Jollibee, 4021 Grand Ave. (at Pipeline), Chino

The dominant fast-food chain in the Philippines, Jollibee has locations elsewhere in Southeast Asia and in the United States that are often beloved by Filipino immigrants who remember the food from childhood. Its only Inland Valley outlet is in Chino, a city that must be more exotic than we'd dreamed.

I drove down for lunch one recent Saturday and found Jollibee in the outdoor food court of Chino Spectrum Towne Center, by a Starbucks. The interior resembles a slightly louder Pinkberry, with orange molded-plastic chairs and white tables. One wall is filled by a photo mural of children's faces.

The menu has Filipino takes on hamburgers, fried chicken and spaghetti. I ordered a combo with spaghetti and one piece of chicken with a soda ($6). The dark-meat chicken (the chain calls it ChickenJoy) came with a cup of gravy. The spaghetti had a sweet marinara sauce, a sliced-up hot dog and melted cheese on top.

I can't say this was delicious, but the food and ambience were pleasantly odd. Interesting to see another culture's slightly surreal version of American staples. I might go back sometime to try the YumBurger just to see what that's all about. Service was cheerful but emphatic. Outdoors, there's seating around a burbling fountain, relaxing on a warm afternoon.

This Jollibee also has a bakery, named Red Ribbon, that makes cakes and small snacks. The restaurant hosts children's parties that feature an appearance by the Jollibee mascot, a smiling bee who wears -- why not? -- a blazer and a chef's hat.

Friday's column (read it here) kicks off with a visit to a dress rehearsal for "Don Pasquale," which opens Saturday in Pomona, and continues with items on dining, my Twitter page, local vignettes and the Bowlium.

The new Super King market, and its surrounding Claremont Promenade center off the 10 Freeway at Indian Hill Boulevard in Claremont, has a super-sized sign, seen here in an eastbound view. (Thank goodness traffic was light as I slowed to snap this through my windshield.)

Although the Super King sign may appear more super than the Norms' sign installed last year, the dimensions show there's no contest. Norms is 99 feet high while Super King's is a mere (ahem) 80 feet.

Books acquired: "Fire and Rain," David Browne; "Kafka Americana," Jonathan Lethem and Carter Scholz; "The Long Lavender Look," "The Empty Copper Sea," John D. MacDonald.

Books read: "I, Robot," Isaac Asimov; "Like I Was Sayin'," Mike Royko; "I Wouldn't Have Missed It," Ogden Nash; "Soon I Will Be Invincible," Austin Grossman; "I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon," Philip K. Dick; "I'll Mature When I'm Dead," Dave Barry; "I, Robot: The Illustrated Screenplay," Harlan Ellison; "As I Lay Dying," William Faulkner; "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream," Harlan Ellison; "Take My Picture Gary Leonard," Gary Leonard; "Party of One: A Loner's Manifesto," Anneli Rufus.

Welcome to my first Reading Log of 2012, the feature where I chart my reading month-by-month, and you chime in with comments about your own reading life.

You may recall that over the past three decades or so I've accumulated a shameful number of unread books, close to 550. Yikes! (That includes some childhood favorites that I've read but intend to reread, and some omnibus books and anthologies, like the complete Shakespeare, that I'm counting as multiple books. But still.)

Between purchases and gifts, that number hasn't budged much despite three years of reading 50 to 60 books per year. But at least my backlog is slowly getting fresher.

This year I'm planning to focus on short books (200 pages or less) in an attempt to sweep away some of the easier ones on my shelves. If I can read, I dunno, 75 this year, including a lot of SF, a few literary classics and the final three Sherlock Holmes books, that would be satisfying. But you never know what a year will bring, and thus, I reserve the right to switch gears and delve into gloomy Russian epics.

I'm off to a good start, polishing off 11 (!) in January. That's too many to talk about, and even for the photo I had to stand on a footstool. But there weren't so many that I had to lay them out in a field and charter a plane for an aerial shot.

Just for fun, the first nine use the personal pronoun in the title, sometimes twice. I started some of them last fall, arranging to finish them in January for a month of "I" books. Oh, we must get our jollies somehow. With a week left in the month and no more "I" books to read, I found two with similarly narcissistic titles to round out the month.

Favorites of the 11 would be Nash's light verse, Dick's short stories and Rufus' defense of 24-hour wallflower people. Biggest disappointment was Barry's latest. I think Will Plunkett was similarly disappointed by it in a comment here last year.

As for the books' provenance, "I Have No Mouth" was bought in about 1981, with Nash's and Royko's acquired in the mid-1980s. Nice to have three oldies out of the way. The rest were purchased in the past decade; notably, Rufus' was purchased at the excellent Green Apple Books in San Francisco and Faulkner's at the Faulkner House museum and gift shop in New Orleans.

February will bring a much shorter list of books. i'll be starting from scratch today with a new, as-yet-unchosen book.

Now, what are you reading, and do you have any personal reading goals for the year?

Wednesday's column (read it here) is a profile of Besse Fogle, the 98-year-old Rancho Cucamonga woman who used to own and run the St. Charles Grill in Pomona. I wrote about the restaurant recently, but Fogle is worth her own column. So, she got one.

The official Set ONTario Free logo is above, designed by Ontario City Hall in support of its campaign to reclaim LA/Ontario International Airport.

Below is a response by Len Talan, who posted it on my Facebook page with the crack, "What the Set ONTario Free campaign is really about." He's a Venice resident whose page lists himself as a fan of LAX. I like the rats that replace the bird in flight.

Reader Judy Gallegos writes with a question:

"Hey David -- love your site! I grew up in Glendora in the 70s, and now live in the Midwest, so your site is a nice cure for homesickness.

"Thanks for your help and keep up the good work!!"

I've heard vague whispers about this restaurant, said to have been located at Indian Hill and San Jose, but didn't have a name to attach. By coincidence, I was just accepted as a member of the Facebook page Growing Up in Montclair, Calif. (tingle!) (even though I didn't grow up in Montclair) and Tim Corvin just posted a photo there of the Railroader, locating it on Indian Hill in Claremont.

Must be the same place. I borrowed the photo for this blog post.

But that's all I know. Can anyone tell us more about The Railroader?

Sunday's column (read it here) includes items on a slate of classic piracy films coming to the Ontario library's movie nights in February, the "Celebrity Wife Swap" episode that featured Ontario and others named David Allen to whom I was alerted by readers.