Rating: 
Workaholic attorney Samantha Sweeting has just done the unthinkable. She’s made a mistake so huge, it’ll wreck any chance of a partnership.
Going into utter meltdown, she walks out of her London office, gets on a train and ends up in the middle of nowhere. Asking for directions at a big, beautiful house, she’s mistaken for an interviewee and finds herself being offered a job as a housekeeper.
Her employers have no idea that they’ve hired a lawyer — and Samantha has no idea how to work the oven. She can’t sew on a button, bake a potato or get the #@%# ironing board to open. How she takes a deep breath and begins to cope — and finds love — is a sory as delicious as the bread she learns to bake.
But will her old life ever catch up with her? And if it does…will she wnat it back?
I’ve been a reader of Sophie Kinsella ever since I got ahold of my first Shopaholic book when I was in college. It was because of her books that I started liking chicklit, and Becky Bloomwood/Brandon will always be the benchmark of typical a typical chicklit protagonist. The thing is, I couldn’t really relate to Becky since I’m not that much of a shopaholic. :P However, Samantha Sweeting is someone I could definitely relate to. :P
It was scary how I can relate to Samantha in the first part of the novel: workaholic, long hours in the office, always on the run. Geez, was I like that for the past months? :| I know I didn’t work on weekends, but I pulled long hours…and was gladly doing so. I knew I wasn’t that close to being like Samantha, but it was surprising and scary how much similar I was with her when it comes to how I work.
Anyway, I like this book because although the story can seem a bit typical — kind of like a reverse Cinderella-like — it was very relatable. Samantha’s lack of knowledge in domestic work may seem a bit exaggerated, but I like how Kinsella made her change very realistic, and the lessons that she made Samantha learn are also very important: how to slow down and live life, that work is not everything. I like how money wasn’t much an object here, seeing as Samantha may be really rich because of her job (seems like she could definitely afford a jet charter for herself), and her employers are definitely rich, so it’s refreshing coming from the Shopaholic books which was all about money. :P Anyway, I loved how the characters interacted with one another, especially the Geigers and Iris and Nathaniel. I’m not too fond of the love story, but it was a necessary plot point in the story else it wouldn’t have the very dramatic movie-like ending. ;)
It’s not a terribly serious book, but it’s a good read if you want something with enough substance but light enough not to bring the reader down. :)
When my teammate, Mike, arrived, I immediately ambushed him with this question: Would it be an ultimate geekery if I say I want to attend WordCamp Philippines 2008?
The answer was yes, but then again, I’m a self-confessed geek, so why would this matter?
Anyway, I heard about this from Kyameel, and I decided to register if only to revive my blogging life and to fully understand Wordpress more, since I’ve been using it for years now (which reminds me…I have to upgrade!), and I don’t see myself using another content management system and I’ve been missing programming and developing, AND admission is free…so I thought, why not? :)
WordCamp Philippines 2008 will be on September 6, 2008, at College of Saint Benilde, Taft Avenue, Manila (hello, Taft, I missed you!). This event is organized by the Mindanao Bloggers (thank you!), and is made possible by the following sponsors:
Who else is going? This will be my first second blogging event for the year (I remember, 2008 Philippine Blog Awards on August!), and I think it’s just time to “revive” my offline blogging life. :P
Rating: 
It is fourteen years since Thursday Next pegged out at the 1988 SuperHoop, and the Special Operations Network has been disbanded. Using Swindon’s Acme Carpets as a front, Thursday and her colleagues Bowden, Stig and Spike continue their same professions, but illegally.
Of course, this front is itself a front for Thursday’s continued work at Jurisfiction, the Policing agency within the bookworld, and she is soon grappling with a recalcitrant new apprentice, an inter-genre war or two, and the inexplicable departure of comedy from the once-hilarious Thomas Hardy books.
As the Council of Genres decree that making books interactive will boost flagging readership levels and Goliath attempt to perfect a trans-fictional tourist coach, Thursday finds herself in the onerous position of having to side with the enemy to destroy a greater evil that threatens the very fabric of the reading experience.
With Aornis Hades once again on the prowl, an idle sixteen-year-old son who would rather sleep in than save the world from the end of time, a government with a dangerously high stupidity surplus and the Swindon Stiltonistas trying to muscle in on her cheese-smuggling business, Thursday must once again travel to the very outer limits of acceptable narrative possibilities to triumph against increasing odds.
[from jasperfforde.com]
Finally I got a copy of this book! I’ve waited for a YEAR to get this one on paperback and thank God I found one last weekend. :) How I missed reading about Thursday Next!
Thursday is back, and it’s fourteen years later. It’s 2002, and things are fine, but not quite. Friday is not being the ChronoGuard trainee he is supposed to be, her uncle Mycroft who died six years ago is showing up as a ghost but he has no idea how, less and less people are reading books and more focused on reality shows and MP3 players, and she has to keep her undercover freelance SpecOps work and Jurisfiction duties from her love, Landen. Oh, and she has to train a Jurisfiction cadet, who is no other than Thursday Next-5, the character from a book based on her. Oh, and the world as they know it could end in a few days if Friday doesn’t shape up…yeah, everything’s fine. ;)
I won’t spoil anyone by revealing more of the plot, but if you’re new to Jasper Fforde and Thursday Next, I won’t recommend getting this book since there’s a lot of references from the previous four books. Also, if you haven’t read any of the Next novels in a while, it might take a while before you can really get with the flow of the story.
It’s a great read, and if you’re a Fforde fan you musn’t miss this. :D I did find some parts kind of dragging, but it builds up nicely up to the end, and it has such a cliffhanger ending that I can’t wait for the next one …which won’t be out until 2009.
But read it! This book series is best for people who likes books as well, so if you’re a certified bookworm, this is one book you should add to your must-reads! :D
Some of my friends have been doing this, and I thought I’d do it too to bring some interactivity into this blog. Let’s see if some people would actually answer. :P
Today’s question is insipired by this PostSecret image:
In case you can’t see it, the card says: If I could make this last forever, I would.
So, the question is: If there’s one thing you’d want to last forever, what would it be?
Yes, I am throwing deep questions on the first time I’m doing this. :P But hey, it’s a valid question. :)
My answer: The easiest answer would probably be I’d wish for all the happy moments to last forever — those days when everthing seemed perfect, like the Switchfoot day, or when I get free Hilton Head rentals. But as much as I’d like those to last forever, I guess I wouldn’t too because it would lose its novelty. So maybe…one of the things I’d really like to last forever (but I haven’t experienced in the longest time :( ) is the peace I get after I pray. The refreshed feeling, the one where I feel that whatever happens during the day, be it good or bad, I know that I can conquer it because God’s with me. I know God’s with me still, but I’ve been having a hard time staying “connected”, and if it weren’t for the daily mass the past weeks, I would’ve probably been totally disconnected. I’m still working on this one, and I hope I can finally find a way to be back in tune, because I really, really miss it.
How about you? What would you want to last forever?
The last time I sat here at Robinson’s Galleria’s Starbucks with my laptop (ole Ginger, not Aslan) was back November 2006, where I sat at the corner, busy writing my NaNoWriMo novel. That was such a long time ago…I can’t believe it’s been more than a year. :) That was way before I did some admin job search…which was more than a year ago too. Now I’m back, because I’m sick of Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, and nothing beats Starbucks’ iced mocha (but I’m saying that only because I think it tastes like their Dark Mocha…or does it?). However, there’s always so many people here, it’s hard to find a nice seat where I can be privy to my own thoughts. Bah. :P I miss Seattle’s Best.
Before I continue, let me just say that the previous paragraph sounded so elitistang burgis, as my thesismate would say. :P
On another note, I bought two books yesterday. I was originally planning to buy only one, so I dropped by Bestsellers to see if Jasper Fforde’s latest Thursday Next novel (First Among the Sequels) is already available in paperback. I didn’t find it there, but I really wanted to get a book to read (this is beside the fact that I have two unread books at the condo — Pride and Prejudice and Wicked, but I don’t feel like reading them), so I ended up getting something fluffy: The Undomestic Goddess by Sophie Kinsella. After staying at Coffee Bean, I went around the mall for a while and decided to visit National Bookstore. Lo and behold, there was the paperback version of the first book I was hunting. Of course I bought it. :D I’m more than halfway done, and I kind of had a hard time adjusting to Fforde’s world again, but after a few pages, I’m back on track. I love this series, and if you haven’t read it, well, go to your nearest bookstore and grab a copy of The Eyre Affair or The Big Over Easy! If you like reading books, you’d love this series — I mean that literally! :)
All these book talk suddenly reminded me: Book Fair is just around the corner! Ack, does this mean more books to be added to my To-Be-Read pile? Looks like it.^^;
And now from books, we go to writing. I’ve had a lot of alone time this weekend and I’m sad to say I did not do one bit of writing. :( I hardly even touched my journal. Sure, I carry it around, but I haven’t really gotten down to write anything on it. Ack, I suck. Aside from blogging and emails, my creative writing has taken a break. And I miss it. I so want to write something, maybe even a bit connected to what’s happening right now, or even write some bits of the novel I’m planning to write this year…but it’s either I’m too lazy to do so, or whenever I try to write, I just come out dry. :| This is one of the times I wish I had a friend like Thursday Next to get me a plot device from the BookWorld to play with my stories. Or…maybe I just need to exert more effort. :P
I’m getting out of Starbucks in a while to hear mass and probably go back to the condo to check if our bathroom is dry and mop it up if it’s not (don’t ask), and then head back here to get dinner and invade another coffee shop. Oh and probably buy that cute white shoes at Celine. Tomorrow’s the start of another work week, and I’m ready to conquer it (I think).
This random post is brought to you by Lifehouse, an iced mocha drink, the letter A and the number 427. Don’t ask. :P
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