Category: I FLIP PAGES

The prodigal blogger resurrects from the bowels of inertia land. (Sorry for the mixed metaphors.)

The truth is – given a choice between blogging or reading, I chose reading.

The ugly and embarrassing truth is that given the choice between reading and playing with my Facebook games, I chose the one with the least cerebral exertion. Facebook is the quicksand of my waking hours. Yes, I’m proud to say I now occupy the number one slot in Mall World; I’ve closed the gap between my sister and me in Farmville; and there are weeks when I come close to toppling the Family Feud King Czar. To achieve such progress, something‘s got to give, and that’s why my blogging life is in shambles. My other blogs are still covered with a dense layer of cobwebs. And I’m behind in my 70-book challenge.

It’s not that I never thought of this blog. So many times, I found myself blogging in my head. If only one can upload one’s thoughts into blogspot through the process of staring at the computer.

Though not as diligent as I want to be with my book activities, I remain a booeek (book geek — I just made that up.) immersing myself in bookish matters. Flipping pages. Falling more in love with books.

Last night, we had our unofficial discussion of the Hunger Games trilogy. Though the discussion was declared unofficial, our moderator Jan Ruiz took her role like a career tribute (kinareer) and prepared the most stimulating discussion questions presented fabulously through Keynote. Stylish transitions that would make Plutarch and his propos gang proud. And we even received bookmarks depicting District 13; thanks Peter and Rhett! 3 designs to choose from! Woohoo.

And then there was the Filipino Book Bloggers’ meet-up. I arrived late and left early, so I have nothing much to report. It’s a good thing Michelle presented an excellent reportage of the event. This group promises to be another way for Pinoy book readers to have a voice to reach out to book suppliers (publishers, retailers, etc.)

Oh yes, I have to mention here the Future of the Book Publishing Conference. Again, I wasn’t there for the whole event. So you’re better off reading the update from someone who was. Honey did a splendid job of summarizing the event highlights. I was one of the speakers, sharing my experience with online social networks for the bookish. Of course, I was more than a little nervous and intimidated having to speak in front of academics and people who are part of the publishing industry. Smart, scarily serious people. And I was presenting what can be construed as fluff since not one philosopher or theoretical framework was cited. But I immensely enjoyed the experience because I was talking about something close to my heart — Flips Flipping Pages, the community that has made my reading life so much richer.

I’m still not used to blogging again. Do you hear the sound of my rusty joints?

So there. I’m back, book blog.

My copy: mass market paperback
ISBN 9780099523826
Purchased March 2008
from National Bookstore
Read: March 24, 2010

I am Gege, and I’m addicted to books. So books are my drugs. And if I may stretch that metaphor a little bit more, there are books that are uppers, and there are those which are downers.

Anne Enright’s The Gathering is most definitely a downer. It’s the kind of book that a teacher would impose on attention-challenged students to get back at them for sleeping in class. It’s the kind of book you read when there’s just too much excitement in your life and you need to slow down, relax to a stupor. Yes, I mean it’s some kind of boring.

Which is not to say that Enright is not a good writer. She is. And she seems to know it and show it.

Enright writes with a self-indulgent consciousness of being a good word weaver. I sense her saying, “Watch me write; I’m good at it.” She writes in a dreamy, lyrical tone; her narration of events hazy, lazy. Her characterization written in broad strokes, as if fogged by faulty memory, interrupted occasionally with surprising minutiae. Stream of consciousness narration blurs the novel’s facts and the character’s reflections; I can’t tell when she’s being literal or metaphorical. When she says in Chapter 4 that she walks through the dimness of their childhood rooms, touching nothing, she is actually walking through their physical home, but you know she’s also referring to deeper meanings.

She writes here as the character of Veronica, who gives you glimpses of all the other characters, mostly her family, from two generations past up to present. Veronica is the 8th child of 12 in an Irish family, born by a mother made invisible, nebulous, lost, and insignificant by the identity that defines her — the bearer of children. Nothing else but.

Veronica is the one who loved Liam most. Liam is the brother who died. And Veronica walks through the events in their lives that might explain why he lived a troubled life and died a baffling, tragic death.

Once in a while, I remember the TV show Brothers and Sisters, and the cast stands in as my visual peg for the book’s characters as they gather, hence the title, to send Liam off. The novel is a heavy dose of family dysfunctions, sex, alcohol, and melancholia. In spots, beautiful, shocking, troubling. In spots, slow, languorous, lulling me to sleep.

My copy: trade paperback
ISBN 0141311509
Purchased: April 28, 2008
from: Fully Booked
Read: March 19, 2010

According to the book’s flyleaf blurb, Roald Dahl began writing after a “monumental bash on the head” he sustained as an RAF pilot during WW2. I hope I wouldn’t need the same kind of blunt force to compel myself to blog again.

So, I’m pushing myself to review letter D of my A to Z challenge series. D is for Dahl. Yes, I know, why is a 43 year old woman reading Dahl for the very first time? I don’t have a good excuse.

I remember my sister had a couple of them on her shelf in the room we shared growing up. But for some strange reason, I’ve never been compelled enough to read any. I even have my own collection of his children’s stories, and still, no Dahl. Well, better late than never, right?

I am happy I finally read him and even happier I chose this collection of short stories to give me my first taste of Dahl. He is a most imaginative and entertaining writer. That bash on the head must have knocked around some of his gray matter giving him a different view of life, because he can take ordinary themes and twist them around a little bit here and there, turning the prosaic into strange and unexpected tales. I liked the way he twisted around the theme of adultery in the collection’s second story of Mrs. Bixby and the Colonel’s Coat. Very cleverly written.

Dahl is a deft storyteller who can pack a lot into a short story. Less able writers would require a novel for each of his short story plots. In fact, his short stories do not end with that unfinished feel that most stories leave you with. He brings his tales to satisfying denouement in as few words as possible. I can imagine that takes a great deal of talent.

Another favorite in the collection is Parson’s Pleasure, the story of a rare furniture collector slash conman who travels the countryside in search of fine furniture sold way below market value. And dresses up as a parson to do it. The jaw-dropping ending left me aghast even though the bad man got his comeuppance.

Story number 4, Man from the South, is the story of a man who makes bets with strangers, not for cash, but for body appendages. It seemed vaguely familiar, and then I remembered I have watched that on TV, which reminded me that back in the 80s, there was a series called Tales of the Unexpected. I googled it, and yes, my memory, in one of its rare moments of functionality, served me right. That series was actually hosted by Roald Dahl. The link leads you to a wikipedia post on the TV series.

Of course, the title story, was what got to me in the first place. The Great Automatic Grammatizer is about a splendid but scary invention — a machine that can spew words and words to produce articles and novels. Hmm, because of my low level of desire to blog these days, I need a machine like that. A great automatic bloggerator.

My copy: paperback
ISBN 014029628X
Purchased: March 10, 2009
from: Booksale, Cash & Carry branch
Read: May 14, 2010

For May, our book club discussed Art in Fiction. We could read any fiction book in which art featured prominently.

I first read Tracy Chevalier’s Girl with a Pearl Earring, and then I moved on to Peter Mayle’s Chasing Cezanne, but I only hit the jackpot with Susan Vreeland’s Girl in Hyacinth Blue.

Girl in a Hyacinth Blue is a fictional Vermeer painting from Vreeland’s imagination. This imagination was inspired by real-life Vermeer paintings, a common theme of which is a subject looking out the window, both subject and window bathed in golden Delft sunshine. Daily props and accoutrement litter the scene to paint a story of extraordinary ordinariness.

This is a beautiful read. I try not to use the word beautiful too casually, because it is way too easy to use it as a default adjective. But this book really is beautiful.

Physically beautiful. Though my copy is just a mass market paperback (MMP), its proportions are slightly narrower and taller than the usual inelegant MMP. The cover suggests a Vermeer painting, but it does not show it exactly the way the author describes it in the book. This means the burden and gift of imagining the painting is upon the reader. Inside, the margins are generous as if framing the text. Gaillard font is an excellent typography choice.

And the stories are beautiful. It seems, at first, that the label “novel” is a misnomer, because it is more a series of seemingly unrelated stories in different settings, going backward from Philadelphia present all the way to 17th century Delft. The thread that binds these stories is the painting as it changed ownership, and how each owner perceived it, valued it, or not.

I like how the book focused on provenance. Those who know even a little bit about art know that it’s not a commodity, its value not determined just by supply and demand, but by so many factors. Provenance is one of those factors that can give a piece legitimacy and can make its value go sky high beyond logical reasons. Yet, in this book, provenance is not treated as a valuation component. Provenance takes on a deeper meaning as the stories show the worth of a painting to the one who owns it, hides it, holds on to it for dear life, paints it, and even to the one who inspires it.

My favorite story is story number 5, Morningshine. The painting comes to a poor farming family, a couple and their 3 children flooded in, stranded in the second floor of their home, with all the possessions they saved. Oh, and a cow.

The painting comes with a baby boy and a note that instructs them to sell the painting and feed the baby. The wife falls in love with both child and painting and decides to keep both, even at the point of starvation. And at the risk of writing a spoiler, I share my favorite line, “There’s got to be some beauty too.”

This line struck a powerful chord within me. In relation to the beauty of reading. Sometimes, I feel people scoff at the time and money I spend on fiction. Like it’s a waste of time when there’s more to be learned from books that teach or inform. I like non-fiction. But there’s got to be some beauty too, the kind of beauty that only fiction can give – the kind that stirs the heart enough to make me cry or laugh. I know some people who will spend their lunch money on a book and starve their stomachs but feed their souls. They get it. They get what Vreeland is saying about art and the agonizing balance of worth between the practical and the beautiful.

There are other stories too, but I’ve said enough about this one, my favorite one, that I don’t want to spoil the rest for you. So, this finally satisfied my Art in Fiction lust.

My copy: trade paperback
ISBN 067978120X
Purchase date unknown
Purchased from: Goodwill Bookstore
Read: May 10, 2010

Peter Mayle was on my list – my list of Favorite Authors I’ve Never Read (FAINR), authors I buy whenever I get the chance. Shelf candy, perhaps, sharing space with other FAIRN authors, Theroux, Pynchon, and Vonnegut. But I knew I wanted to read him because I’m a frustrated travel writer. But you know how it is with TBRs – too many books, too little time, and too much Facebook.

FFP’s May’s themed book discussion on Art in Fiction was the kick I needed to finally read a Mayle. Chasing Cezanne fitted the theme perfectly.

This book had all the promise – a scrumptious recipe of travel, food, art, wit, and suspense – the stuff Mayle is known for. The promise was delivered. The book presents a little bit of all. Sadly, it was just that – a little bit or each element.

A little bit of travel – main protagonist, New York based photographer Andre takes the dotted line to the Riviera and Cap Ferrat and the Bahamas and Paris, and other European destinations on my TBV, To Be Visited, list.

A little bit of food and wine – Andre snacks on “a wonderfully dense rosy saucisson” and “pommes allumettes that snapped in the mouth in the most delicious and satisfying way.”

A little bit of art – well, it’s about a Cezanne.

Just a teeny, very teeny weeny bit of suspense; more is revealed than kept as mystery.

A little bit of all those, but but not enough of any of those to satisfy. I imagined it to be a light comedy flick starring Steve Martin with a fake tan and a funny moustache.

Mayle will not move from my FAINR list to to my Favorite Authors list; not just yet. Though I still think he is worth another read as a non-fic, purely travel, food, and wine author. As a novelist, he is just like what my book nerd friends call sorbet, something to cleanse the literary palate.

And so, this too was not enough to satisfy my Art in Fiction lust. So I moved on to this.

My copy: trade paperback
ISBN 0452282152
pre-owned
Purchased February 13, 2007
from Booksale
Read: May 11, 2010

Unsoliticited Preamble: I’m having a fit of rebellion. Against myself. Against my self-imposed responsibilities of reading 70 books this year, reading authors A to Z, and blogging about them. When I was in school, I always rebelled against things I HAD to do – memorizing the multiplication table, memorizing chemistry lists, reading required reading. And it feels that way now; though I love reading, the HAVE to read and blog about it aspect irks me. Even if I’m the one who imposed these silly little requirements upon myself. And that’s my excuse for not blogging for this long.

So, anyway.

I have been reading; not fast enough to hit my quotas though. For May’s FFP themed book discussion on Art in Fiction, I read 3 books (reviewed here in 3 posts) and scanned another (Phaidon’s the Art Book). Yeay, me!
I started with Tracy Chevalier’s Girl with a Pearl Earring, a book that sets high expectations because it is a best seller, a popular recommendation in online discussions, a book turned power-casted movie. The back blurb screams, “the bestselling novel hailed by critics from coast to coast.” It has a beautiful cover; how can it not with the Vermeer painting featuring prominently?

Tracy Chevalier is a competent writer. And the premise is enticing. It gives a fictional story of what that painting, that girl, that earring is all about. It’s something my soul immediately latched on to. Because in museums, I love peering at paintings and wondering about the story behind the artwork. Wondering about the times when that painting was done. Trying to see life through the painter’s eyes. And Chevalier’s work successfully does that. It cast a spell on me, and in my mind’s eye, I saw a camera obscura view of daily life in Delft in the 17th century. A visual extravaganza worthy of Oscar awards in costume design and cinematography. My heart cooperated with the vision, and I suspended judgment and cloaked myself in the magic, imagining Vermeer in that milieu, breathing in the smell of pigments, sucked into the enigma of the girl with a pearl earring.

Wrapped up in the book, I could almost see the brushstrokes painting the scenes described in the story. If only I didn’t have to come up for air to do real life tasks, if only I didn’t have to think, maybe the spell wouldn’t have to break.

Chevalier does historical fiction well, taking the very little known facts known about Vermeer and his family, producing a convincing story that gives a taste of the times. She gives enough meat to the characters to understand their motivations and for readers to engage with the story. Some parts were truly spellbinding.

My favorite parts were the ones about painting itself. Chevalier gives a glimpse of the fascinating tedium (oxymoron intended) of producing art way back when instead of art supply stores, there were apothecaries selling raw materials that needed to be painstakingly ground before they could be used for painting. I loved reading about Vermeer’s frustratingly slow, meticulous process of painting, building up layer upon layer, adding and erasing details, perfecting it until many months later it’s finally done and worthy of all the centuries of praise he never even heard. Those were magical segments.

But eventually, the magic wore thin. Chevalier takes too long, drawing out a story that isn’t really that much of a story. The conflict is just not compelling enough. The girl seems to be making too much of not much, really. Teenage angst, perhaps. The sexual tension between painter and subject so tautly built up does not explode into a satisfying denouement, but instead unravels listlessly into a disappointing compromise.

And so, this book was not enough to satisfy my Art in Fiction lust. So I moved on to this.

I used to (and still will) blog as Islandhopper, in a blog that was supposed to be a catchall for all my personal angst as well as my restaurant and book reviews. By my standards, the blog got pretty decent traffic that made me feel loved and noticed. But the blog (and I) started having identity issues, and so I started this offshoot blog to focus on book reviews. After the shift, I realized that my friends didn’t love me much for my brains but more for my gastronomic adventures and recommendations. 🙁

Though I mainly blog for myself (to document my life as a way of counteracting the ravages of age on my memory), my ego did suffer a blow. Nevertheless, I will continue to blog about my reading adventures, albeit intermittently, because uhm, well, why, oh, just to have something to show for all the time and money I spend book shopping. Thanks to Melange for her encouragement. She spotlighted me in her blog and made me blush and smile, and made me guilty for not updating more frequently, and just made me feel that there really is something worthwhile about this book blogging thing. Thanks, Melange. This recognition coming from one of my favorite book bloggers is much, much appreciated.

My copy: trade paperback
ISBN 0312282990
pre-owned
Purchased September 22, 2009
from The Bookstore,
University of the Philippines campus
Read: March 3, 2010

If it were not for the recommendations of my book club friends, I would probably not have heard of Michael Chabon and consequently would not have picked up this book from the used bookstore shelf. If it were not for this rather silly A to Z challenge, I probably would not have picked this up from my own shelf to actually read it. The heft intimidated me; a 1 1/4″ thick trade paperback with 639 pages, this is the kind of book that would set me back in my 70-book goal for 2010. But I needed a C author, and this was the most attractive choice, so I took a deep breath and made the commitment to start the adventure.

Above is the reason I started reading TAAOKC. But why I continued reading it is all Michael Chabon’s fault. That guy can write.

According to Wikipedia, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is the author’s magnum opus. It won for him a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2001. Okay, I don’t really care about those things. What matters is that this guy can write.

He writes so well that reading 600++ pages was a breeze. He writes so convincingly that I felt I was reading about something that really happened. Like there really were these 2 Jewish cousins who lived in New York City and they collaborated on a comic book series about a Harry Houdini inspired superhero called The Escapist and they didn’t make as much money as they should have…. oh, I’ll shut up now and let you read the book yourself.

So as I was saying, Chabon can write. Several times I had to tell myself to stop crying/laughing/moaning because it was just fiction. It didn’t really happen.

Well, some parts of it did. Chabon brings you back to a real time in the 40s, just before the United States plunged into World War 2, when the comic book has just been born and the industry was beginning to flourish. It was the golden age of comic books, and Jewish artists, denied work in other fields, found themselves dominating the industry. Chabon works in historical characters (like Hitler, Salvador Dali and Orson Welles) and historical events (WW2, the Congressional hearings against comic books) and weaves them into the fictional lives of Josef “Jo” Kavalier and Sam Clayman.

Joe Kavalier is one of the most likable characters I have had the pleasure of reading. I immediately fell in love with him. It was more like a crush, really. He got me when as a child he attempted his first performance — what his flyer advertised as “an astounding feat of autoliberation by that prodigy of escapistry CAVALIERI” – and almost killed himself trapped in a sack thrown into an icy river in Prague. He lives through it. He lives through a hellish trip to New York, a leg of which he spent in a coffin. He lives through the tragedy of losing loved ones. He lives through a war assignment in the polar regions. He lives an extraordinary life marked by passion for the interests he pursues, marred by tragedy, enriched by romance, and of course, there is all that comic book magic. His character is gawky, geeky but also adorable and heroic.

His cousin Sam has his share of tragedy and adventure too. His deepest pains include insecurity about his physical imperfections, the absence of a father, his struggles with gender issues, and the agony of being duped and exploited by the owners of The Escapist enterprise. Your heart just goes out to him.

There is a host of other fascinating characters, but I don’t want to talk about the characters and the plot any more as they’re better enjoyed as you read the book. I want to talk more about Chabon’s writing — when he writes Sam’s cliche-ridden comic book scripts, he writes in a cheesy, melodramatic manner that lends itself well to the theme. When he writes as the unnamed narrator of the the adventures, he is terrific – altenatively funny, wry, poignant, furious whenever necessary. You know how it is when you’re in New York, and there’s this buzz that rings in your ears? Chabon was able to communicate that frenetic, intense energy that draws from the big city commotion, a bustling social and art scene, the cacophony of nascent and burgeoning industries, and the controversy of an upcoming war. What Chabon really does well is to face the challenge of narrating through text alone a story, a theme that should convey itself better graphically – through a movie or even a graphic novel. How difficult it must have been to write about Joe’s art — the slugfests, the caricatured characters, the battle against evil fascists — and enable the readers to see them all in their minds’ eyes. And he does so successfully.

Wikipedia says that this novel received “nearly unanimous praise.” Huh, just nearly?

Twilight
by Stephenie Meyer
ISBN: 0316015849
I read a trade paperback borrowed from my sister.
498 pages

I finally read this to find out for myself if it is as good/bad/thrilling/horrid/exciting/crappy as people say it is.

It’s not.

Jenny loves to read: Announcing the 2010 Reading Resolutions Challenge