POV: Attorney Monique

POV or Point of View is a segment on this blog, which features readers and bloggers through an interview. The project has been introduced early of June 2012. To know more about this project, please click here.

Grateful. Blessed.


Those are what I feel for having her as my first interviewee on this project. As I said before, her project on her blog inspired me to create my own version. To honor her, I asked her to be my first guest, which fortunately she accepted without hesitation.

My first guest is a member of book a club family, which I also belong to. I’d been seeing her name on goodreads before I met her because, mind you, she’s one of the best book reviewers I've known. So, it’s my honor to introduce to you my first guest— Attorney Monique.


Tell us about yourself and please include how your bookishness started.

Atty Monique. The Lawyer. The Book Reader.

Hi! My name is Monique, I'm a 32-year-old bookish wife, mother, lawyer, and blogger. (I am actually a lot of things, but I'll limit my introduction to those that are relevant for your purposes. :P) I am an eclectic reader: my bookshelf contains books from all genres, which I enjoy. I am the proud owner of Candy, my white 2nd generation Kindle, which I purchased secondhand from my boss around 2 years ago. Like many book lovers I know, I am forever attempting to whittle down my to-be-read (TBR) pile, but because I am a chronic book-hoarder, print and digital editions alike, I end up adding two books for every one book that I finish. So much for that.

My bookishness began at a young age. I was, oh, perhaps 7 years old when I stumbled upon a hardbound edition of L. Frank Baum's The Wizard of Oz at our home library. (I still have that book at home.) After reading it, I just couldn't stop – I read practically whatever I could get my hands on. You can find out more about this story over at my blog. :)


Tell us about your blog and the story of how you came up with it.

My blog, “ Bookish Little Me,” was born in July 2011, when I realized that the posts on my personal blog (which has been around since 2004) have become more and more about books, book raves and rants, bookish friends, and book clubs, with which I began being more active at the time. There was a time when, in an entire month, all the entries were book-related. The purpose of my personal blog seem to have been eclipsed by all the book talk, so I thought about setting up a separate blog devoted solely to my bookish stuff. That's how “Bookish Little Me” came to be. 

How do you sort out your books on your shelf?

I don't. Haha. :P

Seriously, I'm not all that OC about how my books should be arranged on my shelf. Primarily because of logistics - I need more actual shelves to house the print books that I already own. Right now, there are books that are in plastic boxes under our bed and my old bed in my parents' house, books that are arranged on our knickknacks shelf at home, and books that have taken up residence in my office cubicle. So you could see that arranging books right now is not possible. Let me get back to you on this question when we finally set up our own home library. :)

How do you rate a book?

I don't really have any hard and fast rule or criteria when it comes to rating a book. Mostly, I appreciate a book that appeals to my emotions or tickles my imagination. I rely on that feeling that a book gives me as soon as I close the last pages: did I enjoy it immensely? Or just a tad? Was it a little boring for my taste, or simply not my cup of tea? Things like that. I'm fairly easy to please, so I guess it means a lot if I give a book 5 stars or just 1 star, based on the Goodreads rating system.

How do you review a book? What do you think should be included in a review? Does it need to be lengthy and elaborate, or short and concise?

First off, I have a disclaimer on my blog that says I don't do “reviews” - I prefer to think of them as simply my “thoughts” about a book I've read, because a “review”, in my opinion, should be very precise, strong, and highly critical of any given work. When you read my so-called “reviews,” you'll see that there isn't an accurate formula to them – they're not really how an honest-to-goodness review should be presented. Well, at least as far as I'm concerned.

So to answer your questions: I “review” a book by writing down my thoughts and feelings about it, as simple as that. I think that an actual review should have an appropriate summary of the plot, a critique on its writing and the progress of the story, a comment on character development, and all that jazz – things that are not always present in my “reviews.” Finally, it doesn't matter whether a review is lengthy or short, for as long as the critic's/reviewer's ideas are fully explained and written. 

 

Atty. Monique sharing her favorite Authors and Titles.

What are the two genres that you currently most prefer?

Like I said before, I am a diverse reader, so I read all genres, but I am currently enjoying literary/general fiction and historical fiction at the moment. The 3 titles that I listed above are all from the literary genre. :D

 

Which book would you earnestly recommend to your bookish friends?

Sorry, I can't just settle on one so I have to give three books: Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell, Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides, and Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. I would rave about these books over and over and over again.

 

If there's a book that reflects your personality, what would it be, and why?

It took me a while before deciding on which book (I think) reflects my personality, but I'm going to have to say The Wizard of Oz is the one. The Wizard of Oz is simply written (being a children's book), a classic work, replete with life's lessons for the young and old alike, and is multi-faceted in the sense that it combines reality, magic, comedy, drama, suspense, and all the elements that would make a good, timeless book – attributes that I'd like to think I have, as a person. Aside from being my favorite book of all time, it is also the book that made me the bookish person that I am today.

 

As a reader and a book reviewer, what are your limitations when it comes to reviewing a book?

No limitations whatsoever, because you can't put limitations on thoughts and opinions about a book. If I hated the book, I'll rant about it; if I loved it, I'll rave about it. Besides, I've always believed that a book should be "reviewed" on its own merits and not on the basis of what other people thought about it.

 

How did reading influence your Point of View in life?

Reading for me has become more than just one of the pleasures in life that I enjoy. Through reading, I realized that books aren't just simply there for the reader to be entertained, but are also tools through which life values and lessons are imparted and instilled. I guess I could say that reading has widened my take on a lot of things.