Month: September 2010

open house

Why do you like reading? And what’s the best book you’ve ever read? Only one book.

I like reading because I think it’s the cheapest entertainment available to me (I once bought a book from a bargain bin for five pesos) with the greatest possible reward. I also read to learn, and to improve my writing.

Just the one book? Ah, you’re harsh. It’s just impossible to choose one, but if you insist, I’ll say Joshua Ferris’s THEN WE CAME TO THE END. But of course there are others. I’ve read a lot of books (and intend to read more, hundreds more) and I’m fortunate enough to fall in love with many of them.

Thanks for dropping by, Stranger.

hi! are you still studying french? or are you currently enrolled at alliance de manille?

Hello!

Oh, I’m afraid I’m not enrolled at Alliance. I did enroll last year, but had to withdraw because they changed the schedule at the last minute and it overlapped with my work sched.

What website do you spend the most time on?

Oh dear, probably Twitter. Does that make me shallow? It does, doesn’t it?

How many countries have you traveled to?

None, sadly. I don’t own a passport just yet. And I lack the funds.

What did you eat for breakfast today?

Oatmeal. And that will be my answer tomorrow. And the day after. Because my life is horrible.

If you won a million dollars what would you do with it?

Buy a house. If I get me my own place and put a stop to my renting days, then I’ll probably – PROBABLY – start acting like an adult. Haha.


Got a question?

twisted 8 1/2

  1. Ooh littol shiny black book! With pictures of cats!
  2. I enjoy reading about gadgets and how they compare with the dinosaur age as much as the next person, but there were too many product reviews here. I want to read essays, not ad copies.(Though to be fair to Zafra, she makes an effort to make her product reviews personal by adding anecdotes.)
  3. I wished there were more movie reviews, or reviews of plays, etc. The book is loaded with gadgets, gadgets, coffee maker, gadgets.
  4. I wished the essays had dates.
  5. Still, a handful of interesting pieces here. I especially liked that essay about the streets of the metro. (Bwenja! Hell Poyat ! Bwenja! Hell Poyat!)
  6. But there were funnier posts on her blog. *whine*  I wished she included those.

The Mighty Reading List!

Hunger Games

The Unnamed

Catching Fire

Mockingjay

We Are All Welcome Here

The Year of Fog

The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint

Notes on Extinction

Wild Mind

The Spooky Art

on the side: Twisted 8 1/2, Storm of Swords, Scott Pilgrim, PSF V (last few stories!), new! 100 Bullets

philippine speculative fiction iv and v

Disclaimer! I have stories in both volumes.

Writers and critics here and abroad have reviewed the fourth volume of the Philippine Speculative Fiction series, and Don Jaucian has written a review of PSF V, so I’ll keep this short: I like PSF V more than PSF IV. I was actually giddy while reading the fifth volume, excited by the new names and the sheer number of good stories that managed to make it into the book. PSF IV, unfortunately, had more misses than hits for me. There were stories that I didn’t like at all, and some of the stories I liked were just “okay”.

For PSFV IV, I couldn’t decide on my favorite story, but it would either be “The Secret Origin of Spin-Man” or “Breaking the Spell” or “The Paranoid Style”. Other stories I liked, in no particular order:

The Rooftops of Manila

The Sewing Project

The Dance of the Storm

Mang Marcing and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

A Retrospective on Diseases for Sale

Haya Makes a HUG

Sky Blue

Hopscotch

* * *

For PSF V, “Embedding” is easily my favorite. Fast and fresh and exciting. I had fun reading that story.

Other stories I liked:

A New Hospital

A Yellow Brick Road Valentine – It was an enjoyable read, but I felt the references to the Wizard of Oz were forced.

Carbon

Death and Noy

If We Catch Fire – I wasn’t too fond of the tedious back story and narration, though

Leg Men

New Toy

Sink

Strange Weather

The Creature

The Goodlyf

The Left-Behind Girl

Very Short Fairy Tales

* * *

The Mighty Reading List!

Hunger Games

The Unnamed

Catching Fire

Mockingjay

We Are All Welcome Here

The Year of Fog

The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint

Notes on Extinction

Wild Mind

The Spooky Art

on the side: Twisted 8 1/2, Storm of Swords, Scott Pilgrim, PSF V (last few stories!), new! 100 Bullets

updates and stuff

So, the weekend. I stubbed my toe. The last time I did something so stupid was in grade school, when I stubbed my toe while jumping rope. I broke it and it swelled like a tomato and I had to hop around the house for a week because I was too proud for crutches. This time Jake and I were walking around Greenhills after a glorious lunch at Gloria Maris with his family and a Starbucks stopover with his mother on Friday, and the fellas in front of us stopped and Jake stopped but I didn’t stop soon enough, so my toe hit the back of his shoe and my toenail cracked and almost got ripped off the nail bed. The pain was excruciating, but my first thought was, “My pedicure’s ruined!” I only noticed the blood when we got to the car.

Thank you to Jaykie for this care package. My bleeding toe was very grateful:

(Greenhills, I shall conquer you some other day.)

The logical thing to do was to stay home and rest the toe, but I wasn’t logical, so out I went with Jaykie to meet up with my high school friends. We had dinner at Abe (great food and the service staff was really helpful) and dessert at Golden Spoon and strangely enough, nobody took pictures. Why is that? Were we really that hungry? Or have we reached that age where camwhoring was frowned upon?

Saturday and Sunday were spent in Bulacan. Toe got better and I read some and watched some and I ate my mother’s cooking. No writing done, since I thought I deserved a break after all that pain. Ah, melodrama. But having a toenail almost ripped off your feet is really fucking painful, so there.

* * *

I finished the one and only season of Fear Itself. It’s a horror anthology series and I want more of it. (It got canceled, unfortunately.) Now I want to check out Masters of Horror. My favorite episodes: The Sacrifice, Family Man, In Sickness and In Health, Skin and Bones, Community, and The Spirit Box.

Other TV-related blabbering:

1) I’m glad Glee got its groove back with that season opener. It got boring and dull after the break in Season 1, but now I’m excited to watch again.

2) The How I Met season opener is blah, but I’ll keep watching.

3) Mad Men! More Mad Men! Yeah, I’m watching Season 4, even though I haven’t seen Seasons 2 and 3 and I haven’t even finished Season 1. Eep.

4) Wait, wait, I haven’t seen Big Bang Theory‘s season opener, but I will soon. Also: Modern Family!

* * *

Hey, have you seen Roman Polanski’s Ghost Writer? Tight political thriller. Stunning last scene. (I’ve always thought of Kim Catrall as Samantha, so her British accent here just sounds wrong to me. Other than the fact that it actually sounds wrong – she drops the accent every now and then.)

* * *

It’s a year after Ondoy, and Rocket Kapre’s charity anthology is available for free till October 8. I have a poem there. :)

mockingjay

There appears to be no end to the sadness and tragedy in Suzanne Collins’ Mockingjay. Katniss Everdeen finally agrees to become the rebels’ symbol of dissent, and joins the forces of District 13 to coax other districts to join the cause and bring down the Capitol and assassinate President Snow. She sees a flicker of hope, imagining a future where her sister is a doctor, and where children will no longer have to give their names to the deadly lottery that is the Hunger Games. But even under the eye of District 13’s leader, Coin, she still feels like a pawn and a slave.

A heavy read, and unflinching in its description of torture and cruelty, but I’m glad this book, and the rest of the trilogy, came along. Highly recommended.

“Now we’re in that sweet period where everyone agrees that our recent horrors should never be repeated,” he says. “But collective thinking is usually short-lived. We’re fickle, stupid beings with poor memories and a great gift for self-destruction. Although who knows? Maybe this will be it, Katniss.”

“What?” I ask.

“The time it sticks.”

– Mockingjay

* * *

The Mighty Reading List!

Hunger Games

The Unnamed

Catching Fire

Mockingjay

We Are All Welcome Here

The Year of Fog

The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint

Notes on Extinction

Wild Mind

The Spooky Art

on the side: Twisted 8 1/2, Storm of Swords, Scott Pilgrim, PSF V (last few stories!)

one for basement stories

Straight from my inbox:

Ms. Victoria,

Thanks for sending “Incidental Light” to Basement Stories. I really enjoyed reading your story, in particular, the relationship between the main character and the little brother. I also have to add in here that I loved your poem, “Maps,” in the latest issue of The Pedestal Magazine. Anyway, I’d like to publish “Incidental Light” in the second issue.

[redacted]

Best regards,

Carol Kirkman
Basement Stories

The website: www.basementstories.org
Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/basementstories
The blog: http://basementstories.wordpress.com

I said:

Thank you very much for your kind words. (And must I say that this is the first time an editor said something nice about my submitted story AND a piece I’ve published elsewhere? This made my day.)

It did!

“Incidental Light” originally appeared in the Philippines Free Press. Watch this space. :)