Saying Goodbye to the First Half of the Year, Our June Round-Up

Whenever I write a round-up post I feel that days are shorter and time slips away without me noticing. Half a year has gone, its July and I’m saying good bye to June. Moreover, it’s almost a year since we began this little project of ours called Gathering Books.

1:4:1000 Book Drive

So, where do I begin in this round-up? I might as well start with our anniversary book drive. I’ll be honest, as June approached we were worried. We hadn’t receive that much book donations and here we were aiming to collect 1000 books. There was a bit of tension there, but our dear readers, friends, supporters and fellow book lovers pulled through. Right now I don’t have the numbers. But one thing is for sure WE COLLECTED MORE THAN 1000 BOOKS. Thanks to everyone! Here an incomplete list:

1. Libby & Les Cohen (Singapore) – 66 books – November 2010
2. Corinne from Paper Tigers (Vancouver) – 18 Books/Magazines – May 2011
3. Celina Bacani (Celina Books and Magazines) [Philippines] – 40 Books* – 04 June 2011
4. Academic Excellence Lewis Center for Educational Research [c/o Anne Stockwell, Los Angeles, USA] – 27 boxes of books – estimate of around 500 in all
5. Janus Education Services (Singapore) – 80 Books
6. Gladys Pacis (Singapore/Philippines) – 17 books, 8 magazines
7. Maureen and Doug Neihart (Singapore) – 37 books
8. Tracey Alviar and colleague from NIE (Singapore) – 22 books, 8 magazines.**
9. Gene Navera (NUS, PH/SG) – 11 magazines
10. National Book Development Council of Singapore/Asian Festival of Children’s Content – 4 boxes of books (approximately 220 books)
11. Kristine YuChang (Philippines) – 21 Books
12. Elena Y. Flores (Philippines) – 170 books

Every Wednesday in June we featured posts on our 1:4:1000 Book drive, if you want to check it out here are the links:

• 1:4:1000 Book Drive Full Steam Ahead
• Books are Love -1:4:1000 Book Drive
• Thank You for More Books!
• 1:4:1000 Book Drive Update – Letting Go of Old Friends

We’ll be posting a few more until we’ve updated you on the actual donation.  So wait for that.

GB Bimonthly Special: Whodunit Theme

June was also the end of our Whodunit Challenge 2011. And so,  for May and June we featured books that fall under the Suspense, Mystery, and Crime Genre. This June we’ve reviewed the following:

• The Maze of Bones by Rick Riordan
• The Widow’s Broom by Chris Van Allsburg
• Tales from Outer Suburbia by Shaun Tan
• Over my Dead Body by Kate Klise and Illustrated by M. Sarah Klise
• Regarding the Sink by Kate Klise and Illustrated by M. Sarah Klise
• 39 Clues: One False Note by Gordon Korman
• A Fable of Medieval Magic by Avi
• Woolvs in the Sitee by Margaret Wild and Anne Spudvilas
• The Eleventh Hour, A Curious Mystery by Graeme Base
• The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin
• In the Dread of Night Volume 1 by Joshua Boeringa
• The Murder of Roger Ackroyd  by Agatha Christie

Whodunit Reading Challenge 2011 (Comes to a Close)

I’m sure there are other good books for the genre and so, that’s where I touch on our Whodunit Database. Again, THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO PARTICIPATED IN THE CHALLENGE! To end, here’s a summary of our last entries.

• The Eye of Jade by Dianne WeiLang (Ficsation)
• Paper Towns by John Green (Blackplume)
• All She Was Worth by Miyuki Miyabe (Blackplume)
• Wild Justice by Phillip Margolin (Passion Reads)
• The Restorer by Amanda Stevens (Blackplume)

All in all, we were able to gather 39 reviews from our participants. Thanks to the following blogs/bloggers for joining us in our first reading challenge. Thank you Ficsation, Mental Wayfarer,  Fanarchist, Passion Reads, Jess Rides Here, and Blackplume for joining us. I hope this challenge was able to introduced you to interesting reads.

Reading Challenge Update

Speaking of Reading Challenges, we’re participating on a few this year and here’s the summary.

• Murakami Reading Challenge 2011: 1 of 7
• PoC Reading Challenge 2011: 36  of 25 (currently we are doing this as part of growing the database for PoC)
• Picture Book Challenge 2011:  79 of 120 (we’ve increased our goal from 72 to 120)
• South Asian Challenge:  3 of 7 (Still pending the review of Jhumpra Lahiri’s Unaccustomed Earth)

I suppose I need to speed up on the Murakami and South Asian Reading Challenge as I have 6 months left to complete the seven books. Wish me luck!

365 Books Reading Project

While those are our reading challenge goals, for our 365 Books Reading Project May and June has been a bit slow. I think Myra, Fats and I hit busy mode during these two month.  But I think the numbers are still good. Here’s how it looks like:

• Jan/Feb: 94 Books
• Mar/April: 96 Books
• May: 28 Books
• June:
  • Myra: 21 Books
  • Mary: 9 Books
  • Fats: None (well, I haven’t gotten the update from the US, so we’ll see about this)
  • Total: 30 Books

That’s a total of 49 Books in May/June. It’s almost 50% less of the books we read in the previous four month. Anyway, that 239 Books so far this year which means we need to read 126 more books. Not bad, I think we’ll be able to make it to our 365 Book mark. Anyway, if you wish to check out what we’ve been reading just click on the 2011 Reading Calendar on the Menu Bar.

Quill Junior

We’ve also been lucky to receive contribution from Children for our Book Reviews. This month on Quill Junior  we had  Caviezel Liow, a 10 Year Old boy from River Valley Primary School (Singapore). If you haven’t read the review check it out here:

• Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief

We’ll be posting a monthly review from children every 7^th of the Month.  If you want to join check out our homepage for details.

Academic Nook

In addition to Quill Junior we’ve also launched recently our Academic Nook wherein we feature academics and their thoughts on reading and literature. Our first contributor is  Esther Joosa, Ph.D Candidate wherein she talks about  “The Changing (out) looks of Books”. 

Blog Meme

Speaking of new things, we also started to participate in some blog memes namely: Book Talk Tuesday, Poetry Friday and In My Mailbox (Sunday). Here is the list of our post related to these events:

Book Talk Tuesday:

• Regarding the Sink by Kate Klise and Illustrated by M.Sarah Klise
• Woolvs in the Sitee by Margaret Wild and Anne Spudvilas

Poetry Friday (We feature a few originals)

• He Waits in Stillness
• A Girl Named Alice
• Trick of Light
• Variations on the Word Sleep by Margaret Atwood 

In My Mailbox

• Gathering Books Dives in!
• Books for Review
• In My Mailbox This Week.

So, needless to say June has been an exciting month. It’s that month where projects come to a close, new things come to begin and reading continues. While school and rain begins in June in the Philippines, it hasn’t dampen our spirits! We could only hope for an even better July!