for now. 
  • The Clothes They Stood Up In and The Lady in the Van by Alan Bennett. Bennett’s The Uncommon Reader was brilliant. This is simply me making like the protagonist of that book. 
  • How to Read a Novel: A User’s Guide by John Sutherland. Supposedly for optimum enjoyment of all of the above.