Cloud Atlas

I saw Samantha Ramage's post and immediately wanting to purchase Cloud Atlas book so by the time the movie comes out, I already read it / know what is it about. ((:

The movie will be released on October 26th this year, I have plenty of time to buy, read and finish the book. And this is the trailer that makes me want to see read and see the movie so badly:

And yay, it's available on iTunes store! Can't wait to add it to my e-bookshelves. 

Hector Series

via BooksActually

Last year I read Francois Lelord's Hector and The Search of Happiness and I loved it. So now I'm going to go to my favorite bookstore (YAY!) to get the rest of Hector series. I'm just hoping they're gonna be as great as Hector and The Search of Happiness. Eventhough I recently purchased Game of Thrones series (already watched the Season 1 and Season 2 and quite intrigued to read the books) and 50 Shades trilogy since everyone on the internet is recommending those two. In other words, I still have books I haven't read yet despite the fact I'm gonna run to the bookstore once again. I admit I'm greedy when it comes to books. Judge me. Whatever. #ForgiveMeMyWallet

I'm almost done reading The Hunger Games trilogy, currently reading Book 3: Mockingjay. So far, I'm loving The Hunger Games trilogy. It's so hard for me to put the book down, back to the real life. Suzanne Collins is brilliant! And it's gonna be even harder for me to part ways with Katniss and friends... pretty sure I'm going to have "book hangover".

Must Have: Audrey Hepburn Photographs 1953-1966

When I saw this post by adore vintage, my jaw dropped! I GOTTA HAVE THIS BOOK! MUST HAVE!!! Uuuh yeah another reason for rushing to the bookstore. *tapdancing*

Bob Willoughby: Audrey Hepburn. Photographs: 1953-1966 is published by Taschen.

images via adore vintage

My Bookfessions

If you love reading as much as I do, you'd understand / relate to these so-called-bookfessions ((;

images via bookfessions

The Little Prince (Deluxe Pop Up Book)

I want this book and they ship overseas too! Swooon! 

via books actually

Physical Books versus E-Books

Lately I love purchasing e-books through iTunes Store so I could read them on the iPad anytime, anywhere. Before e-books era, I'm already at the point that a book has to come with me wherever I go. Business meetings, hang out with my friends, eventhough if I'm not going to be able to read, a book always comes with me. Things I have to check before leaving the house: wallet, cellphone, keys, small beauty case and book... OK I'm good to go! ((: I even have back up books in the car just in case. But now, the iPad is good enough.

I still prefer the physical books, I love the look, feel and smell of paper books. Still my favorite! However I find myself quite enjoying the e-reading revolution. I like that I have plenty books on my iPad and that I can read whatever I fancy at any time without having to wonder about where I put it. Also I have way too many books already and they're taking a lot of space in the house! And e-books are cheaper too. 

I’ll never go completely to e-books just because I still love having packed shelves in my home, but about half of my reading is done on the iPad these days. If I like what I read, I will surely buy the physical books. For example, these are the e-books I read on the iPad (time period October - November)...

1. The Son of Neptunes - Rick Riordan 

Recently bought the physical book! (: I love Rick Riordan!

via Rick Riordan's Blog

2. The Help - Kathryn Stockett 

Great book! But not in a hurry to get the physical book. Would love to one day.

via Sarah's Cover

3. Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns) - Mindy Kaling 

Definitely will buy the physical copy as soon as they available in Jakarta. I love her, she's hilarious!

via Movie Line

4. Aleph - Paulo Coelho

I liked it, but I don't think I'll buy the physical copy of this book.

via Arab News

5. Hector And The Search For Happiness - Francois Lelord
Going to buy the physical book for sureeee!

via Buy Her

6. Out of Oz - Gregory Maguire

I bought this already but haven't read it yet. But make no mistake, I'm so getting the physical book! I'm actually collecting his Wicked Years series. This is book #4.

via Passages To The Past

7. Paper Angels - Jimmy Wayne and Travis Trasher

Very Inspiring book, it's about kindness and Christmas. How can I not love this book?

via Got Country Online

Both physical books and e-books are divine. I love them almost equally (65% physical books and 35% e-books). Well I guess what I'm trying to say is that... It really doesn't matter what format we read, as long as we are still reading!

PS: Guys, date a girl who reads!

via Tumblr

The Picture of Dorian Gray

Oscar Wilde’s only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, is a beautiful work of art. I read the book few years ago, it was quite unlike anything I had ever read. Oscar Wilde is unreal. I’m not exactly sure I liked it, but it is certainly an amusing read. And for me, the most quotable material from the book is this part: 

“I have grown to love secrecy. It seems to be the one thing that can make modern life mysterious or marvelous to us. The commonest thing is delightful if one only hides it. When I leave town now I never tell my people where I am going. If I did, I would lose all my pleasure. It is a silly habit, I dare say, but somehow it seems to bring a great deal of romance into one’s life. I suppose you think me awfully foolish about it?” - Basil Hallwar, the painter.

It is sort of entertaining to know that Basil Hallwar and I have the same silly habit for the same silly reason ((:

Title page of the first edition, 1891.  --- image via Google/searchimage

The Picture of Dorian Gray 

Books

The BBC believes most people will have read only six of the 100 books listed here.

Instructions: Copy this into your NOTES. Bold those books you’ve read in their entirety, italicize the ones you started but did not finish or read an excerpt.  

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien

3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling

5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

6 The Bible  

7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte 

8 1984 - George Orwell

9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman

10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott

12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy

13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

14 Complete Works of Shakespeare

15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier

16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien

17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk

18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger

19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger --- already watch the movie.

20 Middlemarch - George Eliot

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell

22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald --- only the movie

24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy --- only the movie (starred by Audrey Hepburn hihi)

25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll

30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame 

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens 

 33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis 

34 Emma -Jane Austen

35 Persuasion - Jane Austen

36 The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe - CS Lewis

37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres

39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden

40 Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell

42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving

45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery  

47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy

48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood 

49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding 

50 Atonement - Ian McEwan 

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel 

52 Dune - Frank Herbert 

53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen

55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth

56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon

60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck 

62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov 

63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt

64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas

66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac 

67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy

68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding

69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie

70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville 

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens

72 Dracula - Bram Stoker 

73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett

74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson

75 Ulysses - James Joyce

76 The Inferno - Dante

77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome

78 Germinal - Emile Zola

79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray

80 Possession - AS Byatt

 81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

 82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

 83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker 

 84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro

 85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

 86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry

 87 Charlotte’s Web - E.B. White

 88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom

 89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

 90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

 92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery

 93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks

 94 Watership Down - Richard Adams 

 95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

 96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute

97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas

 98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare

 99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl 

 100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

I've read only 18 of out these 100. Darn it! 82 books to go!

Just Being Audrey

My ultimate must-have-book in 2011, it's going to be released on January 25th 2011. Beautiful illustrations OMG. OMG. OMG.

via Margaret Cardillo

UPDATE: MARCH 17th 2011 --- I GOT THE BOOK!!!

Take a peek of the book's video trailer... how can I not want this?

Lovely Things in Life

Book, Love, Travel, People, Places, Globe (: --- via tumblr

Couple things I love in one photo. Simply lovely (:

Bibliophile

Source: Wikipedia

Bibliophilia or bibliophilism is the love of books. Accordingly a bibliophile is an individual who loves books.

This is not my first time posting an entry about my love to books. See my earlier entry about this, by clicking here. And once again, I love books. I'm too fond of books and sometimes it turns my brain. Books are really the most birthday present for me, yes I'm giving you a clue here ;)

Ever since I learned how to read (and probably even before that), I have been madly in love with books. My favorite memories from childhood were, forcing my childhood friends to play library and making my parents buy me lots of books (End Blyton's series, Noddy series, Disney's storybooks and many more) and still to this very day, my husband still finds me fall asleep with a book in my hand.

For this very reason alone, I'm quite smitten with this website that I stumbled into few days ago: out of print clothing. The mission of this company is not only to spread the love of reading by having nerds like yours truly (guilty!) wear their heart (aka, favorite book cover) on their sleeve (or chest), but also partnering with books for Africa to donate one book for every shirt sold. Take a look few of their tees below!

My favorite part is their description of the relaxed fit of their tees: "each shirt is treated to feel soft and worn like a well read book". Oh yes, I'm SOLD!

 

Where The Wild Things Are

This movie probably and most likely is scandously underrated by many people who do not get the message. Some movies dont have to be all explosions and violence, SOME movies actualy have a message and this one tells it with such great emotion and depth, that you half to love it.

Unlike many childhood movies this film does a great job of portraying coming of age as a painful and tumultuous process. Giving up childhood fantasies and learning to accept responsibility for one's actions is a difficult process we all must undergo. Max learns about handling relationships and managing his anger.

Great film for adults, kids, and tweens. Highly recommended :)

via Google/imagesearch

The Birthday Presents

via google.com

via apple.com

via google.com

These are the stuffs from my loved ones. Thank you so much!! My bestfriends gave me this Audrey Hepburn book! So beautiful and awesome! The gadgets were from my parents and my parents-in-law.

My dad still owes me a "special" gift... :) I'll be taking it in near future. Still waiting something from my brother! Haha.. I'm so blessed :) Thank you loved ones, you know who you are.

Lovely Book Smell

Recently I received a book I bought on eBay... the book has this lovely book smell. I can't explain how lovely, you can come to my house and I'll let you smell the book ;) I've been holding my nose close to the pages and inhale ever since :D

The Ultimate Guide

LOL! Can't help myself :) I just had to buy this book! Thank you Kinokuniya!

Percy Jackson, A Good Addiction

My Precious Percy Jackson Series Book Collection :)

I loved The Lightning Thief, and was looking forward to moving on with the series. I didn’t expect to get into two, and three, and even the fourth volume so quickly and so completely. I haven’t gone through books in a series this fast since I discovered The Twilight Saga. Percy has claimed my devotion totally.

In book two, The Sea of Monsters, what’s interesting here is how certain rivalries play out. A character’s parentage doesn’t automatically label them on one side or another. Riordan’s characterizations of several of the gods makes for an entertaining read too. This was an exciting, worthy sequel to the first book.

In book three, The Titan’s Curse,  oh Gawd, my effort buying this book was simply grande ;) went to a lot of bookstores yet they were all out of stock. Thank goodness I got in 2 days after finished reading book two. The new characters in this volume work well to progress the story and raise new questions. After finish reading this book, I rushed back to the bookstore looking for book 4. I am completely addicted to this series.

In book four, The Battle of the Labyrinth, More questions, more new characters abound in this book. Perhaps more interestingly, Riordan packs this book with even more heroes, monsters, and incidents from Greek myth than any of the previous volumes. Someone versed in Greek mythology will have a lot of fun reading these books, trying to figure out which card the writer will play next and how, ultimately, it will all fit together.

For the fifth book and final book in the series, The Last Olympian. I had to booked it first at the bookstore. They ran out of stock, I guess everybody is reading Percy Jackson series now huh? I got the book last tuesday night finished it the next morning (this morning to be exact, February 17th 2010). And it's the most expensive one! It's 215,000 Indonesian Rupiah, the previous books were 99,000 each. They don't have the paperback version just yet, only the hardcover one. I had no choice. I was so blinded to even care about the book's price. It’s been a long time since I read any novel that fast, a long time since I was up until the small hours because I couldn’t put the book down… a long time since any book deserved that kind of devotion from me. But this book, and this series, deserved every minute I devoted to it and more.

It’s hard to explain just why I love these books so much. The story is formulaic, and Percy himself falls squarely into the “chosen one” cliche. But sometimes, the execution of a story can be so good that you forget about the cliches and the tropes and just enjoy it for what it is. I think that’s the case here. Riordan tells his story masterfully, with characters and events that grabbed me right away and made me want to read more. Harry Potter series has nothing compared with Percy Jackson series. This series has high adventure, real magic, rich characters, and a love story that doesn’t feel cliched and tacked-on.

I’m kinda glad I didn’t start reading this books until the last volume was already released. I got through the whole series in less than a month and had a wonderfully satisfying reading experience without the frustration of waiting a year in-between installments. But if Riordan gives us more, I’ll be in on the ground floor for the next series.

Why I Love The Percy Jackson Series

I read The Lightning Thief, Book One of Percy Jackson & The Olympians by Rick Riordan earlier this month. Yes, I am a newbie :) where was I all these years? I was probably the last one to know that about this book. This young adult book is normally not the type of book that I would pick up on my own, but I found it to be fun and engaging.

From the publisher:

"Percy Jackson is a good kid, but he can’t seem to focus on his schoolwork or control his temper. And lately, being away at boarding school is only getting worse — Percy could have sworn his pre-algebra teacher turned into a monster and tried to kill him. When Percy’s mom finds out, she knows it’s time that he knew the truth about where he came from, and that he go to the one place he’ll be safe. She sends Percy to Camp Half-Blood, a summer camp for demigods (on Long Island), where he learns that the father he never knew is Poseidon, God of the Sea. Soon, a mystery unfolds and together with his friends — one a satyr and the other the demigod daughter of Athena — Percy sets out on a quest across the United States to reach the gates of the Underworld (located in a recording studio in Hollywood) and prevent a catastrophic war between the gods."

Fun book.  And a very creative way to teach Greek mythology.  If I had tried to learn how all the gods were related to each other by reading this book, rather than reading the formal book I probably would have had a lot more interest in the Greek mythology.  The story was very fast moving.  There was never a lack of adventure, nor humor. A great series for all ages.  I just finished reading the second book last night, I must get my hands on the next one by tomorrow :D

And today, I went to the cinema watching the Percy Jackson: The Lightning Thief movie. I must say, my opinion is exactly the same as Rick Riordan's, the author. He wrote this on his blog last year when the movie was still in the making:

"Will the movie be exactly like the book? Well to start with, I have never seen a movie that was exactly like the book it came from, so I think it's safe to say no. Movies are a totally different medium. What you'll be seeing is not The Lightning Thief book copied page for page onto the screen. What you'll be seeing is Chris Columbus' interpretation of The Lightning Thief story. . . Let the movie be the movie, and the books be the books, and try to enjoy the story without getting too worked up about any differences."

And these few things that did bug me when watching the movie: Annabeth's not a brunnete, she's a blonde and they are supposed to be twelve not twenty something. Nevertheless it was a good movie, my husband loved it too.

Percy Jackson & The Olympians : The Lightning Thief

 

I have to finish reading this book before the movie released! I hope it's gonna be a lot better than Harry Potter series, since I don't really fancy magic and stuff... but Greek myths, I loooove :D 

 

The Bro Code by Barney Stinson

The Bro Code

Michael Oher

Last night I watched a movie called "The Blind Side", based on an extraordinary true story about Samaritan-ism, humanism, kindness, love and brotherhood. Cut story short, I was so touched (i don't cry usually).

It's about Michael Oher. Check out this article and you'll find out why I'm so amazed with story.

'The Blind Side': How Michael Oher Made It

I hope one day, I get to help people like Michael Oher. God bless the Touhy family.