Over the weekend, I finished reading Can You Keep A Secret? by Sophie Kinsella.

I was able to purchase a copy from PowerBooks while I was in Metro Manila last week.

Can You Keep A Secret? is Kinsella’s follow-up foray into the chick lit world sans Becky Bloomwood of the four-part Shopaholic series. The book’s heroine is marketing assistant Emma Corrigan, who has a few too many secrets to comfortably keep.

I must admit that I was disappointed with the book. It is not as humorous as the Shopaholic novels.

There are also too many parallels with the aforementioned series, such as:
1. A ditzy heroine who believes there is so much more in life awaiting her
2. A dark, brooding love interest who built his own company, is rich and is reputed to be a genius
3. A scandal through mass media that badly damages the heroine’s reputation and already flimsy pride
4. An irritating female co-worker occupying a nearby desk: Artemis for Emma and Clare for Becky
5. The heroine’s immediate supervisor whose name begins with the letter P: Paul for Emma and Philip for Becky
6. The heroine’s ability to quickly incur financial debts
7. The heroine is an only child
8. The presence of a sister figure who outshines the heroine: Kerry for Emma and Jessica for Becky

There are other similarities that I will probably recall later on, however, Can You Keep A Secret? is nonetheless fun enough on its own.

I am still awaiting the mass market paperback release of Kinsella’s new novel, The Undomestic Goddess. I have already seen the book and read its synopsis, but the edition was the large print paperback and it cost nearly a thousand pesos.

Here is the summary of Can You Keep A Secret? at Amazon.com:

When her plane en route from Glasgow to London experiences horrible turbulence, Emma Corrigan is convinced she is going to die.

She babbles all of her most intimate thoughts and secrets to the handsome American man sitting next to her. But the plane lands safely, and Emma bids him an awkward good-bye.

When she enters the office on Monday and learns the CEO of the company, Jack Harper, is in for a visit, Emma is horrified to learn Jack is actually the man in whom she confided on the flight. He knows everything, including that she hates her job and that she is not quite sure she loves her boyfriend.

But Jack does not fire her on the spot; instead, he quietly replaces the office coffeemaker she hates and gives her advice about her personal life, which she finds infuriating. So why can’t she stop thinking about him?

I finished Paulo Coelho’s Veronika Decides to Die last Sunday and found it fairly touching, with an ironic twist for the ending.

I first discovered Coelho’s works through the popularity of The Alchemist, which I subsequently bought and read voraciously. Veronika is the second book of this brilliant author in my collection.

I adored the character who became Veronika’s love interest: a rich, highly educated, schizophrenic music lover named Eduard, who also happens to be quite handsome. He sounds exactly like my kind of man.

Yesterday, I bought two “chick lit” paperbacks. This new inclination for such reading fare has, I believe, been indoctrinated into yours truly by the very charming Shophalic series penned by Sophie Kinsella.

My newly acquired tomes are Bergdorf Blondes by Plum Sykes and The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger. Right now, I am nearly 200 hundred pages into the former.

So sue me from being a pink-loving girly-girl.

Here is a summary of Veronika from Amazon.com:

The bestselling Brazilian author of The Alchemist delicately etches this morose but ultimately uplifting story of the suicidal Veronika, who creeps along the boundary between life and death, sanity and madness, happiness and despair.

Veronika, 24, works in a library in Ljubljana, Slovenia, and rents a room in a convent; she is an attractive woman with friends and family, but feelings of powerlessness and apathy tempt her to find “freedom” in an overdose of sleeping pills.

When Veronika awakens in the purgatory of Villete, the country’s famous lunatic asylum, she is told her suicide attempt weakened her heart and she has only days to live.

In a sedative-induced haze, Veronika finds companionship in white-haired Mari, who suffers from panic attacks, and Eduard, an ambassador’s son who has been diagnosed as schizophrenic, and she begins to question the definition of insanity.

It is her supposed death sentence from the devious Dr. Igor, who is trying to shock her back into reality, that allows Veronika to reacquire the will to live and love.

My parents and I are going to the town of Concepcion early tomorrow morning to visit my maternal grandparents.

They live in the barangay of Nino, which, all in all, is a good three hours away from Iloilo City. I am so looking forward to seeing Lolo and Lola again, after almost a year.

I am grateful that it rained tonight. This will make the roads far less dusty than usual, and that is a very good thing as we will be using an open-window jeepney for transport.

It is quite fun to travel long distances via jeepney because it really makes you appreciate and savor the entire concept of completing the journey from one place to the other.

Over the past 24 hours, I finished the second and third installments of Sophie Kinsella‘s Shopaholic series, Shopaholic Takes Manhattan and Shopaholic Ties the Knot.

These books were both fun romps, but I have to say that I still love Confessions of a Shopaholic best. It goes without saying that I plan to get the fourth book, Shopaholic and Sister, the next time I go to the mall.

Never mind that I go to the bookstore practically everyday, just to make sure that I get first dibs on Dan Brown‘s Digital Fortress the very moment it hits the shelves. It is left as the only Brown book I have yet to read.

In additio, have I mentioned that I have actually made a down payment on my reservation of the sixth Harry Potter book a week ago?

Here is a description of the second Shopaholic book from Amazon.com:

In this sequel to Kinsella’s bestselling Confessions of a Shopaholic, Becky Bloomwood, a personal finance “expert” with her own TV show, is more of a financial mess than ever: she can’t stop shopping, even though she can’t afford anything.

She’s even assigned her flatmate, Suze, to monitor her spending, but to no avail: Becky is full of cute rationalizations, like “Foreign money doesn’t count, so you can spend as much as you like,” and can’t stop herself from sneaking into posh boutiques.

Her work-obsessed boyfriend, Luke, runs a financial PR agency, and when he gets the green light to open an office in New York City, he brings Becky along.

Upon her arrival in the Big Apple, she euphorically discovers Barney’s, Saks, Sephora and sample sales but when wind of her shopping excesses gets back to the British press, she loses both her relationship and her TV job.

This meme was shared by a friend. Go ahead and try it yourself.

Instructions
1. Enter “(your name here) needs” in a Google search.
2. Read through the link descriptions, looking for those that actually form a sentence.
3. Post the first 15 results.
4. Enjoy!

· Shirley needs the Holistic approach.
· Shirley needs help.
· Shirley needs a dollar.
· Shirley needs overhauling.
· Shirley needs Supreme Court Reporter v.44.
· Shirley needs me.
· Shirley needs advice.
· Shirley needs the public to escape depression.
· Shirley needs love.
· Shirley needs more spells.
· Shirley needs the following: any donated items; volunteers to help with sales, inventory and pricing items; and help designing and distributing fliers.
· Shirley needs to be on the thoroughfare between the development and the car park.
· Shirley needs to remain free.
· Shirley needs more sand.
· Shirley needs Harvard.

I have just finished Sophie Kinsella‘s Confessions of a Shopaholic, which I got on paperback (contodos 20-percent Laking National discount) yesterday during my Graduate School lunch break.

The book is light and spirited, with a few emotional chords here and there. Overall, it is definitely chick lit. I highly recommend Confessions to those who want to experience unadulterated extravagant fun. Pun intended.

Amazon.com provides the following book summary:

At age 25, Rebecca Bloomwood has everything she wants. Or does she?

Can her career as a financial journalist, a fab flat and a closet full of designer clothes lessen the blow of the dunning letters from credit card companies and banks that have been arriving too quickly to be contained by the drawer in which Rebecca hides them?

Although her romantic entanglements tend toward the superficial, there is that wonderful Luke Brandon of Brandon Communications: handsome, intelligent, the 31st-richest bachelor according to Harper’s and actually possessed of a personality that is more substance than style. Too bad that Rebecca blows it whenever their paths cross.

Will Rebecca learn to stop shopping before she loses everything worthwhile?

When faced with the opportunity to do good for others and impress Luke, will she finally measure up?