WWW Wednesday 18

This meme/link-up is hosted by Taking on a World of Words

What are you currently reading?
 I'm reading A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle for the first time and it already feels familiar, like Anastasia Krupnik or Little Women or any of my childhood favorites. 

What did you recently finish reading?

Since my last WWW Wednesday was months ago, I've just linked the books here  

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

What Things Mean by Sophia N. Lee
Found by Isa Garcia

Sula's Voyage by Catherine Torres

Anthem for Doomed Youth (Penguin Little Black Classic) by Wilfred Owen

I Shall Not Be Moved by Maya Angelou

Blue is the Warmest Color (graphic novel) by Julie Maroh - I haven't seen the movie, but I loved the aesthetic and the story of the book

Trese: Murder on Balete Drive (graphic novel) by Budjette Tan

Rich People Problems by Kevin Kwan

Thick as Thieves by Megan Whalen Turner - Each installment of this series catches me off guard

The Actor and the Housewife by Shannon Hale - I thought Becky asked herself all the right questions, and that their relationship was better and lovelier than I'd expected

Just Juliet by Charlotte Reagan

The Vegetarian by Han Kang

One Hundred Names for Love by Diane Ackerman - an interesting combination of neuroscience, grief, creative thinking, and obscure words. Some of my favorite names for love were She For Whom All Flowers Bloom Early, Inertia Canceled, and Foundling of the Here and Beyond.

Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson

Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli

Smaller and Smaller Circles by F.H. Batacan - a detective/crime novel with a Jesuit forensic anthropologist racing to find a serial killer

What do you think you'll read next?

After A Wrinkle in Time I'm planning on reading Love Story by Erich Segal, which I stumbled upon in my local Little Free Library. I think I got the 1970 edition, which is pretty cool.

WWW Wednesday 17

This meme/link-up is hosted by Taking on a World of Words
What are you currently reading?
Found by Isa Garcia is lovely; I'm savoring it by reading a letter a day. 

What did you recently finish reading?

Since the start of 2017 I've read 14 books. The most popular ones were Food Rules by Michael Pollan, Cravings by Chrissy Teigen, Love, Rosie by Cecelia Ahern, and Wonder by R.J. Palacio. The last two made me cry. I also read The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley (the first Flavia de Luce), Graceling by Kristin Cashore, Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo (a reread),  and Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo. 

Some more unusual books (for my usual taste) I read were The Nesting Place by Myquillyn Smith (nonfiction/decorating, It Doesn't Have to be Perfect to be Beautiful), About the Size of It by Warwick Cairns (The Common Sense Approach to Measuring Things), and To Be Or Not To Be by Ryan North (a choose-your-own-adventure Hamlet retelling). 

I also read three Filipino books: Alternative Alamat (reimagined Philippine mythology), Shine by Candy Gourlay, and Don't Tell My Mother by Brigitte Bautista (the first book I've read about LGBT issues and religious issues in a coming-of-age setting).

What do you think you'll read next?

After Found I think I'm going to resume reading Frankenstein by Mary Shelley.

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.

WWW Wednesday 14

This meme/link-up is hosted by Taking on a World of Words
What are you currently reading?
Looking back at my previous WWW's, I see a lot of stuff left unfinished. I still haven't finished Macarthur by Bob Ong, and it's actually buried under a pile of notebooks and lab logbooks. From 50 Foods: A Guide to Deliciousness by Edward Behr, I only have Vinegar and Walnuts left unread. The Passion of Mademoiselle S. is still gathering dust in its corner on my desk. There also hasn't been any progress on The Shell Collector by Anthony Doerr or Noble House by James Clavell since I switched to The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley on my e-reader.

What did you recently finish reading?

Maya Angelou's Wouldn't take nothing for my journey now was a beautiful read. It wasn't necessary to agree with everything she had to say to enjoy how she said it. 

Catch a Falling Star by Cristina Pantoja-Hidalgo came to me through a book exchange in April. It's a book of short stories about a young girl, set a few decades before I was born but still oddly familiar and nostalgic. 

Our Darkest Hours is a collection of short stories by Jose Miguel Arguelles, about how humans handle frustration. Some of the stories were too dark for my taste, but I should have expected that.  One in particular stood out to me, about indigenous boat dwellers facing off against the zombies on the mainland. It was an interesting concept and also pretty well-executed in my opinion.

This Side of Sunny by Agay Llanera is about a Fil-Am girl who returns to the island where her parents met, to try and find her missing mother. It's a romance where she falls for the local who ends up being her tour guide, and he also has a dramatic backstory. It was kind of predictable, but I enjoyed the local flavor and the island setting.

What do you think you'll read next?

I should really focus on my thesis proposal writing, so I won't put anything here for now.

WWW Wednesday 13

This meme/link-up is hosted by Taking on a World of Words
What are you currently reading?
I bought Macarthur by Bob Ong, the first Tagalog/Filipino book I've bought that wasn't required reading, and the first chapter wasn;t as difficult as I'd thought. It helps that he doesn't go for the ~literary~ language and just writes the way people actually talk.

What did you recently finish reading?

The Camel Bookmobile by Masha Hamilton was an interesting read, and I think it's based on her real-life experiences with an actual camel bookmobile. That would be such a great job to have, though over here you'd probably transport books by water buffalo or by motorcycle. I can't help but get weirdly judgey whenever people do "white savior" things, but this was pretty self-aware and didn't provoke any eyerolls from me.

The Uncommon Reader is a novella by Alan Bennett about what would happen if the Queen suddenly starts reading like she needs it to survive. Five stars from me.

I caved and got myself a copy of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. Some people were saying they couldn't embrace it as canon, like it felt like fanfic, but that's how I felt about Deathly Hallows and this  script actually made more sense to me while I was reading it. I loved Scorpius and how he approached everything, and I found this more satisfying than the "19 years later" epilogue.

I also read two delightful Tolkien short stories, Smith of Wootton Major and Farmer Giles of Ham. Smith of Wootton Major was a little more serious, and Farmer Giles of Ham was completely hilarious. I think Tolkien is now one of my favorite authors. 

Be More Chill by Ned Vizzini was a bit of a letdown. I got so excited about the supercomputer, but as I was reading it I could only think that if I'd read it as a teen, my suspicions would only have been confirmed: boys are the worst. I kept comparing the book to Limitless (the TV show, not the movie) and thinking of all the wasted potential. Quantum computing seems interesting, though.

What do you think you'll read next?

I should really focus on my thesis proposal writing, so I won't put anything here for now.

WWW Wednesday 12

What are you currently reading?
Almost halfway through 50 Foods: A Guide to Deliciousness by Edward Behr. It was on sale for P100, or $2.12, which comes to P2 or $0.04 per food, which made it irresistible to me. Each chapter is a guide to selecting/harvesting, preparing, and pairing with wine foods like strawberries, bacon, potatoes, and honey. It's one of those nonfiction books that get you doing more research afterward.

I've also been reading a fanfic where Lily Evans is the one who will end up facing Voldemort. Pretty good so far, and there's a lot more tension about being Muggleborn and wanting a place in the Wizarding world. 

What did you recently finish reading?

I recently bought and finished Trip to Tagaytay by Arnold Arre. It's a very short graphic novel set in some imagined future where most of the world has migrated to outer space and a nameless protagonist is one of the few left behind on Earth. He's communicating with his sweetheart, who is on a space station.There's not much plot, it's mostly the backgrounds of the future world and all the things that strangely remain unchanged that tell a story.

Banana Heart Summer is one of the best books I've read this year. The writing style reminds me a little of Julia Alvarez or Isabel Allende with the lush descriptions of food, usually as metaphor for desire for a better life. If anyone's looking for more diverse reads, this would be a great option. It's even available on Book Depository! I was thinking that a lot of the food or local references would be unfamiliar to foreign readers, but isn't that part of the point of reading foreign books? It's set in Bicol, a region of the Philippines I don't know well, and the non-English words sprinkled in the book are Bikolano, a language I don't speak, though that's where my grandmother is from. 

Here's the summary on the back of my copy:

'Close to midnight, when the heart bows from its stem, wait for its first dew. It will drop like a gem. Catch it with your tongue. When you eat the heart of the matter, you'll never grow hungry again.'

The myth of the banana heart inspires twelve-year-old Nenita. She will appease her family's hunger and win her mother's love. As she cooks and eats, or dreams of cooking and eating, other love stories unfold in her street, sweltering between a volcano and a church. It is the hottest summer in the 1960s, in her small town reeling with the songs of Roy Orbison, Patsy Cline and the Beatles.

And here are two quotes I liked:

I rubbed the chicken with the green lemon halves to disguise the meaty smell. Strange that, all the time, we attempt to 'make better' the smell, taste, texture or look of nature. We cannot leave well enough alone. Perhaps because nothing is well enough alone. Perhaps because nothing is well enough alone. Perhaps because the heart of the matter offends the palate, and where it does not offend, it scares. So we arm ourselves with herbs and spices, and we consider ourselves improved as a species.

and

Sometimes, only a taste can be more distressing than pleasurable, a very miserly treat. Like endearments in half sentences or embraces not coming full circle, ensuring the torment of gaps. I thought of the boy who touched my arm, only my arm... 

What do you think you'll read next?
 I plan on reading Here by Richard McGuire. I've been on a graphic novel binge, and this book is an adaptation of a famous 1989 comic strip.  From Goodreads: "Built in six pages of interlocking panels, dated by year, it collapsed time and space to tell the story of the corner of a room - and its inhabitants - between the years 500,957,406,073 BC and 2033 AD. The strip remains one of the most influential and widely discussed contributions to the medium, and it has now been developed, expanded and reimagined by the artist into this full-length, full-colour graphic novel - a must for any fan of the genre. "

WWW Wednesday 11

This meme/link-up is hosted by Taking on a World of Words

What are you currently reading?

I am currently rereading Wind, Sand, and Stars by Antoine de Saint-Exupery. It's one of my favorites. Also finally cracked the cover of The Passion of Mademoiselle S., which I won in a Goodreads giveaway several months ago. It's a compilation of letters from a woman named Simone to her lover Charles over the course of their "perverse" affair. I've read three letters so far, and she has used that word several times already. 

What did you recently finish reading?
I recently finished reading Night Flight by Antoine de Saint-Exupery. He has the most beautifully descriptive way of writing that comes across even in translation. The dark night often got compared to the sea, both in the potential hiding beneath it, and in what it has already swept away. So, so lovely. I also finished Sixty-Six by Russell Molina. Mang Tino, an elderly man of 66 years, suddenly gains super strength and uses it to "clean up the neighborhood." The action scenes are interspersed with him caring for his ailing wife Aura (I think she has Alzheimer's) and with the letters she wrote to him when they were younger and he worked overseas. I think it's the first book of a series. I really loved the illustration style of this graphic novel. I also finished the e-book of The Winner's Crime by Marie Rutkoski. It's the sequel to the Winner's Curse, and has much higher stakes and ~palace intrigue~ involved. Just now I finished the last book in the series, The Winner's Kiss. It was a satisfying ending but I still want epilogues and peeks at the progress every five years and maybe a TV miniseries or a movie adaptation. Does anyone else get that way about good series?

What do you think you'll read next?
Banana Heart Summer still hasn't gotten the attention it deserves. My long-distance book club will start book # 3, The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, after we finally discuss This Side of Paradise.

WWW Wednesday 10

This meme/link-up is hosted by Taking on a World of Words

What are you currently reading?

I haven't picked up anything new since the graphic novel yesterday. Does a review paper on solid oxide electrolytic cells count?

What did you recently finish reading?
I'd previously planned out my June reading in a sort of Annotated TBR, and I'm pretty proud of myself for finishing four titles on my list. I finished Never Let Me Go earlier this month, and since my last WWW I've finished Burning Bright by Tracy Chevalier, Fantastic Mr. Fox by Roald Dahl, and Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I also finished a sequel, The Rosie Effect by Graeme Simsion.

More recently I finished a Filipino graphic novel, Halina Filipina by Arnold Arre. 

What do you think you'll read next?
Banana Heart Summer probably deserves another shot, and for my birthday month I want to read books by my favorite authors. I have Night Flight by Antoine de Saint-Exupery on hand this week.

WWW Wednesday 9

This meme/link-up is hosted by Taking on a World of Words

What are you currently reading?

Still a little stuck on Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It's my first time reading someone else's footnotes, and it slows me down quite a bit. I like footnotes as a sort of literary device (The Bartimaeus Sequence, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell), but this is a new approach to me. Is it weird to treat book club reads as schoolwork? I feel like I need to take notes and prepare talking points.

What did you recently finish reading?
This week, I read the second half of the Queen's Thief series by Megan Whalen Turner. The King of Attolia was even better than the previous two books, and I swear A Conspiracy of Kings "taught" me more about politics than the entire ASoIaF series did. I also read the sequel to Crazy Rich Asians, which was China Rich Girlfriend by Kevin Kwan. The plot's a lot more dramatic and telenovela-esque, but I've learned to love well-executed telenovela plot twists since Jane the Virgin. I look forward to the next books in the series. 

What do you think you'll read next?
For now, I just want to finish Tender is the Night. I did go a little crazy in the bookstore last week, though, and I look forward to reading Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson and Be More Chill by Ned Vizzini, as well as a graphic novel I'm saving for my birthday.

WWW Wednesday 8

This meme/link-up is hosted by Taking on a World of Words

What are you currently reading?

A friend and I are doing a long-distance book club, and our second book is Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald. 

What did you recently finish reading?
Since my last WWW (and finals week, and one-week sembreak), I've read seven books. Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan and Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty were both fast-paced, gossipy books that were really entertaining reads. My Wish List by Gregoire Delacourt was about a woman who won the lottery and couldn't decide how to spend her winnings, and it really got me thinking. The Rest of Us Just Live Here by Patrick Ness was a little boring, but I felt I had to finish it because I'd already committed to it. For our LDBC, our first book was Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, which has the least interesting narrator I've ever encountered, but the Norfolk parts were lovely. More interesting reads were The Thief and The Queen of Attolia by Megan Whalen Turner. They're full of twists I never saw coming, and I loved how the myths/literature of one culture was another culture's actual religion/reality.

What do you think you'll read next?
I plan on reading the next book in the series, The King of Attolia by Megan Whalen Turner. 

WWW Wednesday 7

This meme/link-up is hosted by Taking on a World of Words

What are you currently reading?

I'm still trying out this thing where I only read one book at a time, but I ended up switching what I was reading. Now I'm on The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai. She uses words wonderfully; I particularly love the way she writes about the mist and the mountains.

What did you recently finish reading?
I set everything aside to read The Raven King as soon as people started reviewing it. Ronan is such a great character! I'm not sure if it was the best ending we could have gotten, it felt a little anticlimactic, sort of like The Deathly Hallows. But still a great series.

What do you think you'll read next?
Either I'll go back to everything else I have on hold, or I'll read one of the new books I bought today. This was on the first page of one of them, so how could I say no to this?

From A Cup of Sake Beneath the Cherry Trees by Yoshida Kenko (Penguin Little Black Classic)

WWW Wednesday 6

This meme/link-up is hosted by Taking on a World of Words

What are you currently reading?

I'm trying out this thing where I only read one book at a time. This week I'm focusing on Banana Heart Summer by Merlinda Bobis. This is the first young adult novel I've encountered that reads like a foodie memoir. So far, so good. 

What did you recently finish reading?
I finally finished reading The World Between Two Covers by Ann Morgan. Three weeks ago I had really weird feelings about the chapter on colonialism/imperialism, and the chapters that followed were... milder. The book itself felt like a comprehensive review paper, like there was more research than conclusion. It was compelling in the sense that I felt compelled to take notes. I do think it's an interesting and worthwhile project, to try and read a book from every nation.

What do you think you'll read next?
After Banana Heart Summer, I want to read Sixty Six by Russell Molina. It's a graphic novel about a senior citizen (he's 66 years old) who gains superpowers. Should be interesting.

WWW Wednesday 5

This meme/link-up is hosted by Taking on a World of Words

What are you currently reading?

I just started reading The Shell Collector by Anthony Doerr. It's been interesting so far.

What did you recently finish reading?
Tuesdays at the Castle by Jessica Day George was magical. A sentient castle helping the royal family defend the kingdom reminds me both of Hogwarts and of JARVIS. My only nitpick might be that it doesn't really feature Tuesdays that much, but that's me taking book titles too literally.

In the Country: Stories by Mia Alvar was an easier read than Jessica Zafra's short stories because the characters were more fleshed out, with someone you could actually pinpoint as having a central role. It was odd, though, how much "local flavor" was infused into the stories, like there was some "authentic" reference to dried fish or pad paper sold by the page in each sentence. Another thing that didn't sit well with me was how she wrote about a country I didn't know. The cultural references were right, but she wrote about Martial Law and the first People Power Revolution (which happened thirty years ago) and the lives of migrant workers/OFWs and their families. 

What do you think you'll read next?
I don't know, actually. April is almost over and I don't feel as pressed to focus on Filipino fiction. 

WWW Wednesday 4

This meme/link-up is hosted by Taking on a World of Words

What are you currently reading?
I'm currently reading In the Country: Stories by Mia Alvar, though I haven't gotten past the first story yet. I'm also reading Noble House by James Clavell.

What did you recently finish reading?
Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson was a really sweet love story, and in a way The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker was also a love story. Both were about Eastern cultures in the West (England and New York, respectively), and felt sort of like they tied in with last week's uncomfortable feelings about Ann Morgan. On the other hand, I also finished Tai-Pan by James Clavell, which was about the founding of the Hong Kong colony. It was very entertaining, and the vulgarity seemed period-appropriate.

What do you think you'll read next?
Honestly I just want to finish all the books I'm currently reading, but I'm also cramming for Captain America: Civil War. Not that I'm actually reading any of the comics, but I'm trying to find myself a nice deprogramming headcanon on AO3.

WWW Wednesday 3

This meme/link-up is hosted by Taking on a World of Words

What are you currently reading?

As always, I'm reading about fifteen books at the same time and making only a couple of pages of progress on each of them. E-books enable me to switch up what I'm reading depending on my mood. The main book I'm reading is still The World Between Two Covers by Ann Morgan. I recently finished the chapter on colonialism/imperialism, and it's so weird to encounter thoughts on this topic from a white person. I mean, it's good that you feel uncomfortable and awkward about your country's history, and that you're acknowledging the atrocities committed in the name of "civilization", but it's even better for you that that's all you have to feel about it, if that makes sense. You go on about exchanges of culture and how native cultures are strong enough to not be diluted by Anglophone literature and stuff like that, but you get to say it from your outsider's point of view. I think that's what bothers me most about this - that reading literature from outside her nation is a sort of noble quest, while in bookstores here the main display area is for all sorts of foreign literature while the local literature is somewhere in the back, most of the time near the textbooks. Idk man this book makes me feel like I'm learning a lot one moment and in the next I'm raging about privilege. 

What did you recently finish reading?
This week I finished The Pedant's Return by Andrea Barham, which was full of trivia and fact-checking, and though it was interesting I don't think it's the kind of book you keep around for reference in this day and age.

Be Frank With Me by Julia Claiborne Johnson was lovely, with a nice small cast I got to know pretty thoroughly, and beautiful, unique Frank who ended up saving the day.

I'm about four years late to the party with Cinder by Marissa Meyer, which I got into during a sort of side project where I'll try to read as many fairytale retellings as I can get my hands on (or I can stomach).

Just today I finished Ramona and Her Father by Beverly Cleary, just in time for the author's 100th birthday! Love her and her work.

For Buwan ng Panitikang Pilipino I read The Stories So Far by Jessica Zafra. My favorite of the lot was  914, 915, 916 (The neighbors keep missing each other in an apartment building that messes with the space-time continuum.)

What do you think you'll read next?
I have quite a few Filipino books on shelf - two graphic novels, two more collections of short stories, and another YA novel - and I want to prioritize them for now.

WWW Wednesday 2

This meme/link-up is hosted by Taking on a World of Words

What are you currently reading?
I'm almost through with The Pedant's Return by Andrea Barham, and on the fifth Mediator book. I also started reading Be Frank With Me, which so far has been mostly cute and light with the occasional tug on my heartstrings. The closest comparison I can make right now is probably George and Sam, which was one of the best books I read last year.

What did you recently finish reading?
I recently finished reading The Girl You Left Behind by Jojo Moyes, which was sort of like a mash-up of Tracy Chevalier's Girl with a Pearl Earring and The Virgin Blue, but with more feels and uh, political tension, I guess. The prequel novella, Honeymoon in Paris, was shorter and sweeter.

I also read the Captive Prince trilogy by C.S. Pacat. The first book was really intense and kind of uncomfortable for me, but I think the second book showed deeper relationships and the game of chess the royals seemed to be playing was on a larger scale.

Just yesterday I read Cindy Gourlay's Tall Story, which I'd picked up because the blurb reminded me of the myth of Bernardo Carpio. The YA novel turned out to be built around that myth, and various other barrio superstitions. It was interesting to see Filipino YA in the regular shelves of the bookstore and not just on the Wattpad/magazine shelves.

What do you think you'll read next?
The Inheritance of Loss is due back in the library soon, so I should probably get reading. I also plan to read In the Country: Stories by Mia Alvar.

WWW Wednesday 1

This meme/link-up is hosted by Taking on a World of Words, and I thought I'd give it a shot.

What are you currently reading?

I'm halfway through The World Between Two Covers by Ann Morgan, I can't speed-read it because every chapter makes me want to take copious notes and buy all the books mentioned. Another book I'm almost halfway through is The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker. Meg Cabot's The Mediator series has been my go-to waiting/queuing e-book, and I'm on the fourth book in the series right now.

Last night I started reading my Puffin in Bloom edition of Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, a childhood favorite and the first really nice edition I've decided to invest in, and this morning before breakfast I snuck a couple of pages of The Pedant's Return by Andrea Barham. 

What did you recently finish reading?

For half of last week I was in a small, sort of remote island with no data or Internet connection. I read Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews, the movie of which I found adorably quirky; The Forest of the Pygmies by Isabel Allende, which is the final installment of a middle-grade trilogy; and One Plus One by Jojo Moyes, which managed to wring out more tears from me than Me Before You did. 

This week I finished Under the Tuscan Sun by Frances Mayes just in time to return it to the library; it's a foodie memoir that makes you want to visit Italy too and taste everything she described. I also finished the second and third books of The Mediator, which are really short (bitin) and meant to be serialized, I guess. Nora Ephron's I Remember Nothing: and Other Reflections was a bit of a struggle to read, but in the end I liked it better than I Feel Bad About My Neck. 

What do you think you'll read next?

I just borrowed The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai from the library, so that's what I'll be prioritizing. Aside from that, I'll be trying to finish all the books I'm currently reading.