Posted by bennardfajardo on June 9, 2015 · 6 Comments
For four months now, I have never updated the BOOKLOVE feature of my blog. There’s no reason for excuses because it was mostly laziness that held me off from writing regularly. However, I don’t just want to let this feature die so, in order to catch-up, I’m going to write an extended version of BOOKLOVE … Continue reading →
Filed under Book Love, Books · Tagged with A High Wind in Jamaica, A Tale of Love and Darkness, Against Interpretation and Other Essays, Alejandro Zambra, All The President's Men, Amos Oz, Bob Silvers, Bob Woodward, Book Love, Books, Carl Bernstein, Criterion Collection, George V. Higgins, Heinrich Böll, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jeffrey Toobin, John Barth, John Donne, Kazuo Ishiguro, Kelly Link, Machado de Assis, Magic for Beginners, Margaret Atwood, Martin Amis, May It Please The Court: The First Amendment, Nausea, On Death, Ory and Crake, Patrick Modiano, Paul Auster, Peter Irons, Phillip Gourevitch, Richard Hughes, Robert Musil, Susan Sontag, Suspended Sentences, The Alienist, The Art of Hunger, The Friends of Eddie Coyle, The Housekeeper and The Professor, The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum, The Man Without Qualities: Volume 1, The New York Review Abroad, The Nine, The Remains of the Day, The Sot-Weed Factor, The War Against Cliche, Thomas Pynchon, V., Ways of Going Home, We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families, Yoko Ogawa
Posted by bennardfajardo on March 6, 2015 · 3 Comments
As I’m writing this, my Twitter feed is being bombarded by tweets about World Book Day which, in effect, has rendered me confused because I thought the WBD is celebrated during the 23rd of April. Of course, I didn’t leave this up to my own difficulty in remembering dates and events so I did a quick … Continue reading →
Filed under Books, Reading List · Tagged with A Very Easy Death, Amsterdam, Arundhati Roy, Books, Donald Antrim, Essential Reading, Ian McEwan, Paul Auster, Simone de Beauvoir, The Emerald Light in the Air, The God of Small Things, The Red Notebook
Posted by bennardfajardo on January 5, 2015 · 3 Comments
2014, like all years past ever since I started blogging, has been an extraordinary year for reading. I’ve read 62 books total and most of them were amazing reads. Yes, yes, there were a few duds and even some of the worst pieces of literature that I have encountered in my life but the good and the … Continue reading →
Filed under A Year in Reading, Books · Tagged with 2014, A Month in the Country, A Year In Reading, Atonement, Books, Civilwarland in Bad Decline, Claire Messud, Clarice Lispector, David Mitchell, George Saunders, Ian McEwan, In Persuasion Nation, Jhumpa Lahiri, JL Carr, Joan Didion, Joyce Carol Oates, Julian Barnes, Leonard Michaels, Margaret Atwood, Muriel Spark, Paul Auster, Play It As It Lays, Raymond Carver, Sylvia, Tenth of December, The Blind Assassin, The Hour of the Star, The Interpreter of Maladies, The Sense of an Ending, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love
Posted by bennardfajardo on September 4, 2014 · 5 Comments
The final third of the year is already upon us with the so-called “-ber” months entering the fray. So far, I have finished 43 books out of the 60 that I had promised myself. So that means there’s still four months left for me to read 17 more, a doable feat in my opinion especially if … Continue reading →
Filed under Reading List · Tagged with Billy Collins, Books, Claire Messud, Essential Reading, Felisberto Hernandez, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Gabrielle Zevin, Moon Palace, Paul Auster, The Storied Life of AJ Fikry, The Trouble with Poetry, The Woman Upstairs, Two Crocodiles, Winter Journal
Posted by bennardfajardo on September 2, 2014 · 6 Comments
My mother came into the house one day, a smile on her face and a newspaper in her hand, walked right up to me, opened the paper right in front of me, and shoved the paper into my face. “The 2014 Library of Congress Book Festival” it said and nothing else except the date and … Continue reading →
Filed under Book Love · Tagged with A Thousand Forests in One Acorn: An Anthology of Spanish-Language Fiction, Billy Collins, Book Love, Books, Claire Messud, EL Doctorow, Library of Congress National Book Festival, Paul Auster, Ragtime, Roberto Bolaño, Siri Hustvedt, The Blazing World, The Trouble with Poetry, The Woman Upstairs, Valerie Miles, Winter Journal
Posted by bennardfajardo on August 2, 2014 · 4 Comments
Another milestone of sorts. My very first Essential Reading post was published on August 2012 so I’ve been keeping this feature up for 2 years now which is, quite frankly, an achievement for a guy like me. Anyway, before we proceed with the books I’ve read last July, let’s take a trip down memory lane … Continue reading →
Filed under Books, Reading List · Tagged with Alfred Hayes, Books, Clarice Lispector, Erica Jong, Essential Reading, Fear of Flying, In Love, Moon Palace, Muriel Spark, Paul Auster, The Ballad of Peckham Rye, The Hour of the Star
Posted by bennardfajardo on December 30, 2013 · 7 Comments
This is probably my last post for this year (unless the blogging gods send their blessings) and my 80th overall. A nice round number would be a nice way to end this year in blogging (although a nice round number + 1 would be arguably better). Anyway, 2013 is almost at an end and sometimes … Continue reading →
Filed under A Year in Reading, Books · Tagged with A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, A Year In Reading, Alexander Pushkin, Alice Munro, Allen Ginsberg, Any Human Heart, Bill Willingham, Books, Chew, Dance of the Happy Shades, Dangerous Laughter, David Foster Wallace, David Mitchell, Elmer, F. Scott, Fables, Fatal Eggs, George Saunders, Gerry Alanguilan, Ghostwritten, Graham Greene, Guy Gavriel Kay, Howl and Other Poems, Hunger, Jason, Jeffrey Eugenides, Jessica Hagedorn, John Layman, John Williams, Jonathan Lethem, Jorge Luis Borges, Journey into the Past, Julian Barnes, Knut Hamsun, Labyrinths, Lolita, Lysley Tenorio, Manila Noir, Max Brooks, May Day, Michael Chabon, Mikhail Bulgakov, Milan Kundera, Monstress, Motherless Brooklyn, My Mistress's Sparrow Is Dead: Great Love Stories from Chekhov to Munro, Neil Gaiman, Object Lessons: The Paris Review Presents The Art of The Short Story, Pablo Neruda, Pastoralia, Paul Auster, Porcupine, Raymond Carver, Sandman, Short Cuts, Stefan Zweig, Steven Millhauser, Stoner, Tales of Belkin, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, The End of the Affair, The Master and Margarita, The New York Trilogy, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, The Virgin Suicides, This is Water, Tigana, Twenty Love Poems and A Song of Despair, Vladimir Nabokov, Who Do You Think You Are?, William Boyd, World War Z, Yiyun Li
Posted by bennardfajardo on December 11, 2013 · 6 Comments
Well, here we go again. My self-serving update for all the notable books that I’ve acquired this month and, technically, this will be only for the books that I’ve acquired on the 2nd half of November because the first half was already covered in last months BOOKLOVE. Anyway, here is my hoard for the 2nd … Continue reading →
Filed under Book Love, Books · Tagged with Berlin Stories, Book Love, Books, Call If You Need Me, Collected Fictions, Field Work, Jorge Luis Borges, Moon Palace, Paul Auster, Raymond Carver, Robert Walser, Seamus Heaney, The Cure at Troy
Posted by bennardfajardo on December 4, 2013 · 6 Comments
Hello! December, the end of the year, is finally here and that means that I am in the last month of my reading for the year 2013. It has been a wonderful year of reading but that should be for a different post so, for now, let me recap the books I’ve read for November … Continue reading →
Filed under Books, Reading List · Tagged with Alice Munro, Books, Doris Lessing, Essential Reading, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jeffrey Eugenides, Paul Auster, The Diamond as Big as the Ritz, The Golden Notebook, The Marriage Plot, Timbuktu, Who Do You Think You Are?
Posted by bennardfajardo on November 29, 2013 · 6 Comments
“The story is not in the words; it’s in the struggle.” – The Unnamed Narrator of The Locked Room Paul Auster is one of the authors whose work I really like and excited to explore. I got introduced to his prowess through his novella, Man in the Dark, and then I followed it up with his short … Continue reading →
The Book Hooligan 