Category: I FLIP PAGES

Bought: November 15, 2009 from National Book Store’s bargain bin
Read: January 16, 2010
ISBN: 082135226

“I’m telling you stories. Trust me.”

Jeanette Winterson sure knows how to tell stories.

I didn’t expect much from a book with such a generic title, but I wanted to try Winterson, so I picked up this slim (only 160 pages) book from my massive TBR pile. I also did not read any reviews and barely scanned the back cover blurbs, so I did not know what to expect. I like beginning a book with no expectations.

The Passion is a love story of sorts. It’s about loving God or at least one’s idea of God, loving country, loving made-up people, and loving those who don’t love back.

The first chapter is the journal of Henri – young, naive Henri, who’s still inextricably bonded to his mother. Plucked from a small French village, he was recruited into the army and thrust into a more adult, more savage world of brothels, mermaid infested seas that claim the lives of men, winter wars, and soldiers who pawn their hearts so they can burn villages without compunction. Henri’s lithe body and gentle demeanor get him assigned to kitchen duty feeding Napoloeon Bonaparte’s insatiable hunger for chicken, an assignment that spares Henri from the business of killing men and burning villages.

The second chapter, reminiscent of Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, moves from Bouglogne to Venice. The story shifts from Henri to the boatman’s daughter, Villanelle. Cross-dressing, casino-cheating, water-walking, woman-loving Villanelle with the fiery hair and the beauty mark on the right place. She robs and leaves her husband whose retaliation casts her to the role of pleasure giver to the Generals.

The first two chapters first seem like two separate short stories, and it is only in the third chapter when soldier boy meets the boatman’s daughter. Just when Henri was falling out of love with Bonaparte, he meets the woman he is to love forever.

I retell the stories in a way I can only describe as lame. Winterson writes in a way that makes the plot secondary to the writing itself. Winterson writes in a way that makes one sigh at the end of the reading — a loaded sigh that is as much about the sadness of leaving a book as it is about writer envy. I am always perplexed and frustrated how we are given more or less the same number of words free to use, but only a few can bring together these freely given words and weave magic. In writing about the all too common human experience of heartbreak, Winterson writes:

“I didn’t know what hate felt like, not the hate that comes after love. It’s huge and desperate and it longs to be proved wrong. And every day it’s proved right it grows a little more monstrous. If the love was passion, the hate will be obsession. A need to see the once-loved weak and cowed and beneath pity. Disgust is close and dignity is far away. The hate is not only for the once loved, it’s for yourself too; how could you ever have loved this?”

How many of us have felt something like this? And how few of us can write it this way? Drunk-dialing and revenge shopping were invented for us who can’t find the words to express our heartache the way Winterson does.

It’ll be hard to read my next Winterson without any expectations.

A few days after Christmas, our balikbayan box** from Chicago came. Such glee! The first joy came from sniffing that heady, some kind of wonderful scent that always accompanies luggage and packages from the US. And then the goodies spilled forth. Among them were books! It’s like Christmas eve again.

These are books from my sister-in-law Pat’s shelves. Thanks, ‘tePat! Is it bad to wish for a perennial lack of storage space so you would keep on throwing books our way?

The books in the foreground found a loving home in my shelves. And the Garth Nix books behind went to my niece, Dani. Not included in the picture is a Far Side hardbound addressed to my hubbalicious. I devoured it as it came just when I needed a quick read to meet my 60-book challenge.

Thanks for the books and the goodies, Te’Pat.

What got me squealing were these two books. My first ever Amazon purchases. I had them mailed to Chicago to save on freight and the hassle of dealing with misguided tax collectors.

This is The Little Prince pop-up book. Gorgeous, gorgeous book recommended by Blooey. To add to my just-started collection of Little Prince books. Even if I weren’t collecting, I would still love to have this pop-up version, now one of my prized possessions. I’ve already read it, but it went back into the plastic bag for protection.

Kurt Cobain’s Journals — this is a book I’ve been lusting for since 2003 when I saw it in a US bookstore. I balked at the $20 ticket then, but I’ve never forgotten it, and it has haunted my mind and my wishlist for all those years. And now, I am so happy it’s moving from my wishlist to my book inventory. This one would take a longer, slower read.

Okay, now that I’m done sniffing and squealing, let’s get some reading done.

A wonderful 2010 to everyone! May you have all the books your heart desires and all the time to read and enjoy them!

** Care package in a jumbo box

Alvarez, Julia
Byatt, A.S.
Chabon, Michael
Dunning, John
Enright, Anne
Fowles, John
Gruen,
Hoffman, Alice
Irving, John
Kerouac, John
Le Guin, Ursula
Mayle, Peter
Naipaul, V.S.
Okri, Ben
Pynchon, Thomas
Q – need suggestions. I’ve already read Quindlen
Rushdie, Salman
Sebold, Alice
Tartt, Donna
Updike, John
Vonnegut, Kurt
Wolfe, Tom
X – This is the challenge — to find an author whose surname starts with X
Y – need suggestions; I’ve already read Yoshimoto
Zola, Emile

Every morning, twin brothers Guilt and Failure wake me up. I stretch a little and my blurry eyes are drawn to the vision and object of my guilt and failure — a floor-to-ceiling shelf crammed with dead trees and millions of words. And that’s just the shelf of fiction. It is a tower to procrastination and rabid acquisition. A tower of nearly a thousand books, more than half of which, unread. Unread by me, at least, because some were bought used. I want to remedy that.

The books are arranged alphabetically according to the authors’ surnames. Some authors have multiple books, so it would seem that those are my favorite authors. I guess they are. They’re my favorite authors when it comes to buying books. I haven’t necessarily had any empirical basis for saying I love their work. I haven’t read anything they have written. I want to remedy that.

Yes, I buy more books than I can read. I enjoy reading, but I guess shopping is a much easier and less time-consuming task. So I have a TBR pile of crazy proportions. I want to remedy that.

My remedy is to read at least 26 new authors in 2010. By new, I mean authors I haven’t read yet. I will focus on fiction, and I will do my best to take only books that are already in my shelf. Except for a couple of letters near the end of the alphabet, I think I have enough to go from A to Z.

To read 26 new authors from A to Z, in that order –that is 2010’s reading challenge. I will do this alone, but I hope there will be people out there facing the same overwhelming TBR situation who would want to join me and make this experience more more fun and motivational.

It is daunting but doable. It is intimidating, but it will invigorate your reading life. Do this with me!

Here’s my author list: http://gegeflipspages.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-26-authors-for-2010-to-z-book.html

So, here are the details of the A to Z Reading Challenge:

Goal: To read 26 authors with surnames from A to Z between January 1 to December 31, 2010.

I will focus on fiction authors I have not read before. But you might have different goals and limitations, so you can choose how you’re going to interpret the above challenge.

FAQ (thanks to Deborah for allowing me to steal her format)

Do I have to read alphabetically from A to Z?
Hmm. Ideally, yes. It gives you a system and an order to follow. That was my original plan. But I anticipate you might have to read other books at certain times like for other challenges or for your book club discussions, so this rule is very bendable. I, myself, will try to read from A to Z but will most likely deviate from the plan quite a bit.

Can I base it on the author’s first name instead of the surname?
Sure. Your call. You might decide to use the first names for all the books, or all surnames, or a combination of both. Just don’t count the same book and same author twice. For example, if you use Zadie Smith for Z, you cannot list her for S.

Are audiobooks and ebooks allowed? How about graphic novels?
Yes! Any format will be allowed for this challenge.

Are nonfiction books allowed?
Why, yes, of course.

Do I need to buy the books for the challenge?
You don’t HAVE to buy them unless you want to. You can get them from the library, borrow from friends, use your own copies.

May I reread a book I’ve read before 2010?
Because this goal is about making a serious dent on your TBR piles, rereads are not ideal. But then again, whatever rocks your boat.

Do I have to write any reviews?
Reviews are not required, but sharing your reviews makes the experience more fun and interesting.

Can these books be used for other challenges?
Sure, why not?

How do I participate?
Just leave comments below with links to your blog posts about The A to Z Challenge. Include a list of authors you’re aiming to read in 2010. Throughout the year, periodically, update through your blog, and leave comments here. Feel free to right click on the image above to post on your blog. I’m also using a Mr. Linky feature so you can send me your URLs.

What if I don’t have a blog? Can I still participate?
Yes! Sign up at http://www.shelfari.com/groups/48066/about and participate in the thread – there you can list the books you have read and plan to read.

Are there prizes for people who complete the challenge?
Yes! The satisfaction of making a serious dent on your TBR pile, the enjoyment of reading, and the fun of discovering authors. I also didn’t set up a complicated point system because, well, it’s complicated. I also truly believe that reading itself is the reward.

But I am considering giving prizes to the best reviews. Let me think more about how to make this more exciting for all of us.

I hope the above FAQ covers everything you need to know to join and enjoy this challenge. Let’s read more, learn more this 2010!!!

One of the things that would surprise my teachers, if they would remember me at all, is that I’m into books, that I’m into reading big time. You see, I was a bad student. I was one of those who could pass, sometimes excel in, subjects without ever having to study. I spent my times in class doodling and designing my classmates’ prom dresses and my time after classes doing everything that did not resemble studying. I could pass certain subjects without ever having to tear through the text book’s shrinkwrap. By March, when the schoolyear was about to end, my books would be pristine and my notebooks practically empty.

I liked reading then. As a kid, I went through all 56 Nancy Drew titles. When adolescence struck, I was the precocious one who would pilfer my mom’s Harold Robbins and Sidney Sheldons and bring them to school so that my classmates and I could learn about the facts of life. Can you blame us? We had to wait for two more years before bio class, when we could learn about making babies; we had to satisfy our curiosity or forever think one could get pregnant by sitting on a chair with a boy when you had your period. We had to rely on Professor Harold Robbins to tell us which goes where and how. The humongous dictionary in the library supplied us with the vocabulary to supplement what Prof. Robbins could not explain in detail. Boy, do I digress. Where were we? Ah, books. Then, of course, I went through the Sweet Dreams and Sweet Valley High phases. So, I wouldn’t say I disliked reading back then.

But I hated required reading. This aversion must have been caused by the trauma of having to plod through Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea. For somebody with issues with delayed gratification, this was a painful read. A real drag that made me promise to myself that I would never let my teachers tell me what to read.

Maybe it’s also because I never really bothered to write down our assignments. So, I just never knew which books we had to read. The whole class went through 3 levels of hell in Dante’s Inferno; I didn’t even bother to read the cliffsnotes. I did read Merchant of Venice, but that’s because I had to play the role of Shylock in one run and that of Portia in another. Frustrated thespian that I was (still am.), I was motivated to read this required reading.

The worst was required reading for Filipino class. I found reading Tagalog difficult, so that aggravated my aversion to required reading. Besides, why did I have to read Ibong Adarna when I already saw the film with Dolphy, Panchito, and Babalu? And then, there was Noli Me Tangere for 3rd year and El Filibusterismo for 4th year. I remembered reading and wondering what the big ado was about tinola. There was nothing in those readings that excited me. The romance between Ibarra’s and Maria Clara, depicted as virginal and oh-so-feminine, did not titillate the way our well worn Mills & Boon literature did. Furthermore, the book was rather sad-looking with newsprint pages that transferred ink onto my hands. Rizal’s novels were delivered to us in condensed versions with each chapter as dry and bland as the previous. And so I halfheartedly flipped through the pages and read just enough to pass high school.

It was only in college, when my Rizal class got me reading El Filibusterismo in English, as a novel and not in abridged form, that I got an inkling of how great this literary work is. And I was surprised to find myself enjoying required reading. By that time, I was just about done with the hell called school, and happily saying goodbye to the necessity to read required books.

Insert time lapse sound effect here. Tingininginin.

More than 20 years later, I find mysef required to read 24 books of various genres, not because some teacher needs to fulfill a lesson plan and not because I have to get a passing grade. But just because I want to, and just maybe because I can.

Flips Flipping Pages, probably the biggest congregation of book nerds, in the country today, set up a challenge at the start of 2009. (Yes, we do have other things to do than just read. And no, it’s not because we don’t have social lives.) The challenge is to complete by midnight of December 31, 2009 twenty four books that should include the following:

• 12 fiction – (6 Euro/American/Commonwealth, 4 Asian/Latin American/African, 2 local[at least one of the 12 should be classic lit])
• 6 nonfiction – (1 science/math, 1 lifestyle, 1 poli/eco/soc, 1 bio/autobio/memoir, 2 local)
• 3 reading group requirement – any 3 of the 10 or so FFP reading group titles to be discussed in 2009
• 1 award winner – (booker, pulitzer, palanca, national book) In this case, it has to be the piece that won, not a book by palanca award winner XXX.
• 1 common book – as dictated by our resident canon
• 1 partner’s choice – recommended by an FFP member

I will keep you in suspense regarding my progress towards meeting or not meeting that challenge. My teachers would not be surprised to know that I am still a big crammer, so it’s not a done deal at this stage. I’m in the middle of Jose Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere as the common book, and once in a while I would stop reading and just smile at Rizal’s wit or sigh when I get to the parts that remind me of the Filipino’s sad plight then and now. I hit myself on the head for not having had the maturity to appreciate, to love, this piece of literature back then. I honestly think now that every Filipino must read this book, now that your teachers do not require you to read it but your being Filipino does.

I also think we should all require, push, motivate ourselves to read beyond the usual — beyond the usual bestsellers discussed over dinner, beyond our usual favorites and preferences, even beyond what we can easily comprehend. There’s nothing wrong with an occasional nosebleed.

What this book challege does, aside from assuaging us from our rabid book accumulation habits, is to get us to experiment with other genres, discover authors we’ve never read nor heard of, push us to get through our gargantuan TBR (To Be Read) piles, and just expand our hearts and minds to the world wide wonder of books.

Blithe Spirit by Noel Coward, An Improbable Farce in Three Acts

Book borrowed from the DLSU Library, the privilege of using which is one of my strongest motivations (or is it my only motivation?) to keep on teaching.

Read September 23, 2009.

I didn’t like reading plays. I found it weird reading something that should be performed and watched. But I had an interpretive reading project that required the reading of a play excerpt.

My immediate choice was a Noel Coward work. I have vague recollections of watching and enjoying his plays a long time ago when I had Repertory Philippines season tickets. But the real reason I chose him was his frequent focus on marriage themes. And marriage themes translated to excerpts with two characters – a man and a woman. Which is just about all I can manage in terms of vocal variety.

Reading Blithe Spirit, I realized I had an unfair bias against plays as reading material. I enjoyed Coward’s dry Bristish humor, with a bit of slapstick thrown in. A lot of witty repartee to keep me entertained in the one-sitting reading of its three acts.

The Blithe Spirit in the title is the departed spirit of Elvira, the ex-Mrs. Condomine, who laughed too hard watching a BBC musical and died of a heart attack seven years ago. With issues to resolve with the living, she decides to drop in on Charles and his new wife, Ruth. Trouble, obviously, ensues. Mr. Condomine has to first contend with disbelief and accusations of drunkenness and lunacy. Then when Ruth finally realizes that Elvira is indeed back with the living, bickering and mayhem follow, as Elvira tries to bring Charles with her back to whatever limbo she came from. Curtain falls on a chaotic scene where the original problem of a spirit infestation is aggravated.

This is a fun, quick read. Coupled with a successful interpretive reading delivery that got me channeling Angela Lansbury to a very appreciative audience who laughed at the right time, this makes it as one of my most entertaining reads of the year.

It’s Wishlist Wednesday, when I blog about the books I lust for.

Top on my list is Walter Benjamin’s The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.

I have no intention of reading this cover to cover, unless I absolutely have to; maybe in a fit of academic pretentiousness. But I want to have it because I just love, love, love the cover. Scrumptious cover that perfectly matches the title and theme of the book.

I saw it on a list of 2008’s Best Book Covers, and I fell madly in love. Props go to cover designer Jason Booher.

I can’t even find the ISBN in Amazon. Could it be out of print so soon after its printing?

Any one who gives me this in that cover will receive my lifetime, loyal-puppy adoration.

ISBN: 0141036192

Acquired: August 16, 2008, given to me by my brother-in-law Ken on his last Manila trip; I have since bought at least 3 copies I gave up for mooching.
Read: October 2009
ISBN: 0060838728
My copy is a well-loved, dog-eared trade paperback.

This book came with high recommendations from everyone who has read it. That, of course, raised the expectation and put it in danger of falling below it. It didn’t.

Only the most critical would find nothing to like about this book.

Ann Patchett’s writing reminds me of the depressing truth that I can’t write. Not fiction. Nothing this moving. Nothing this bittersweet and poignant.

Ann Patchett writes the language of romance. No, not the cheesy, Fabio-on-the-cover variety of romance writing. Certainly more sublime. Take, for example, the way she rhapsodizes about music. She writes about one of the book’s main characters, Katsumi Hosokawa, how on his elevent birthday his father brings him to the opera. In the opera hall, they walked together, not speaking, and listened to the music. Katsumi, moved, feeling himself falling forward, reached for his father’s hands. I narrate it poorly, so let me quote an excerpt:
“It was during that performance of Rigoletto that opera imprinted itself on Katsumi Hosokawa, a message written on the pink undersides of his eyelids that he read to himself while he slept. Many years later, when everything was business, when he worked harder than anyone in the country whose values are structured on hard work, he believed that life, true life, was something that was stored in music. True life was kept safe in the lines of Tchaikovsky’s Eugne Onegin while you went out into the world and met the obligations required of you.”

It is amazing how one can write romantically about a hostage situation.

In an unnamed South American country, armed terrorists take hostage of a dinner party, of which Hosokawa is the guest of honor. He was bribed to attend the party, and the payoff is the opportunity to listen to the music of revered soprano Roxanne Coss. The cost of this exchange is many days trapped in a house, and more. In this unlikely scenario, people of different races bond. Some of them fall in love, if not with each other, at least with Roxanne’s music. Hardened terrorists, pragmatic businessmen grow enamored with music in languages they don’t even understand.

And then it ended.

Abruptly. Tragically. If you’re like me, a sucker for sad endings, do not read the epilogue right away. Give it some time before you turn the page, grieve, ponder, and then slowly turn the page for a surprising ending. I have no more words, so this post will end just as abruptly.

Bought: 2007?
Read: September 2009
ISBN: 0375707972
Reason for Buying: I liked the cover. Yes, because there is a book on it.
Reason for Reading: Husband was pressuring me to watch the DVD, so I had to read the book first.

I have a confession to make. I don’t really like reading book reviews. They spoil the thrill of discovery and affect my judgment of the book. I prefer to be surprised. I don’t really want to know much more than what’s on the blurbs on the back of the book. For The Reader, however, I chanced upon some reviews — and they were mixed. And that’s why it took me some time to get to reading this.

My review is mixed as well. The Reader has a titillating beginning, a humdrum middle, and an ending that broke my heart into a million achy pieces. Overall? It just might end up in my 2009’s best reads. Not because it is one of the best written, but because it got to me. Unexpectedly. Because it made me cry; no, bawl is more like it. And sometimes, that’s a good enough reason for me to like a book.

The beginning: In post WWII Germany, 15-year-old Michael falls in love and has a torrid affair with Hanna, a woman twice his age. And even though this is no longer an extraordinary tale now that cougars are considered cool, I can’t help but be drawn into the story as pithily narrated by Michael. Hanna’s character is hard to like. But the part that makes me fall in love with their love affair, the part that makes it less indecent than it really is the part of their relationship spent reading. Michael read books aloud to Hannah, who seems to be more into those literary activities than into the sex and romance. Maybe it’s just me; maybe it’s because it’s a constant source of frustration for me not to to be able to share my love of books with my husband, and so this part I found achingly romantic.

The beginning of the story ends with the affair abruptly ending.

The middle part is all tedium. Moralizing, contemplative, rambling tedium. Painful, please-stop-this-misery, teeth-gnashing tedium. On hindsight, maybe it was designed to be so. Because the end of their affair actually killed any sense of joy in Michael. But still. It was unbearable tedium.

And just as I was about to give up on the book, something about the ending struck me. And hit me hard in the gut. And reminded me again that I should not read while driving. More precisely, I should not read books with sad endings while driving because visibility could be terribly compromised. A sad, sad, beautifully sad ending that made me forget about that horribly tedious middle. But more than just being an ending designed to pander on the emotions of a hormonally imbalanced female who is a sucker for a good cry, it was an ending that had a message for me to chew on. A message about regrets and about how much we waste our lives not doing what we ought to do while we waffle about the things we think we ought to do. Okay, I don’t expect you to understand that. Like I said, it’s a message for me.

And that affirms to me what this year’s reading journey keeps on telling me — that for this reader, it’s not always about how well written a book is that makes it worthwhile reading. It’s not just about entertainment either. It’s about how the book connects to me personally, emotionally, that makes it worth the read.

Bought: July 8, 2008 from Book Sale for PhP40
Read: November 28, 2009
ISBN: 0452275008
Published by Plume/Penguin, 1996
My copy is a well-loved trade paperback with creases on the spine and dog-ears on the covers.

Reason for Buying: I collect Oates because my book snob friend, Naomi, says she does not like her. She also does not like Oprah Book Club books, but I don’t collect those.

Reason for Reading: I was challenged to read any work of Joyce Carol Oates. This one was one of the thinnest. I’m on time pressure here.

Zombie is the diary of a serial killer. A very sick serial killer. To be fair, he really does not intend to kill his victims. He really just wants them to be his sex slaves. They just happen to have the misfortune of dying while he not-so-nimbly inserts an ice pick through the bony orbit above their eyeballs.

To divulge more about the story is to deprive you of the sheer glee (insert sarcastic emoticon) of discovering the depravity of its main character, Quentin. To divulge more is to relive the gruesome bits of this nasty, nasty novel and to go back inside the mind of a sexual psychopath. And I’m not keen on going back there. Surprisingly, though, I should probably have been more disgusted than I was. Though there were times, when I had to lay the book down, shake my head, and stop my mind’s eye from imagining too much; more often I read with an unexpected detachment.

If you’re squeamish and easily disturbed, this is not for you. On the other hand, it is pretty light reading as far as psycho-thrillers go.

I’m still figuring out if I like the book. It’s enthralling reading, I must say. But if Nabokov’s Lolita and Suskind’s Perfume are the standards for novels that get you inside sick minds, then this pales by miles. It does not have the heft and depth of plot and characterization that enable Humbert Humbert (Lolita) and Grenouille (Perfume) to get under the reader’s skin, to inspire strong emotions. Quentin’s character is developed well enough; his motivations are made quite clear, but as the novel makes him to be this ordinary-looking person, he comes across as rather ordinary for readers already jaded by Silence of the Lambs and too many CSI episodes. In the end, the story just does not discombobulate me as much as I think it should. Maybe because Oates writes in a tempered way that does not sensationalize. I like that the banality of narration is free from any attempt to manipulate. That’s supposed to be a good thing; right?

I read this book as part of a reading challenge. The challenge was to simply read a book by Joyce Carol Oates. This work is probably not the best representation of Oates’ body of work. Because it is narrated by the character, it uses crude, almost infantile language — styled by Oates with weird punctuation and a lot of capitalized words. As such, it does not reveal Oates’ prose, which I am curious to read more of. Though this book does not make me a fan, I would still be interested to read her other books.