Time travelling has been often in 2015, mostly in time and space I’ve already been to before.
I was on my way back to Cebu from my coverage of Pope Francis’s visit in Leyte when I finished The Runner by Cynthia Voigt. I met Bullet, an excellent cross-country runner, who doesn’t run to win. He runs because he loves it. Bullet and this book inspired me even more and helped me conquer the Cebu City Marathon 2015.
I decided to end my five years and three months stint as an assistant editor for the Sun.Star website in February, and while I was going through this thing young people nowadays call #sepanx, I was reading The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai. The book is special because Ms. IDA, one of my best mentors in Journalism, gave it to me as gift. It’s a treasure!
Leaving the comfort zone brings out the best and the worst and I’ve had my fair share of both. After leaving the mainstream media, I worked for a startup company that does events and publicity works. During the adjustment period, I kept coming back to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and reread the Harry Potter series by JK Rowling. I bought a Bloomsbury edition of the series last Christmas as gift for my siblings who love the HP movies. I also joined Doctor Who (12 Doctors, 12 Authors) and we traveled in his different timelines and met his 11 other incarnations. I visited The Ocean at the End of the Lane after and I was joined by one of my favorite authors, Neil Gaiman, who introduced me to the faeries. Life was tough and the ocean at the end of the lane was a relief.
Running also helped me survive the year that was, and Benjamin Gaetos’s book I Dream, I Ran, I Conquered fueled my spirit and helped me dream, run and conquer again.
Around May, I fell in love again. I didn’t know until lately that he’s a time traveler, too, and before he moved here, he used to live in the moon. He’s a reader, too.
Over the summer, my younger sister stayed with me. I bought her the latest book of his favorite author – Adultery by Paolo Coelho – as gift for doing well in school. I borrowed the book after she was done reading it.
Around July, the first image of Pluto, the planet where I come from, was transmitted to Earth. What happened four days after was memorable – a Time Traveler from the Moon and a Time Traveler from Pluto embraced for the first time and started a new journey in time and space together.
I didn’t know what paperback to read yet, so I opted reading Holes by Louis Sacher. It was among the books that my best friend stored on my Kindle Paperwhite Nyx. Sacher is a brilliant children’s book author. He really is.
I suddenly remembered The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt, which I started reading in 2014. It was an unfinished business, so I devoured it like never before. I was already seeing the Time Traveler from the Moon around this time. He chose to linger in my timeline, however, afar.
Around September, I had to stop time traveling for a while because I got sick and depressed. Everything started to feel too much – financial crisis in the family, dim career path, long distance relationship, and what not. I drowned in miserable discomfort and I told nobody. Until one day I woke up realizing it isn’t too late to find ways to rebound, to learn the lessons of my detour, and to stay firm. I left the startup company, healed myself, and planned to go back home for a few days when I found out I got a new job offer – this time in a 5-star hotel in an island city.
Boy Meets Girl by Joshua Harris was the book I was reading during my first weeks in the new job. The book is an inspiring story about how the author met the love of his life and about the role of our Christian faith in building and sustaining relationships.
Cannery Row and Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck and Little Women by LM Montgomery were my companion during the 2-hour commute from home to work.
Around October, my Time Traveler boyfriend, who knew about my new post, sent me a lot of e-books I could use as references. Two of which I read were Web Marketing for Small Business by Kurt Lucier and Killer Web Content: Make the Sale, Deliver the Service by Gerry McGovern.
Christmas season came and I was done with The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy, another reread, before my Time Traveler visited. We spent our first Christmas together in the moon, surrounded by the galaxies.
I only read a few in 2015. I hope I could read and time travel more this year. How about you? What were the books you read last year? What are in your reading list this year?
