Category: books
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The Strange Library, best buys at the FullyBooked sale, and a raised wand for Snape
My wish list last holidays for the office exchange gift contained only one item, but a long one: ‘Haruki Murakami book except 1Q84, Norwegian Wood, Colorless Tsukuru, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, and What I Talk About When I Talk About Running.’ It must’ve given my Secret Santa a migraine. The minimum price was 300 pesos, and the […]
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Free spirits who began life at 30s
My summer reads included two biographies – “Art Lover” (Peggy Guggenheim) and “Dearie” (Julia Child). These were 70% off because a Bibliarch branch in Pasong Tamo was closing its store last April – a sad affair, but a great chance to read about two strong women who began Life in their 30s.
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What’s in a book
The Filipinas Heritage Library is launching The Printed Word, the lecture series on the BOOK, its history, as well as other facets not readily known by the public.
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Poetry sales to be donated to Given foundation
Two UPLB humanities professors will be donating all the sales of their poetry exhibit to the Given Grace Academic Excellence Foundation, a scholarship set up by the parents of murdered UPLB student Given Grace Cebanico. Professors Eman Dumlao and Dennis Aguinaldo have been staunch critics of all forms of injustice in and out of the […]
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Something poptastik for your taste
[poptastic: a state of happiness] One can’t be quite sure how Urban Dictionary, or humans (so to speak), come up with new words, which is probably as often as babies are popped into this planet, but this word here, poptastic, has sure captured the promise of the event below: that something good is going to happen. […]
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If the MMDA really has to write Dan Brown a letter
If the MMDA really has to write Dan Brown a letter, maybe I would volunteer as their ghostwriter and have the chair sign this: Dear author, That literature mirrors reality has long been a subject of debate among students of Art, but allow us to read your metaphor against the grain: the representation of Manila […]
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We are what we eat and I am a salad
Since I come home after work early in the afternoon, siesta time, I would usually take a nap, read a book, walk around MOA (Booksale or Fullybooked or fashion stores), watch BBC/CNN/HBO, or prepare merienda. Pasta is my pastime because all it takes to cook it is boil the pasta and prepare the sauce. All […]
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Airport reading
Waiting in airports–for boarding especially–could be a tad boring. Some prefer to nap, usually when it’s an early morning flight; some chat with friends or make last calls before boarding; some connect to the airport WiFi and browse their gadgets; some shop around airport stores or buy some snacks or grab a cup of coffee; […]
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Ilustrado (an untrue, honest story about us, Filipinos)
Believe it or not, instead of reading or writing a review, the first thing I did after reading Ilustrado is add the author on Facebook to look at some of his photos. Whatever happened to my academic dignity and literary principle, the author is dead. (The dead accepted the friend request anyway) “honesty before glory” What […]
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Exotic Asia and images of the Philippines in the Singapore published novel, White Tiger
Do you also get curious whenever your country is mentioned in a foreign film or book? Of course, we’re interested in how ‘the others’ see us. When I saw White Tiger on the shelves of Bookay Ukay, I thought it’s the famous 2008 award-winning Indian novel by Aravind Adiga (The White Tiger). It wasn’t. Published […]
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Divine Secrets
Forty-year old theater director old Siddalee Walker is not in good terms with her (literally) crazy darling of a mother, Vivi. This is because of a controversial New York Times article about Vivi’s child abuse on her kids, including Sidda.
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1Q84 punctures the boring, the ordinary and the lonely (no spoilers)
Okay, let it be said that I liked 1Q84 because I enjoy the strange and the extraordinary in the everyday life. This is just one of the reasons for recommending this novel to my friends. Another reason is, I love the ending. I was prepared for something Murakami-ish (perplexing), but its ending was concrete and […]
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Crush of the Month: Murakami
“I loved to read; I loved to listen to music; and I love cats. Those three things. So, even though I was an only kid, I could be happy because I knew what I loved. Those three things haven’t changed from my childhood. I know what I love, still, now. That’s a confidence. If you […]
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blog under renovation
So I check out my site and I feel like accidentally trespassing into somebody’s house, then all sinks in, oh, my husband did mention to me something about some quick house renovation. So I step out first and go somewhere else while waiting for this to be fixed. In the meantime, I go back to […]
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Eating, Praying, Loving
Reading Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat Pray Love after Haruki Murakami is a breather. At first, Liz Gilbert’s voice in the novel could be really annoying as she is so full of herself (yeah, even if it’s her life, it’s too much!). She talks about her struggle in Divorce Land and whines all the time about her […]
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one of our favorite authors died (and we didn't know that he was still alive, or, that we were sharing the same planet with him)
If you really want to know about it, the author of Catcher in the Rye has died, at 91, in recluse, of natural cause. The last time I ‘encountered’ the American author was when I
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Sky Over Dimas’ Review by Powerhouse Class
Dr Cristina Pantoja-Hidalgo asked in class, “Why is there humor in a novel as tragic as this?” Thinking out loud I said, “Otherwise it could have been a Russian novel.” A classmate laughed, my professor sneered. Sky Over Dimas makes you feel good about how normal your family is–boring even. Its first line, “The fact […]
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The Fantastic in Philippine Speculative Fiction
How and why is fantasy—as defined by American critic Eric Rabkin and Slovenian Slavoj Žižek—used in Philippine Speculative Fiction 3 (PSF3)? For this inquiry, the stories selected are FH Batacan’s “Keeping Time,” Alfred Yuson’s “The Music Child,” and Yvette Tan’s “Sidhi”. Edited by Nikki Alfar and Dean Francis Alfar, the anthology is marketed as “short […]
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