While on the trip: a moment to take a deep breath and bond with friends. Hell, work has been crazy and I need this. (Though our itinerary looks almost as crazy.)

When I get back: work, Unseen Moon deliveries, chores, laundry, J.

Wish me luck.

This most recent work of Eliza Victoria involves beautifully woven stories of horror, insanity, and juvenile crimes. I am not exactly a fan of dark and scary novels but I found myself enjoying Victoria’s book. It was wicked and creepy. Reading this book was a new experience for me because I’d never before come across a Filipino book that touches on the sensitive themes of juvenile crime, gender, and sex.

She reviews each of the four stories in the ebook. “The Ghosts of Sinagtala” is a favorite of hers. (This story appears to be the favorite of readers, so far.)

“Ghosts of Sinagtala”
Just like most grandparent’s stories, this is about the ghosts that live in a mansion built during the Philippine Spanish occupation. It touches on the dark histories of Filipino families who lived during those times. Ben and Emma inherited a big mansion called Sinagtala, located in an isolated place in the province. It was taboo in the community to talk about the ghost stories about the mansion, and Ben, the oldest sibling, dismissed them as nonsense. This is the creepiest and scariest story I’ve read in the book (or maybe all my life). I started reading it one night but I had to stop and finish it in the morning because it was too terrifying. Victoria uses a technique — connecting the past to the present — that can be found in other horror stories, and it was intense! I can’t even believe I survived reading the story. Despite that (or because of it), “Ghosts of Sinagtala” is a favorite.

Go read the full review on the site!

Reblogged from Blather, Rinse, Repeat:

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Unseen Moon

Eliza Victoria

Unseen Moon is a collection of five short stories. My favorite is "December", because it's creepy yet heartbreaking at the same time. Kind of sweet, in a way. It's a beautifully rotten story. (Does that make sense? Because I can't find a better way to describe it.) The following, however, is a review of a different story from the collection: "Ghosts of Sinagtala".

Read more… 301 more words

• The election results are nauseating.
• If you ordered a copy of Unseen Moon, you should have received an email by now. :) Please reply to me so I can make sure you are a person and not a figment of my imagination.
• Books will always be there for you.

Here are some books I’ve recently finished.

Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? by Mindy Kaling

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Read this in one sitting. I am a fan of The Office (first season was funny, second season was brilliant, third to fourth season was that kind friend you come home to after a long day, then I gave up), but not really of Mindy Kaling, as she plays Kelly, a “tertiary character” that tends “to have one or two great lines per episode. Wait, what’s the thing that comes after tertiary? That’s Kelly.” I know she now has The Mindy Project, but I haven’t seen that, so all I know about Kaling is that she plays Kelly Kapoor. I’m so glad I read this book. The text is not laugh-out-loud funny, but I find her humor and her stories and her attention to strange detail endearing. It’s a light read you should bring with you to cheer you up. Hell, it cheered me up. (“This book will take you two days to read. Did you even see the cover? It’s mostly pink.”)

Also, and I just found out about this through this book, Kaling and a friend wrote a one-act play called Matt & Ben, where she played Ben Affleck. The play got her a meeting with The Office creator, Greg Daniels. That is awesome. Where can I get a recording?

The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression by Andrew Solomon

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Andrew Solomon once again writes with infinite grace, understanding, and generosity. If you want to learn more about depression, or if you’re suffering from it, this is the book for you. Actually, I would recommend this to everyone, because even in this day and age, I still hear people talk about depression as if it were ordinary sadness that you can just walk off, or cure with a drinking session with a couple of friends. I used to say that, when I was younger, not knowing that there are people who cannot literally get out of bed in the morning due to this paralyzing ailment. Solomon writes about his own depression, and discusses suicide (his own mother committed suicide when she realized that she won’t be cured of her illness), depression among the poor (an often overlooked demographic), and the politics of institutionalization and medication.

A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You by Amy Bloom

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I can’t quite articulate how much I loved these stories, how much I admired the level of craft on display here. Characterizations are sharp, and descriptions are precise and concise. It is amazing. Consider this excerpt:

The summer Jessie Spencer turned five, she played Capture the Flag every day with the big boys, the almost-six-year-olds who’d gone to kindergarten a year late. Jane never worried, even in passing, about Jesse’s IQ or her eye-hand coordination or her social skills. Jesse and Jane were a mutual admiration society of two smart, strong, blue-eyed women, one five and one thirty-five, both good skaters and good singers and good storytellers. Jane didn’t mention all this to the other mothers at play group, who would have said it was the same between them and their daughters when Jane could see it was not, and she didn’t mention it to her own sweet, anxious mother, who would have taken it, understandably, as a reproach. Jane didn’t even mention this closeness to the pediatrician, keeper of every mother’s secret fears and wishes, but it sang her to sleep at night. Jane’s reputation as the play group’s good listener was undeserved; the mothers talked about their knock-kneed girls and backward boys and Jane smiled and her eyes followed Jesse. She watched her and thought, That smile! Those lashes! How brave! How determined!

That single paragraph (the second paragraph in the first story) made me sit up and take notice.

View all my reviews

Reblogged from The Girl Who Read and Other Stories:

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Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away!

Read more… 230 more words

Her favorite is “The Ghosts of Sinagtala”.

The Ghosts of Sinagtala (4/5) – This is a story of Ben and Emma, who inherited a mansion from their grandparents that had a dark history. Oh what a creepy, creepy story. Tricia was tweeting about this when she read it first, so I knew well enough to read this in broad daylight. And even then, I still got terribly creeped out. This is my favorite in the book, and I really liked the connection between the mansion’s past to Ben and Emma. This is the story that successfully made me not want to go out of my room at night to get a glass of water because I was afraid to find a little girl crying in the darkness. O_o

She gave her thoughts per story, and rated the collection three stars out of five. Thanks Tina!

Overall, Unseen Moon is another good collection of Eliza’s stories. It’s not as scary as I expected (except for The Ghosts of Sinagtala – remembering several scenes still gives me the creeps), but it was really quite dark. This collection is a little bit more similar to Lower Myths than A Bottle of Storm Clouds, sans the paranormal aspect. If you want to get to know Eliza’s works but you’re not a huge fan of anything that is out of the normal world, then Unseen Moon might be the right Eliza book for you. If you’ve read Eliza’s other works and you want more, then you won’t want to miss this one. :)

Read more here.

We finally went on Saturday. Commute from our place was easy and cheap; two jeepneys, and we got off in front of the Yuchengco Tower a little after 8 AM.

Crossing the street to a tiny alley, we went to Breakfast, Lunch, and Snack. It’s not usually part of the usual Binondo itinerary (Binondo is the oldest Chinatown in the world, so the food trip cuisine should be Chinese), but J has eaten there before and would like to have sisig for breakfast.

(Photos taken in stealth mode hahaha.)

I loved their sisig; most sisig dishes I’d tried had chewy fat, but this one just melted in your mouth.

Lumpia House wasn’t completely open yet when we got there, but we ordered pancit and lumpia.

I could still taste that lumpia. It had nuts and sugar, so you could eat it without the sweet sauce. It was so good. 

Two or three people could share this single pancit order.

Some plants in Lumpia House.

After a stop at a Merriam-Webster bookstore (it was so ancient they had floppy disks [!!!] and disk drive cleaners [!!!!!] for sale), we went to Quick Snack, and had some kuchay-ah. Kuchay-ah has tofu and veggies, great for vegetarians.

We walked to Lucky Chinatown Mall, and from there took a trike to 168 (we could have walked, but didn’t know the route) where I…bought a lot of cheap things.

Ehem.

Back to the mall.

We planned on going to the original Sincerity branch, but there’s a Sincerity right there in the mall, so might as well eat there.

You should try their signature fried chicken and rice.

Photo-op break haha.

Hee.

Back to Binondo and a quick stop at Tea Haven. Nothing special, but it’s cheap.

Then Eng Bee Tin! Their custard hopia is heavenly.

We were full from Sincerity, so no siopao, siomai, or mami. Next time. ;)

It’s free to read online, but consider donating, or buying a physical copy. Each issue is 40 pages, A5, saddle-stitched and photo-illustrated in black and white.

Here is “Elegy for the lost minutes“, chosen as part of the preview. My thanks to editor Krishan Coupland.

Watch it!