Beautiful Madness Book

Wow, what a weekend. The past two days has been such an eventful time for me as I've mentioned, having attended this year's Philippine Readers & Writers Festival and joining the panel for Book Blogging 101. It's an understatement to say that this is an event I'll never forget. It was surreal, amazing and so much fun. I did not get much sleep, and had to wake up extra early to meet with fellow panelists / book blogger friends. It was the first time I met bookstagrammer extraordinaire, Eunice , but we immediately clicked and instead of talking about how we'll do the panel (as we do not have a moderator), we ended up sharing our mutual nervousness. Admittedly, this was the biggest panel I have though it is not my first and nerves were starting to settle in. 9:30. We started five minutes late and by then there were more people than we ever expected to attend. We were all skeptical of the two and a half hour time we were given, because we didn't know we'd be ...

The first (of the many, I'm sure!) book signings this year, Victoria Aveyard dropped by in Cebu and Manila to meet her fans! Guess what time I slept for this signing? There's always something about book signings that make me lose sleep, and I was particularly looking forward to this one since I've loved Red Queen so much and read it a good half a year before it was published and the prospect of meeting the author made me all the more excited. She's here! *waves furiously* #VictoriaAveyardinPH #nbsevents A photo posted by Kai A. (@amaterasureads) on Mar 5, 2016 at 6:26pm PST We immediately got the ball rolling and me and my fellow bloggers started asking questions which Victoria answered as much as she could (complete with Game of Thrones and Harry Potter ranting on the side which was so cute!) so here we go: My question for her was: Red Queen featured a lot of big betrayals in the story. As far as shocking literary betrayals go, were any that you’ve read inspired those...

The year is coming to a close but no rest for the bookish community as this time the New Adult trio of Colleen Hoover, Tarryn Fisher and fellow Filipino Christine Brae captivated the country in this latest book signing event organized by National Bookstore. Again, don't ask about my sleeping patterns because it was crazy the night before, as always. I have to admit that I've only read a handful of New Adult novels and I was so curious to know how my encounter with the trio will turn out and surprisingly I had a lot of fun! There were lots of swooning and screaming that happened when all three of them walked in and then we started the Q&A. My question was for all three authors, which was: You’ve co-written a book, can you share with us what the experience was like and will you consider doing it again? And if you ever want to collaborate with another author, who would it be and why? Tarryn: It was the easiest thing (with Colleen). We just get along. I feel like we're both...

Even though I enjoy reading sci-fi and dystopia, sometimes I sit down and just read a good contemporary YA novel and all is right in the world. And the three ladies who graced Manila with their presence more than a week ago just make us want to say: "Ahh, so this is what YA contemporary heaven feels like." I was unusually in high spirits (though I woke up around 3 am) as I was mainly looking forward to seeing Robyn Schneider, because I love and worship her writing and The Beginning of Everything moved me so much but I got more than what I was expecting. They were a riot! It was one of the longest Q&A's we've had and one filled with so much laughter! It's been a while since I've been starstruck and made speechless but when all three of them walked towards the stage I was just that and I know I just had this huge grin on my face because they were there sitting in front of me, answering questions fielded by bloggers. So what has been asked and how were they ...

And National Bookstore woke up the book blogger in me (who was on hiatus) with this signing. Meeting Leigh Bardugo has officially kick started the 2nd half of my year with a very big bang. All I can say is? Again, wow. As you all know, I still couldn't sleep the night before and coupled with exhaustion from being at Toycon 2015 on Saturday, I summoned what little energy I had left to attend and IT WAS WELL WORTH IT. Leigh was such a darling! I've actually read Shadow & Bone a solid year right after it was released, so whatever hype there was has pretty much died down by then, and the second book was just released. And yet I was pretty sure I was hit with the same impact other readers got when they've read it the year before I did, so meeting Leigh was something I was looking forward to because I really loved Shadow & Bone. The bloggers started asking questions, but not before Leigh tried to tell us which Filipino words and phrases she had learned over the course of ...

I can finally say I have met the author of one of the very few books which managed to make me speechless for a good minute before I realized my heart was breaking. E Lockhart, New York Times bestselling author of We Were Liars and other amazing books such as the Ruby Oliver series, was here in Manila for a book signing this weekend and IT WAS SUCH A BLAST MEETING HER! I was wide awake until 3:30 am the day of the signing, mainly because of a bad case of nerves. Come on, it's E. Lockhart. Some few months ago I was nursing one of the worst book hangovers of my reading life because of We Were Liars and then I'm finally meeting her face to face. Ladies and gentlemen, E. Lockhart in the flesh. The moment Emily sat there and spoke after the first question was asked, I know we're all going to be in for a treat. If you're going to listen to the recording below, it's obvious how there are always a couple of seconds of dead air because we're all eagerly waiting for her a...