Got a spare or two?

Hello lovely readers! I wanted to send a special thank you to fellow blogger, Natasha, over at 1330V for donating heaps of children's books for our book drive! I am so very thankful for this and I'm sure the children who are going to receive them are going to be thrilled!

It's not too late to donate if you haven't already! For those of you new to the blog I am currently holding a book drive that will run until the end of July. Gently used and/or new books for children/pre-teens are currently being accepted. Your generous donation will be given to Reading to Kids. Reading to Kids is a grassroots organization dedicated to inspiring low-income children with a love of reading.

Our donated books will be given to the children after their reading clubs to take home and build their own home libraries. Parents receive donated books as well so that they can help nurture their child's newfound love for reading. So dig up some of your childhood books, ask your friends to donate some of theirs or roam the shelves at your local bookstore for the latest releases.

Ways to donate to this book drive:

• Bring your new or gently used children's book(s) to our next book club meeting in July
• Contact yours truly so that we can organize a meet-up where I can pick up your book donations
• I am currently working to get donation boxes placed in some local independent book stores in the city. If all goes well I will announce these bookstore locations where you can drop off your donations
• Not in Los Angeles but still want to help? Let me know and we can make arrangements to work something out
  
• Above all please contact me if you're interested in helping out. Every book counts.

Culture Shock

Friday night and it was time to decompress. After work I headed over to my friend, Erica's, new apartment. We were going to have a "low-budget" night in with some pizza, fruit and her famous homemade sangria. I am absolutely hopeless when it comes to being domestic so after being shooed out of the kitchen I see her gentleman caller sipping his sangria and reading. I thought he had brought this copy over and was passing the time by squeezing in a few pages. He actually found the book in Erica's newly built bookshelf. She later tells us that she hasn't read it since receiving the book as a present a while ago.


The book is called "Becoming Mexican American" by George J. Sanchez. None of us were really sure what the book was about however David said there were many pictures and other interesting visuals. Is he compelled and fascinated enough to get into this book? Yes, most likely.



After thumbing through the pages of this book I found him flipping through Maus by Art Spiegelman. Want to know a secret? I never read this book! I've been meaning to and since Erica has a copy she is going to let me borrow it. She had to read it in college for her Holocaust literature class. Interestingly enough I wanted to take that same class because I could always see the book on the shelves whenever I'd pick up copies of the required reading for all my classes every quarter. I will finally cross this book off my list...soon enough.

What are some of your favourite graphic novels?

Reading by the Sea

On my visit to the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, California yesterday I spotted a girl reading by the fountain out front. I didn't get to talk to her because my mother and I were in a rush but it looked like the girl was reading a Twilight book from what I could make out. Not sure which book exactly.

Perfect day to be outside on a Sunday! What were you reading under the sun over the weekend?

A Man and the Myth

I was just getting back from my usual coffee run at Larchmont and my visit to the library to pick up a copy of Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri (current book club pick). I had dialed up one of my best friends to play catch up when I spot Tommy crossing the street on my block. Karen, I'm sorry but yes, this was the reason I had to hang up on you.

Tommy was walking and reading, something I like to do, too, but I sometimes fear I may get run over by a car because I'm not paying attention to my surroundings. Tommy happens to live in the colourful apartment building around the corner, the same one I covet everytime I pass by. It truly is one of my favourite buildings on the block.

On his way to visit his brother who happens to live nearby. He's reading "The Recovery of Christian Myth" by Guilford Dudley III. (This was one of the moments I wished I had my handheld recorder handy because I may have misquoted. So Tommy, if you're reading this, feel free to correct me). The book observes that once the church experienced the onset of the modern and scientific age it combat and gave up its historic and "mythical" background. This scientific rationalization demytholigized and depersonalized the truth. A fellow UCLA Bruin Tommy recently wrote a paper on this topic. "We've lost the ability to preserve myth."



His brother is an academic as well and happens to study philosophy. "My brother tends to be quite the 'rational' and 'logical' one while I am more the religiously-minded one." Having this dichotomy adds a little spice in their dialogues on this topic.

Tommy tends to read non-fiction, much of which have to do with religion but lean towards the mythic components of religion. Although recently Tommy did read Into the Wild. This was another book that sparked an interesting conversation between him and his brother. His brother had just taken a semantics course so they were able to discuss how the book's romantic notions got the best of the protagonist. Here he was wanting to go out on these adventures on a whim, go where the wind takes him. However he must battle logic. Do his romantic notions come at the cost of logic/meaning?

If he were to recommend a book to anyone it would be "The Problem of Evil" because it covers the big picture of the philosophical topic. It's pretty general for anyone and everyone to read and take something out of it. Tommy also recommends a work by Peter Kreeft, a Cahotlic theologian, called "Making Sense Out Of Suffering". This is another work that is great for all types of people regardless of their beliefs. "It gleans from every discipline and isn't confined to singular, one-sided stock reasoning."

Manga Mania

My office is located right above the infamous (I suppose it is infamous) Baker furniture store right by the Beverly Center and the Sofitel Hotel. If you've ever been to a show at the Largo then you've parked in our parking lot. A few weekends ago Baker hosted a huge sale - expensive furniture (like end tables that cost more than my monthly rent) were set up in the parking lot itself. Many of those items had yet to be picked up so they hired a temporary security guard to stand watch after hours.

One night after a long day I was startled to find this man seated by the doorway into the parking lot. I'd see him every night that week passing time on his laptop or on his mobile phone. Then I would see him in the mornings when I got into work. On Thursday night, however, I saw him sitting in one of the bigger chairs, engrossed in a book.

I noticed the book cover was backwards, as in the front cover was on the back. I asked the guard, Stephen, what he was reading. From the artwork I asked if it was manga. I had hit it right on the money! Stephen is reading book 13 from the "Death Note" series. Before heading into work today Stephen stopped by the Border's down the street in search of another manga book but when he saw that Book 13, the latest book from the series, was available he HAD to grab his copy right then and there.


The title and cover alone has me intrigued. Stephen explains that there are two main characters in the story - an evil doer and the good guy detective. These two geniuses have a mental battle! There is this notebook where one writes someone's full name and method of death. As a result that person written up in the book dies that way. So if I wrote Stephen's name in there along with "hit by oncoming traffic" poor Stephen becomes roadkill.

People have been missing and so the good detective mentally battles the evil doer to stop him from killing off all these people. "Everything happens mentally. You even have to concentrate hard when writing down someone's name, ensuring that you are thinking of the right person."

I was flipping through the book and along with the manga storyline itself I saw what looked like charts and editor's notes in the margin. Stephen explained that this was also a "How-To-Read" book. The back of the book contains explanations on how to decipher certain things. And apparently there are movies based off the manga. Stephen had actually watched the movie first and that got him reading the whole series. He has issues with the movies. The anime cartoons and video games (for all manga) are fine. But the movies, he says, feel like much of the storyline is stripped away. It feels watered down.


Stephen got addicted to manga/anime sometime in high school. Many of his classmates and friends were reading manga so he started getting into it because of them and, thus, became the group who devoured anything and everything manga. He's into Yu-Gi-Oh and Shonen Jump/Naruto. I smiled and asked him if he really enjoyed Naruto Shippuden alot then confessed that Naruto is one of our projects and that VIZ Media is one of our clients. Stephen's face dropped. "Wait, you work with Naruto? As in YOU WORK WITH NARUTO??" I didn't know if this outburst was him about to shun me or hug me. Thankfully it was the latter. I explained how my company works on Naruto Shippuden, told him about Naruto.com and the Watch & Win contest we were promoting, how we will be marketing Naruto's 10th Anniversary later in the year, and how I had a Naruto headband that I could give him. Stephen's eyes lit up like a Christmas tree! After talking for a bit I ran back upstairs and grabbed my Naruto headband. I figured Stephen would appreciate it more however I kept my Akamaru bag - I fought to get one so I am clinging to that, sir! I tried to see if we had any DVDs or figurines available but didn't know if they were already accounted for. I will have to ask the client to send me some items for my new friend.


It was really neat hearing Stephen explain the different Naruto characters to me. He was like my own personal character guide! He looked at the symbol on the headband and explained why there was a slash in the middle and so on. His sheer enthusiasm and passion beaming off of him got me really excited and happy. Before heading home I asked Stephen to recommend a manga I should get into. I am not as well-versed in it as I probably should be. He asked me what I was into and listed off a few genres. "Are you into adventure, comedy, drama...?" I thought about it for a bit. "I suppose I'd like to read adventure with a dark edge." He recommended "Inuyasha" by Rumiko Takahashi. I looked up the books when I got home and saw girls on the cover. Badass girls? Heck yes! I told him I would check it out along with the Death Note series since the premise has got me curious. He told me I could visit a Border's and just explore the Manga section. "Everything is in alphabetical order. Even if you don't know what you're looking for you're bound to find something that pops out at you."



Do you have a favourite manga? If so, why do you like it? What is the story's background?

Literary Adventures at Disneyland

I've returned from a day Disneyland yesterday with my fellow co-workers. While navigating through the park I noticed a handful of readers passing the time in the epic long lines. I spotted a mother reading aloud to her young son and daughter in line for Space Mountain. The book? Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones. It was really sweet to see the mother taking this time to read to her children and help draw her children's attention away from the long wait.

Near this mother was a man with a travel book entitled Kalifornie (California travel book in Czech). Behind him was a man reading a script.

Maneuvering through the crowds setting up camp before the light show in New Orleans Square on my way to the Haunted Mansion I noticed a woman leaning up against a rail, reading a roman novel of sorts. I could not make out the title but did see the man with the bare chest and flowing hair holding a voluptuous coquette in his arms.

Good to see people thinking ahead. I, on the other hand, left my book at home so I resorted to good ol' conversation with my friend while queued up.

Do you remember to bring a book to amusement parks?

First Book Drive! Help the kiddies out

I've been itching to do something meaningful for a worthy cause revolving around books/reading and have decided to hold my blog's first book drive! After some research into local organizations I'm excited to announce that I've decided to focus this book drive's efforts towards aiding Reading to Kids.

Reading to Kids is a grassroots organization dedicated to inspiring low-income children with a love of reading. On the second Saturday of each month, Reading to Kids gathers over 1,000 children and hundreds of volunteers for reading clubs at Los Angeles area elementary schools from 9am to noon. At the reading clubs, pairs of volunteers read aloud to small groups of children, while their parents receive training on how to encourage their children to read at home. Kids, parents, teachers, and school libraries receive book donations at the end of the reading clubs. These are important donations, as 60% of low-income homes do not have age appropriate reading materials for children.


I am calling on my friends and blog readers to help out during this book drive by donating new and/or gently used books to these kids in the program as well as books for the parents to take home to encourage reading in their households. The organization is looking for books for kids in kindergarten to 5th grade. Our donated books will be given to the children after their reading clubs to take home and build their own home libraries. Parents receive donated books as well so that they can help nurture their child's newfound love for reading. So dig up some of your childhood books, ask your friends to donate some of theirs or roam the shelves at your local bookstore for the latest releases.

Ways to donate to this book drive:

• Bring your new or gently used children's book(s) to our next book club meeting in July
• Contact yours truly so that we can organize a meet-up where I can pick up your book donations
• I am currently working to get donation boxes placed in some local independent book stores in the city. If all goes well I will announce these bookstore locations where you can drop off your donations
• Not in Los Angeles but still want to help? Let me know and we can make arrangements to work something out
  
• Above all please contact me if you're interested in helping out. Every book counts and hopefully we can a good amount collected for a month-long drive

Reading to Kids is super excited about the Noses in Books book drive so let's kick this book drive off to a good start! Visit http://www.readingtokids.org/ for more information about the organization and on ways you can volunteer to be a reader in their monthly reading groups.

Next up...

Thanks for those who were able to stop by for this month's book club meeting. June gloom kicked in and brought in some morning rain so I had to move the discussion from the cemetery to my apartment so thanks for going with the flow on the last minute changes. Great points were brought up during our discussion of Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book. I'm compelled to read Coraline and see how different it is from the movie, and to see more of Gaiman's writing style.

Next book on the docket was chosen by my friend and fellow book clubber, Ashley. For those interested in reading along we will be diving into Jhumpa Lahiri's (author of book turned movie, The Namesake) work, Unaccustomed Earth, comprised of eight short stories "that take us from Cambridge and Seattle to India and Thailand as they enter the lives of sisters and brothers, fathers and mothers, daughters and sons, friends and lovers."

[from RandomHouse.com]

In the stunning title story, Ruma, a young mother in a new city, is visited by her father, who carefully tends the earth of her garden, where he and his grandson form a special bond. But he’s harboring a secret from his daughter, a love affair he’s keeping all to himself. In “A Choice of Accommodations,” a husband’s attempt to turn an old friend’s wedding into a romantic getaway weekend with his wife takes a dark, revealing turn as the party lasts deep into the night. In “Only Goodness,” a sister eager to give her younger brother the perfect childhood she never had is overwhelmed by guilt, anguish, and anger when his alcoholism threatens her family. And in “Hema and Kaushik,” a trio of linked stories—a luminous, intensely compelling elegy of life, death, love, and fate—we follow the lives of a girl and boy who, one winter, share a house in Massachusetts. They travel from innocence to experience on separate, sometimes painful paths, until destiny brings them together again years later in Rome.

Meeting date, time and location TBD (however put a pin on either July 11th or 18th)

Happy reading everyone!

Mini Escapes

Every once in a while I get in those moods where I just want to wander around aimlessly. Whether it be on foot, by bus, or peddling away on Pierrot (my bicycle) I've just got the wanderlust. Just call me Robin Vote (a la Djuna Barnes' Nightwood). After relaxing at home for a bit this passed Saturday I got dressed, counted my change, and decided to board the bus. Sure, let's run errands. I needed to get a tire pump for my bike anyway. So I boarded the bus towards the Target store at Santa Monica and La Brea. My how I've missed riding the bus.

Once I got to the top of the stairs in the courtyard I saw Nicole sitting on one of the wooden benches in front of ULTA. Nicole was reading Rick Riordan's The Titan's Curse, a book, she explains, about the Olympians. It's a fantasy book or sorts and is part of a series of books. She thought she'd take some time to read today since she had the day off from work. "Yeah, I'm a pretty quick reader so I tend to pick up books that are also 'quick and easy' reads." This way she can get alot accomplished during her down time.

Nicole tends to lean towards fantasy books because they storylines are a great way to escape. She also enjoys stories with great drama involved.

Growing up Peter Pan was her favourite and she read it over and over. And not the Disney version, per se. She read the real deal. "I liked Peter Pan because of the imagination throughout the story." If we're going to escape in books why not add some quirky twists to it, right? We talked about the book versus the movie and like many, Nicole prefers the book over the movies although she admits to enjoying the film adaptations.


Nicole used to draw when she was younger and make up stories to go along with her drawings. Nowadays she would love to write her own children's book if she could and she would hone her artistic skills of yore so that she can do her own illustrations to accompany her fantastical storylines.

Did you ever make up your own stories and books, complete with illustrations, when you were a child? I remember doing that in school and even binding them ourselves with creative book covers. (In one class we even sent our work to be professionally bound). One story I remember writing was a tall tale! Kind of a modern Paul Bunyan but a woman, of course! I was in 4th grade and I remember incorporating the word "smithereens" into my story. Something about crushing bricks into smithereens.

Dance Dance Dancing with the Dead

Scored tickets to see Lykke Li at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery on March 29th. This happened to be my first concert at the cemetery (The Masonic Lodge to be exact). The building itself was gorgeous! You enter into a lovely outdoor patio with pretty white lights in the trees. There is beautiful tile work in the foyer and the salon upstairs is absolutely old and precious! Lykke performed in a quaint room - lighting against the old heavy and wooden chairs gave the perfect ghostly feel. She opened with "Time Flies". We stomped our feet to "Dance Dance Dance", we swooned to her cover of Kings of Leon's "Knocked Up" and she closed out with a cover of "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow".

Before her set I was roaming the grounds, sipping my wine, and encountered Dave perched on a chair at the bottom of the staircase reading "The Oresteia" by Aeschylus which contains the Greek trilogy (Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers and The Eumenides). When Dave was explaining the book to me I had asked if he was reading it for school or for pleasure. One sees a book like that and has flashbacks of college lit class reading. "I know, I know. But the book isn't as heavy as it seems" he explains beneath his wicked 'stache. We had over an hour to kill before the set so he figured he would catch up on some reading. Dave's been to shows here before. The last one he attended was for Iron & Wine. (How did I miss that!) Dave's pre-show reading for Iron & Wine was Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson. "I often ride the bus so I always have a book on me and I'm constantly reading. I read before shows, I read before a movie starts. Heck, I will even read during a movie with a mini flashlight if the movie isn't that interesting."


Skeleton in the closet? The last book he's read is Twilight. "I really didn't want to read it but I did because it's one of those books that everyone's been reading so I thought I would see what all the fuss was about. It was almost like a rite of passage. To tell you the truth I didn't like the book one bit but I thought the movie was okay. I actually read the book after I watched the movie. Everyone is always saying how books are always better than the movie but this was an exception. I did think that the movie was pretty faithful to the book though."

Dave prefers to read the classics (double entendre there since he also enjoys ancient Greek works). His favourite book of all time is Lord of the Flies. This was the book that really triggered his love for literature probably because he read it during a time in his life when he was the same age as the characters in the book. The book really affected him and he read it about 3 or 4 times when he was younger. When he was even younger he enjoyed a Shel Silverstein classic, The Giving Tree.

We started talking about the book I am currently reading for my book club, The Graveyard Book and he explained that he enjoyed Neil Gaiman's graphic novels. Also told him about us reading Murakami's Kafka On The Shore and we totally geeked out on our love for Murakami. His personal favourite is The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. "I took it with me when I had to go to jury duty a few weeks ago. I started it in the waiting room and ended up reading the 400 pages of it that day - it was that good."

Dave's own book would be about music. "I just like music. Plain and simple." Specifically it would be a book about The Pixies, his favourite band of all time. "I'd also like to write about the punk band Hüsker Dü, a band from Minneapolis where I'm from."


What book did you finish in one sitting because you loved it so much?
What band would you like to write about? Why?

NPR Summer Reads

If you haven't already I recommend you poke around NPR's Summer Books and Summer Reading section. Summer tends to be a time to catch up on literary endeavors and there are some lovely recommendations on that page. Perhaps my friends and I can choose something off these lists for our next book club read :)

Check out the page here

Beanology

Ah yes, can I just reiterate how gorgeous I think Chicago is? Granted I came during optimal prime weather but nonetheless - gorgeous city through and through! I continued to explore Millennium Park and visited that infamous bean. Interesting fact? They send in firetrucks to hose that baby down since pigeons take a liking to it.


Thankfully its mirror-like state proved to be beneficial since I was flying solo that day. (See self portrait below. Seemed like the thing to do amongst other tourists. When in Rome, right?)

Sitting in the shade Mike reads the non-fiction work "What to Eat" by dietitian Marion Nestle. Nestle walks readers through the various food choices we are inundated with and hones in on the various supermarket aisles and its products (meats, packaged foods, juices, waters, produce, etc.), helps decode nutritional labels and more.


Mike had heard of the book via suggestions from friends until one of them finally let him borrow a copy. This is actually a follow-up read to a book Mike had read earlier - "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle". And by follow-up I mean it complements the other.

Mike enjoys reading non-fiction works for the most part but not necessarily self-improvement books a la his current food reads. Rather he leans towards more historical books and political science reads. "I like to be socially aware..."


Mike had the same mindset as me because he too heard about the new Modern Art wing at the Art Institute (my next destination after roaming around the park). He has just come from there and liked what he saw except he could've done without the crowds (with the grand opening of the new wing the museum was free to the public that whole week). "It's also a holiday weekend so there are many visitors/tourists in town." GUILTY! Mike doesn't regret going however he wants to go back the likes of me leave town :)

Growing up Mike enjoyed books like the The Black Stallion by Walter Farley and Jack London's classic The Call of the Wild. He also can't forget the Lord of the Rings books. "I prefer the books over the movies. You just can't compare the cinematic interpretation to the memories/interpretations one has of the tales as a child and even as an adult. It's different for everyone and I think everyone has their own personal interpretation that they have conjured in their imagination."

If he were to write his own book it would be about green living and the environment. He does his best to live a green lifestyle so he would like to write about his experience in doing so.



I think Mike is the first reader I've encountered who references Jack London. Such a childhood classic. What was your favourite Jack London book? Call of the Wild? White Fang? Sea Wolf?