Second attempt at a YouTube channel

A while back I started a YouTube channel to accompany this blog but I felt that I needed to have a very specific topic to cover instead of just a mix of my various interests (like this blog).

I've been spending a lot of time lately watching book review videos and even book hauls (these are strangely addictive) and so I thought I would contribute to the Booktuber community and start my very own channel.

So here's my first video. Enjoy!

Sports and beauty

I'm finally branching out and trying a genre I've never really had any interest on: sports biography. Maybe it's because of the upcoming Olympics or the 'athletic chic' fashion trend or maybe my mind's way of subconsciously telling me to start exercising but I'm really getting into sports and fitness lately. I'm actually annoyed at the fact that we don't have a sports channel.

So I'm just making do with reading sports biographies. Starting with Nadal: My Story. How could I possibly resist that cover. I'm really enjoying it so far. Nadal has always been one of those athletes that fascinated me. He just looks like one of those public figures who actually has a compelling story to tell, one that exists beyond the fame and what we see in the media.

I've recently formed a book club with some friends and our read of the month is Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray. I've attempted to read this before but I found it to be such a bore but now that I have matured (I hope) I've found it wildly funny. The characters are brilliant and the lines that come out of their mouths are just delicious. No wonder quotes from the book seem to appear all the time on my Tumblr news feed.

50 Books // The Passage // # 7

This book is a whale. Almost a thousand pages! With my Generation Y symptom, the 'low attention span', this took a while to read. There's also a lot of characters and I'm not good with names. The book's timeline spans decades and of course, the world is in peril.

All of this spells out one thing. The Passage by Justin Cronin is an epic. With a capital E. Epic. Actually no, in caps lock. EPIC. Add an exclamation.

EPIC!

It's also a vampire novel. I can hear you groaning. I can assure you this is no Twilight. The vampires here aren't covered in pretty sparkles. They're covered in human viscera. Actually, the 'virals' I pictured more as a zombie/vampire hybrid and they're more vicious and more horrifying than any vampire or zombie I've come across in a novel. These things are ruthless. 

It's quite hard to describe the plot because there's a lot going on here but all you need to know is that there's a central character. She's a little girl named Amy. The reason she's so special I won't give away here but in the first part of the book we read about where she came from and how the virus spread throughout the world. 

It then becomes a post-apocalyptic story and the story shifts and focuses on what's called the first colony. We don't exactly know what has happened with the rest of the world because the colonies have isolated themselves as a form of protection from the virals. The problem is they can't isolate themselves for much long. 

The first part of the book is outstanding. Cronin sets up the characters and the story really well here. Even though the premise is familiar (it reminded me of I Am Legend) and certainly not new (virus outbreak) it was still very electrifying and I was eager to know what was going to happen next.

All of a sudden the story is fast-forwarded by almost a century. The thrill of the previous part quickly wanes because of we're suddenly introduced to a different world and new characters. I hated that. I felt like I was just getting to know the previous characters and here I am suddenly being introduced to new people. It was like becoming popular at school then all of a sudden you're moved to another one.

The middle is the weakest for me. I can't even remember what happened for the most part because it was so uninteresting. I was ready to give up halfway through until I started to warm up to the newer characters. The story then starts to really get exciting. That was what I wanted from this novel all along: the thrill of a post-apocalyptic story with vampires. I was reading more literary books before this one and I was craving for lots of action and I was finally getting it. 

The Passage ends in a cliffhanger (or rather, CLIFFHANGER!) and I don't care if the next instalment is the size of War and Peace, I'm itching to read it. I'm just hoping we don't get introduced to a million new characters.

Links:

About the 50 Books Challenge

Goodreads account

List of the books I've read so far

Book 'poster' was created and edited by me. Book cover from here.

50 Books // We Have Always Lived In The Castle // # 6

I've always been interested in stories about a small community traumatised and scarred by a singular event, either past or present - from Camus' The Plague to Miller's terrifying play The Crucible - there's something about mass hysteria or mob tyranny that I find so fascinating and admittedly, a little bit exciting.

What Shirley Jackson does best in her novel We Have Always Lived In The Castle is how in the beginning she contained the hysteria and suppressed the mob making the inevitable panic (occurring later on) to spread as fiercely as a bushfire and as damaging as cancer. 

The novel is written from the perspective of Katherine Blackwood, who at eighteen years old is the youngest in the Blackwood family, or rather what's left of the family. Both Blackwood parents died as well as an aunt and a younger brother when arsenic was mixed with the sugar and then sprinkled on their blackberries. Constance, the older sister was blamed because she was the only one who did not put sugar on her blackberries. The uncle survived the poisoning and Katherine skipped the meal.

Only three are left to reside in the Blackwood residence and they live in near isolation from the rest of the town after being casted away after the incident.

The novel moves like a slow, seductive and deliciously disturbing dance and everything feels dark. I only experienced a slight glimmer of light from the tender relationship between the two sisters. But even their relationship had its dark moments.

Everyone is cruel to everyone. The townspeople are frightening. The Blackwood family are cheerlessly bizarre. I don't recall the weather being mentioned in the book but it felt like every passing day had a dark grey hovering above it, with an occasional downpour with no promise of sunshine.

The characters are beautifully complex and enigmatic and the reveal at the end felt like a sudden chilly breeze: abrupt, disconcerting at first but then it all makes sense.

Links:

About the 50 Books Challenge

Goodreads account

List of the books I've read so far

Book 'poster' was created and edited by me. Book cover from here.

50 Books // The Magicians // # 5

You know that post-Harry Potter depression you went through after you saw the last Harry Potter movie? 

I may have found a fix. The Magicians by Lev Grossman is like a mish mash of the worlds of Hogwarts, Narnia and Middle Earth. It's like postmodern fantasy novel with actual references from famous fantasy stories. 

It starts when our main character, Quentin, stumbles into a magical school and is forced to take a bizarre examination before being allowed entry. THe difference between Hogwarts and Brakebills is that in the latter, magic learning is extremely serious. I don't want to explain the whole process with how the magic works there but it's a lot more complicated than a simple swish and flick! It's more realistic and the entire novel examines the real psychological and emotional impact of being a wizard within the context of the real non-magical world.

Despite going to a magical college most of the characters are depressed and unsatisfied. I would recommend this to any undergraduate students because that feeling of having absolutely no idea what you're going to do with your life is probably the primary theme of the novel and it is so familiar. The thrill and anxiety of an unknown future ahead.

Unlike the Harry Potter books with a whole school year dedicated to one book. Grossman only uses half of the novel to narrate their entire magical education. It instead focuses on what happens after, which the Harry Potter books didn't. 

I'm reading the second novel now, The Magician King and I can't wait until he writes a third one.

Links:

About the 50 Books Challenge

Goodreads account

List of the books I've read so far

Image edited by me from this original image. Second image from my Instagram @jesuevalle.

50 Books // The Bell Jar // # 4

Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar was written in the first person and it couldn't have been written in any other way. The immediacy  and urgency of the words allows the readers to feel exactly what she is feeling. Most books allows its readers to sympathise and relate to the characters they describe but this managed to make you feel like you are the character. So when she was descending into madness you felt like your mind was slowly eroding as well. When she doesn't sleep you suddenly felt lethargic. This is a dangerous book to read but it is well worth that risk.


The very first sentence mentions the Rosenbergs, a couple sentenced to death by electric chair for passing on sensitive information to the Soviets. It sets the scene perfectly. Historically, it reminded readers of the post-war ennui, the paranoia, the simmering panic brought upon a looming nuclear war. The image of the electric chair foreshadows the shock treatments Esther, the protagonist, undergoes. The execution, an untimely death, seems fitting for the story of a woman faced with the recourse of self-execution. 


The writing is what you would expect from a poet. Heavy use of imagery and emotive language but there is a plainness and frankness to it that made the prose complex without being overly rich. Plath's voice is strong and unique. I have not come across a narrator or a character like her but one thing that caught me by surprise was the humour she managed to inject into it. At times she was incredibly witty and darkly funny. Her sense of humour added another layer to her character I was not expecting and fortunately it did not disrupt the heavy, dire tone of the novel.


This is a hard book to recommend but it's one of those books everyone should read at least once in their life.

Links:

About the 50 Books Challenge

Goodreads account

List of the books I've read so far

Top image was edited by me. Bottom image is owned by me.

50 Books // Jane Eyre // # 3

Reading Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre makes me yearn for a time when people spoke to each other with such grace and elegance coupled with an intensity of passion that is intermittently laced with the words they speak. It doesn't matter whether they are being cruel or nice or loving. Their utterance between one another never fail to express a potent emotion. Romantic passages like this:

"I sometimes have a queer

feeling with regard to you

- especially when you are near

me, as now: it is as if I

had a string somewhere under

my left ribs, tightly and

inextricably knotted to a

similar string situated in the

corresponding quarter of your

little frame. And if that

boisterous channel, and two

hundred miles or so of land

come broad between us, I am

afraid that cord of communion

will be snapt and then I've

a nervous notion I should take

to bleeding inwardly."

SWOONGASM.

I really like how it's in equal parts violent, romantic and dark. The entire novel feels like this with its gothic, romantic mood. It was perfectly balanced. Less gothic and dark and it would have been too sickly sweet to me.


The other thing I love most about this novel is the central heart, brain, soul and lung of this story: Jane Eyre herself, of course. Right after I finished the book, I posted this on my Tumblr:

"Just finished this last night, or rather, early morning at 4am.

I am in love with Jane Eyre. Not just the book itself but also the character. She is fiercely independent, burning with passion, highly intelligent, unpretentiously artistic and utters some of the sharpest, wittiest lines in literary history. 

The final half of the book gave me multiple heart aches from pure excitement, heartbreak and overwhelming happiness. 

This goes on my list of books I would recommend to anyone.

There are multiple film adaptations of this book. Please don’t use those as excuses to not read this. The book will always be better. Always."

I'll just leave it at that. 

I write on the books I read and I revisit those notes to write these posts. But for this one, every single time I open the book, as if by magic, I find myself re-reading parts of the novel. And I end up getting nothing done. That really shows how powerful Ms. Bronte's novel is. How it can just draw you in, and ask you to bring its story and its characters back to life. This is the kind of book when it is inappropriate to put the words 'The End' at the end because it just doesn't. Its traces will linger with you long after that final page is read and the book shut.

Links:

About the 50 Books Challenge

Goodreads account

List of the books I've read so far

Image was edited by me from this original source.

50 Books // The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle // # 2

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Murakami's masterpiece (I seem to always say this about every Murakami I read) is about a young married man named Toru. Toru loses a number of things. First his cat, then his wife and then slowly his sense of reality. In search of these things he encounters characters both bizarre and amusing ranging from war veterans, a politician, an introspective sixteen-year-old girl and even mind prostitutes. Yes, prostitutes who pleasure you in your dreams. 

To describe the plot of the novel is near impossible. At more than 600 pages this is an epic that crosses various time periods, various character viewpoints while managing to weave in and out (and sometimes in between) the real and the imagined. It sounds confusing and complex but it's actually deceptively simple. The way Murakami writes allows the surreal nature of the narrative as well as the layered plot to be as digestible as a children's fairytale. There are so many things going on but somehow Murakami never leaves you behind. This is probably because he never embellishes his sentences more than he needs to. At one point there is even a story within a story within another story. As one character tells Toru one of her stories Toru observes:

"Without explanation, she would

reverse chronological order or suddenly

introduces as a major character

someone she had never mentioned 

to me before...

She would narrate events she had

witnessed with her own eyes, as 

well as events that she had never

witnessed."

 Upon reading this I realised Murakami was describing how he tells his own stories.

I would read this before I go to bed and I remember how strange my own dreams end up becoming. It was as if Murakami's prose somehow rearranged my brain to allow it to gaze at the world in a distorted, convoluted and even a perverse kind of way.

I tend to read fast and usually whizz through books but this one made me slow down and cherish every sentence, every moment and every chapter. I gave it time and it deserved it without question.

Links:

About the 50 Books Challenge

Goodreads account

List of the books I've read so far

Image was edited by me from this original image.

50 Books // Bonjour Tristesse // #1

Hurray for the first book I completed for the 2012 Fifty Books Challenge! It wasn't that difficult since Bonjour Tristesse is only over a hundred pages long.

I'm thankful that it was very brief because I found the main character, Cecile, extremely irritating, selfish and arrogant. If I wanted to witness the lives of privileged people living colourless lives then I would have turned on an episode of a Kardashian TV show.

This was written by an eighteen-year old about a seventeen-year old and you can pretty much sniff out the teenage angst and boredom right from the very first page.

Although she does provide small glimpses of introspection and an occasional acute observance of a character's behaviour, most of the time her words aren't very penetrating and lacks a bit of depth.

This was set in the South of France, arguably the country's most glamourous area, during the most elegant of all decades but Sagan never really took me there. Again, I had brief glimpses of it but the language is so restrained I felt like I was witnessing the story with a cloak thrown over me. I was reading a Murakami and Bronte novel at the same time I was reading this and every lacklustre sentence I read in Bonjour Tristesse made me long for the rich, vibrant and complex storytelling from those accomplished writers.

However, I don't really regret reading this. It was a quick and easy read and I actually had fun mocking and despising the characters in the novel.

Links:

About the 50 Books Challenge

Goodreads account

List of the books I've read so far

Images are owned by me and cannot be reused without permission or crediting the original source.

50 Books Challenge

In 2012, I've decided to take part in the 50 books challenge.

It's simple enough, finish 50 books from the 1st of January to 31st of December. After I finish a book I will write a post with thoughts, criticisms, and my general experience reading the book. I will also be posting a 'book poster' which will add a visual touch to the blog post, as well as an Instagram of the book cover. 

I may succeed, I may fail or the world may end (see Mayan calendar apocalypse).

Now I must confess I've kind of cheated already.

Bad start, I know, but technically it's not cheating. I think.

The books I'm reading this month (December 2011) I'm going to hold off finishing until January next year and since I'm over halfway through about seven books already, I'll be able to get a massive head start during January. 

So, it's not cheating. Just very cunning.

Have a Merry Christmas and a safe, wonderful New Year.

Links:

Most recent blog posts 

Goodreads account

List of the books I've read so far

Image edited by me. Original image here.

Op Shop Mini Haul

I went with my friend to the College of Fine Arts annual exhibition today. Made me even more excited about going there to study design next year. I will post up pictures from there later. 

We also went op shopping afterwards and ended up buying these red wine Gap trousers which is way too long for me because I'm a shorty pants. It will look good folded up which will be perfect for summer. I also purchased a copy of Jane Eyre and Oscar Wilde Plays. They're both so battered (which means they were well-loved) and the pages are yellow and have that lovely old book smell. 

“In a second-hand bookshop head to the back, find the old books with dust undisturbed and woren off covers for these cloth true treasures.”

- Rachel Hall

Image is owned by me and cannot be reused without permission or crediting the original source.

Norwegian Wood and marginalia

Reading as a little boy I always wondered why there were blank pages at the end of books. Wikipedia offers us a technical explanation. Those blank pages are a result from the convention of printing books in large sheets of paper and therefore sometimes one or several pages are left intentionally devoid of content at the end. 

When I was ten years old however, I concluded that those pages were meant to be written on for the reader. Sometimes I would write alternate endings for books. For someone like me who was left utterly depressed by the endings of Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, I found joy in writing a happier conclusion for the Baudelaire triplets. 

Or I would play pretend-critic and wrote what I thought about the book or noted down chapters and pages that I know I would want to revisit later on. 

Now I've moved away from writing solely on the end pages and now habitually write on the margins of all pages in the book, underlining quotes, writing of-the-moment reactions (usually immature) or just thoughts inspired by the writing. 

It made reading an active experience which is an essential part of this pastime. This is important especially for younger generations who are used to media acting as interactive spaces for them. 

I found this act particularly useful when I read Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood. A deeply saddening story about damaged, fragile minds. I found myself angered, depressed, amused and frustrated and writing about my thoughts was completely liberating. His writings are so beautiful that so many passages bore the underlines signifying their amazingness.  Murakami writes in a way that even the descriptions of the most banal object, character or setting can instigate a cleansing weeping session in one's room. It's like his words are stained with melancholy.

He is also quite blunt. He declares a character's death as if he was proclaiming the day's weather. The first sentence of the last chapter was written so plainly I had to re-read it several times to grasp what it actually meant despite its simple statement. A combination of shock and mournfulness swallowed me and I had to close the book to give me time to breathe. It was the first sentence of that chapter.

The characters are colourful, dark or just plain bizarre and they go in and out like ghosts. Once you start reading about one you end up forgetting about the others until you are jolted back to them.

Murakami is also a master of time. The narrative would weave the past, the present and the near future so seamlessly. It feels tightly constructed without being too antiseptic. 

If you have ever been interested in human beings and their minds and feelings, then please don't neglect reading this. 

All images are owned by me and cannot be reused without permission or crediting the original source.

Bookish Fashion and George Orwell

I blogged about Out of Print here before. They're an online shop that sell T-shirts and sweaters designed with iconic book covers. I was meant to get the Moby Dick one but, alas, they were out of stock of that particular style and it was already discontinued. 

They sent me George Orwell's 1984 fleece instead. I haven't read the book but I downloaded the e-book to my iPad when I received the fleece, just so I wouldn't look silly if people ask me if I have read the book I'm wearing.

I've never really had any urge to read this book but after the first chapter I was hooked. I don't know if it's because I'm a pessimist but I've always been drawn to dystopian fiction. Both The Giver and The Road are two of my favourite books of all time and I think I'm about to add 1984 to that list.

In one of the earlier chapters in the book, our protagonist starts to write in this blank journal he found in a store with a good, old-fashioned pen. In this futuristic world both items seem to exist as relics. He writes a banal entry but discovers that the act of writing, of putting thoughts into paper, is gratifyingly liberating. I can't help but look back when I was younger and identify with this particular sentiment. I felt (and still feel) exactly the same way every time I write.

Enough of the book rant. Let's talk about this unabashedly nerdy sweater. The fabric is so soft and cosy it's the kind of thing I would wear when I want to snuggle up and read a good book. I love the colour and according to the company's Facebook page, they're releasing new styles very soon, so I'm definitely going to get some more.

All images are owned by me and cannot be reused without permission

Read Forever

This makes me want to make myself a cup of hot cocoa and snuggle with a book (or my iPad).

I don't like the assumption that e-readers are killing off physical books. Unless someone discovers that paper is poisonous and are a danger to our health, books are never going to go away. Sure, we may buy less hard copies of books if we opt to purchase a digital copy instead but I don't see anything wrong with that. I'm sure there's enough room for all formats. I can already hear the trees breathe a sigh of relief. Think of the paper we save!

After purchasing my iPad and using it to read books I've actually found myself purchasing more physical books because the iPad has instilled inside me this intense hunger for reading. Now I can call myself a voracious reader - I've always wanted to say that!

Currently reading at the moment:

A Pale View of Hills by Kazuo Ishiguro

Safe Haven by Nicholas Sparks

Various university textbooks and academic readings.

Thank you, J.K. Rowling

Okay, this is going to be a personal post. 

I freaking love Harry Potter.

I was that 11 year old who checked the mailbox several times a day to see if I received a letter to attend Hogwarts.

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban was the very first novel I ever read and finished. Don't ask me why I started with the third book, I don't really remember why but I just did. Even though I only understood small parts of it due to my limited understanding of English because I only just moved to New Zealand from the Philippines. I remember falling in love with books after that and spent so much time with my nose buried in a book, Harry Potter or otherwise. Apart from that TV show Arthur and that library card song they sang, I could only attribute my love for reading and writing to J.K. Rowling and her magical creations.

Not only did the Potter series inspire me to read and write, it also nourished my expanding sense of imagination. It also punctuated my childhood and reminiscing back, I realised most of my fondest memories involved Harry Potter. 

I remember reading too much books in dim light and sitting too close in front of the television so that my vision would worsen and I would get to wear glasses like Harry. This was when pretentious, non-prescription spectacles did not exist like they do today.

I remember playing faux-Quidditch using mops and brooms found in the garage and I ran around with my brother and neighbours in the backyard throwing around a Quaffle (which was just a basketball) and chasing a pretend Snitch.

Those Harry Potter rumours sections of K-Zone, Disney Adventures and other kids' magazines were my tabloids (Dumbledore's Animagus is Hedwig?!?!).

I remember trying to make Butterbeer using butterscotch and goodness knows what. It ended up tasting gross by the way.

I got into trouble after making a mess staining my notebooks with tea and breaking pens in half to extract the ink so I can use the feather I found on the street as a quill.

I used to have a journal and I called it Jesue's Standard Book of Spells, like the textbook Hogwarts students were prescribed with. I wrote spells in there, some taken from the books and some I made up on my own, complete with details such as wand movements, (Wingardium Leviosa is with a swish and flick) the incantation and how to pronounce it and instructions on how to fully master the spell (one must find their happiest memory in order to conjure up their Patronus Charm).

Those are just some of the memories I have growing up with the series. I'm sure there's lots more.

What are your Potter memories?

Image from SiixDream