Required Reading 2013: October

And just like that, it’s the fourth and final quarter of the year. October means there’s just one more month to go before I turn another year older, and just a couple of months before that “most wonderful time of the year” – Christmas!

We don't have autumn here in the Philippines but if we did, I knew it would be my favorite season. Just look at these lovely leaves~

Last month was a good reading time for me. I didn’t finish all the books on my required reading list, true, but that’s okay because (1) it’s just one book; (2) it’s a tome, and; (3) there were good reasons not to finish reading it – one is the fact that I already need to round up the books that will make up the list of nominees for the book club’s February 2014 read.* Here’s the full report on my September reading month:

• Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov - The book club's book for the month. This is statutory rape. 3/5.
• The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis – Done with the first part, Break It Down. Will start on the next one, Almost No Memory, soon.
• The Book of Other People edited by Zadie Smith – Hit or miss collection, very few hits. 3/5.
• What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver – What do we really know about love, anyway? (Not included in the required reading list.) 4/5.

This month, because it’s a busy busy time at work and because I signed up for some volunteer work at the 3rd Filipino Readers’ Conference on the second week of November, I have limited my reading to two books:

• Drown by Junot Diaz – I fell in love with Junot after The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao – so much that I named my reading gadget after the protagonist – and This Is How You Lose Her last month. I can’t wait to read this debut work.
• Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay – The book club’s book of the month. The theme is stand-alone high fantasy.

There will be more readings in between but I’m hoping I could find time to read them all and manage my personal life and work as well. And after October, it’s ReaderCon month! See you there? :)

________________________________________________
*It's my turn to moderate a book club discussion again, after my first one in November last year when I moderated the discussion for "The Historian" by Elizabeth Kostova.