WWW Wednesday 15

This meme/link-up is hosted by Taking on a World of Words
What are you currently reading?
Macarthur by Bob Ong is still buried under notebooks, lab logbooks, and mind maps for my thesis. The Passion of Mademoiselle S. has migrated to the top of my closet, keeping company with The Grapes of Wrath . I'm currently "ctrl + F-ing" my way through Numerical Recipes in C, because programming is challenging and matrices make me want to cry.

What did you recently finish reading?

50 Foods: A Guide to Deliciousness by Edward Behr was an enlightening read filled with trivia, but also with a bit of snobbery about how you can't get decent ingredients in America since everything good is from Europe. I guess that would be true for certain cuisines but it was kind of annoying since I'm from Southeast Asia, hmm if I can't get any decent pasta here I'll just never eat it again? 

Beginner's Guide: Love and Other Chemical Reactions by Six Delos Reyes is the second Filipino romance novel I've read. The language is a little clunky, even for romance novels, but in my opinion the really cool concept (lab geek conducts a science experiment to find love, ends up falling for her control) lived up to its potential. I really liked the cover of this one, too.

We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is based on her TEDTalk (and was sampled on that Beyonce song), and it's one of the best books I've read this year. I mean, 

The problem with gender is that it prescribes how we should be rather than recognizing how we are. Imagine how much happier we would be, how much freer to be our true individual selves, if we didn't have the weight of gender expectations. 

and a lot of other quotes that resonated with me but I haven't shared on social media because of how they might be misinterpreted or reacted to (and isn't that exactly the problem). But really, this book was amazing. I had to sit down and copy out everything that made me feel things, but that was the whole book so I just wrote down everything that felt "universal" or sounded like advice to me.

Sugar & Salt by Ninotchka Rosca is a sort of "fable" of Filipino women's history, from before the Spaniards came and during the colonization, sort of about how they lost their power and are weighed down with wisdom. I can't explain it properly, but I liked it a lot as well.

What do you think you'll read next?

I've kind of been focused on my thesis proposal writing, but I did buy some secondhand books from my university's Christmas bazaar: The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin (since I loved It was snowing butterflies), Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger (I didn't like Catcher but aren't short stories usually more accessible?), and The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery (because it was in paperback size, not the kid chapter book format I usually see). I also bought Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie from an online friend so I'll probably read that soon.