Bookworming: Something old, something new, something borrowed

It was some sort of a great accomplishment when I finished reading One Hundred Years of Solitude just last month. I tried to finish the book for the third time and alas, I succeeded.

So after that, I had the pleasure of basking in the presence of my latest acquisitions as well as the old and borrowed ones that I needed to read.

1. German in Your Pocket
My friend and colleague Maricel lent this to me, concerned that I might not survive in Germany without the basics of the language. But hell, Germans were so nice, that even if I didn't bother to greet them "morgen," they still bothered to help me even if they had a hard time talking in English whenever I was in trouble looking for certain places or food to eat. But nonetheless, this book at least gave me idea on how to pronounce names of streets, establishments and certain places.

2. Passport to French
I actually got this book sometime in 1994, when I was in grade 5. Fast forward to 2009, who would have thought I'd be going to Paris? I got too excited, that even if this book consumed precious baggage space, I wasn't able to browse and memorize some words while I was in France. As a consequence, I had a hard time communicating with Parisians who normally refuse to speak English to travellers like me who are too lazy to say "bonjour."

3. Lonely Planet Germany
There was a downpour of gift certificates during the Christmas season and one of the things that I acquired with those was this travel guide. As a budget traveller, the Lonely Planet series proved useful for me, my first experience of which was when I toured Southeast Asia in 2008. Europeans may be efficient in terms of providing tourists with the right information to the extent that I didn't have to carry this heavy book while I was roaming around Germany, but this gave me ideas and the right perspectives on which cities would be interesting to check out.

4. Cover to Cover: Through the Bible as it Happened by Selwyn Hughes and Trevor J. Partridge
I got this book last Christmas in a party organized by my churchmates at Victory Christian Fellowship. This was a prize in a game where I won. This is supposed to be a daily devotional guide of sorts, but sadly I totally forgot its existence just until I decided to take pictures of my books. I'll have to start reading on this soon!














5. After Dark by Haruki Murakami
Japanese author Haruki Murakami is one of my favorite writers, having enjoyed reading his Sputnik Sweetheart, Norwegian Wood, Kafka on the Shore, and Wild Sheep Chase. I actually bought one of this and gave this to a friend, and then decided to buy one for myself when I was shopping for Christmas presents for some of my closest friends. I brought this with me to Germany in anticipation of the terrible boredom during the 12-hour flight. But goodness, like the language books, this ate up precious baggage space as I was able to catch a lot of sleep during the long-haul flights and never had the chance to open this book.