Bibliophilia

My all-time favorite books as captured by my point and shoot:

I've always been a French in my past and future life. I love their cinema, culture, music, and art -- and I think Paris is the most disarmingly beautiful city in the world. Their language sounds music to my ears -- that's why I took up learning French on a self-study basis. (From left to right) This French dictionary was bought from National Bookstore about five years ago, quite expensive, but worth every penny. I have a soft spot for cut down travel guidebooks -- sufficed to say, I have a bunch of them. These two were my favorites from that collection. I got the AAA France Travel Book from NBS, just for a 100 pesos. While the Rough Guide to Paris was bought from Booksale Alabang, for the cheap amount of 100 pesos -- and upon purchase it is in a very good condition.

Among the seven sequences of the Harry Potter series the fourth book: Goblet of Fire, is my favorite installment. I have read this more than once and I've seen the film on the big screen for about four times. 'Goblet of Fire' is my favorite for several reasons. Harry is still a kid, but is in between the anticipation of becoming a grown up. As he deal with his impending adolescence, he and his friends were about to face a foreboding change in their lives upon the unexpected comeback of a prodigious nemesis of the wizarding world. Goblet...is purely magical but dark, stirring and mysterious at the same time. This is the first book (from the series) that made all the screaming fans dealt with death.

The genius of Orson Welles, the man, the father, the artist and the filmmaker is revered beautifully here by the late auteur's daughter -- Chris Welles Feder. I am a huge fan of Orson Welles and this biography gave me a few insights about him as a self-taught actor/writer/director. This minted hardbound copy, already wrapped up in a plastic sheet, only cost me 99 bucks from NBS Greenbelt annual book sale. A must have for every Welles fan and cinephiles alike.

My favorite book of all time! The cinema is my soul food, the fuel to my fire, the lime to my corona, my boyfriend, the one I can't live without, my ultimate passion in life, and the reason I wake up in the morning. A super find! I bought this copy from NBS Glorietta for a cut price sale of 300 pesos from its original cost of 1000+. There are several check marks noted in each titles of the films I have already seen, and my goal is to watch more quality films in this very short lifetime -- so far, this book has done an excellent job in steering me towards that path. This is my bible.

In my quaint but humble library, I have a collection of books by Paulo Coelho. There are so many to choose from, but this paperback selection of short stories by Coelho is my favorite. My short attention span, ADD tendency, always gets the better of me, but the miniature stories in this book are like vitamins that stays with me forever.

Although I have an assortment of books in my closet -- a stack of the thick classic ones are still unread. I usually prefer to read books that were mostly written in the first person narrative, just like these three. Much more, they have to be sad, depressive and nihilistic. (From top to bottom). "Invisible Monsters" by Chuck Palahniuk is one of the most enjoyable read I have had in years, and in my opinion, this is the best book he had written since Fight Club, but better in so many ways; it is twisted, playful, shockingly sad, and yet it ends on a positive note. "Norwegian Wood" by Haruki Murakami is the ultimate page turner; I've read it from cover to cover as soon as I got my own copy. A bittersweet story of love lost and love unrequited, it consumed me and transported me back to 60s Japan without ever letting me go. "The Catcher in the Rye" by JD Salinger is the best book in the whole wide world, and there is no need for a counter response to that.

In my opinion, this book by Elizabeth Wurtzel is the autobiographical equivalent of The Catcher in the Rye and Sylvia Plath's 'The Bell Jar'. Once you have read it, you would want to read it all over again. As a child of the 90s -- I was raised in the counterculture era AKA as the Grunge. The word "angst" entered our consciousness; during those years we saw a rise in pill poppers, depressives and suicidals. Prozac Nation is a time capsule that takes us back to the music of Kurt Cobain, only this time you have to read the life and experiences of a girl -- suffering from that proverbial "black hole" -- as she endures and faces her own demons and the badness that surrounds her.

I'm really not that big on self-help books, but "He's Just Not That Into You" by Greg Behrendt is a game changer. I bought this copy from NBS on a discount price. Though in a minted condition, the cover of the book is factory defected, but nevertheless, the substance inside is the one that really counts. I love how this book tells us about the brutal truth about dating -- directly from the male perspective -- and how it encourages us to find the one that "is into you". A must read! If you love "Sex and the City" you would love this. After all, the author was a consultant of the TV series.