United We Read

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Like I mentioned in one of my previous posts, one of the many reasons why I haven’t been blogging lately is because I’ve been busy using my creative juices over at the Filipino ReaderCon website. This year, I decided to step up and have a bigger role in the conference just because it’s about something I feel passionate about. I became the head of the Online Promotions team, which wasn’t really different from what I did last year, save for a few more responsibilities.

So most of my responsibilities happened before the event: managing the website, helping out with the Filipino Readers’ Choice Awards, twitter, Facebook. It wasn’t that stressful, but it did zap me of some writing juices hence the silence in this blog. And that other blog.

But anyway. Last Saturday was D-day, and man, what a day it was. I love being a part of events, really, and events about books and reading really just takes the cake. Since my main responsibility for the day was to live tweet and to update Facebook every now and then, I was pretty relaxed. Especially since I had a very capable online promotions team who were ready to do the live tweeting for the different panels. :)

Online Promotions! Yay! (Photo from Ella)

So the morning sessions went by smoothly and Internet was running perfectly and tweets were coming in with the hashtag #filreadercon. I was tweeting, too, from my phone, and it was quite a tiring thing, but it gave me some time to listen to the panels. I just love the energy of the people, both online and offline.

And then, my good friend Celina tweeted this:

And then I double checked on my Tweetdeck:

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Posted in: Events \ Tagged: , , ,

ReaderCon 2012 Filipino Friday 4: Books and Friends

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Filipino FridayHappy Friday everyone! It feels like I’m waking up from a long, kind of unpleasant dream today, with the rains and floods that’s happened in Manila lately. I hope everyone’s okay, though, or at least, recovering well!

On another note, it’s a little over a week till the 2nd Filipino ReaderCon! Ahh, I’m so excited! Are you? :) It will be a very busy day for me, but I won’t mind. It’s going to be on August 18, at the Filipinas Heritage Library — if you haven’t pre-registered, make sure you do so now so you can secure your slot!

I also really like this week’s Filipino Friday topic — enough of the rambling now, let’s answer it. :)

August 10 – Books and Friends. We will have book discussions hosted by several book clubs during the ReaderCon, so to prepare us for that, let’s talk about books and friendships and book clubs. Are you a part of a book club? If yes, what made you join one? What’s your favorite activity that you have with them? If you’re not a part of one, will you consider joining one? Why or why not?

Or if you’re not (yet) a part of a book club, do you have friends who share the same passion for books as you do? Do you have a “bookish” best friend? If yes, tell us about them! How did you become friends? What’s your favorite memory with them?

I’ve been a part of Goodreads – The Filipino Group since late 2010. I’ve talked about the first meet-up I attended on the blog before, and like what I’ve kept on saying, it’s really one of the best decisions I’ve ever done. I’m a social person, and I really want to share the things I like with people who has the same interest. My online communities often die because I end up lurking forever, so I was kind of expecting that it would happen with this, too. But I guess meeting people in the flesh makes it different because ever since that first meet-up, I’ve been meeting with them quite regularly, and I can say that they really are my friends. *sniff*

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The first meet-up I attended with TFG

It’s been two years since that meet-up, and we’ve done so many things as a group. We used to have palengke meet-ups, or just informal meet-ups where everyone talks and exchanges books and all that. We watched movies together, hunted for books together, attended conferences together, partied together, and even went on some trips out of town with each other. Our big meet-ups used to be four times a year, but just recently, we’ve been meeting more often because of our monthly face to face discussions.

*cue photo dump!*

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Posted in: General \ Tagged: , , , , , , , ,

ReaderCon 2012 Filipino Friday 1+2+3: Introductions and Schools and Habits

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Filipino FridayI’m a week late to this, because I was out of town last weekend. Apologies. But anyway, it’s less than a month before the 2nd ReaderCon and knowing what’s happening behind the scenes of such a big event can be very, very exciting. It also means that I’m not blogging as much, too! Eep. But let’s remedy that now — here’s my first two three Filipino Fridays in one post! (Yes, you can do that :D)

So, Introductions. Hello blog visitors old and new! I’m Tina, and I’m a book-a-holic! :P I own this blog and several others, and I also write about books occasionally for an online magazine too. I’m a content manager by day, and a reader for the rest of the time, and I’d like to call myself a writer too, who’s just digging for enough courage to set some of my written children free in the world. :) I’ve been reading for as long as I can remember, but I’ll reserve stories for that later on. :P

I never really know what to answer about my favorite books of all time, but if there was a flood (God forbid) and I can only save 1, I’ll probably grab This Present Darkness by Frank Peretti because it was the book that got me reading again. The rest I shall acquire again on my Kindle (of course I’ll save that too).

Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. TolkienA book that surprised me this year? The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien. I knew it was good fantasy, but I didn’t really expect to love it, or even that I’d read it this year. But thanks to my book club, I actually finished it! I don’t know when I’ll read the next books, but I definitely will read them sometime.

I’m going to skip some of the questions so I can head for the second Filipino Friday question: Who got you into reading? I was thinking of how I’d write this part, because according to my mom, I had a very interesting reading history! Let’s do it in bullets then.

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Posted in: Reading Quirks \ Tagged: ,