Category: books

a book review, and then some

In the second installment of A Song of Ice and Fire, King Robert Baratheon is dead, and four kings insist their claim to the Iron throne: the boy Joffrey, Robert’s eldest son but is believed to be the fruit of his mother’s incestual relationship with his uncle Jaime, the Kingslayer; the boy Robb, Ned Stark’s eldest son and self-proclaimed King of the North; and Robert’s brothers, Renly Baratheon, who commands several Houses who have sworn their allegiance; and Stannis Baratheon, Robert’s brother, who has dismissed the old gods for the more powerful (but suspicious) Lord of Light. Meanwhile, Sansa Stark is still held hostage by the Lannisters, Jaime Lannister is held hostage by the Starks, Arya serves at the Lannister-controlled Harrenhal but keeps her identity secret, and Daenerys of House Targaryen tries to find a way to land an army on Westeros and unleash her dragon-children. In the sky, a blood-red comet passes, spelling both doom and victory, depending on who is looking.

With such a complex plot and so many characters, a less skilled writer would have ended up confusing readers, and maybe even confusing himself, but Martin’s storytelling is strong and sure. And such twists! And such suspense! Martin is testament to the fact that you can produce a novel that is fast-paced and action-packed, but still let the language shine through. A really good read.

(The third book is A Storm of Swords and is already waiting for me over at Jaykie’s, but I’ll take a break from Martin for a bit to read The River King by Alice Hoffman, which was lent to me by Kat. :) )

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Speaking of Martin, I’ve been seeing this card deck at Jaykie’s

and I’ve been asking him to teach me how to play for days, so on Friday we finally sat down for a round:

I controlled House Lannister:

I lost! LOL. But I found this card game easier to understand than Magic. The art is awesome.

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Speaking of awesome art, after I came back from the weekend I found this sitting on my bed:

Inside the packet are complimentary copies and a letter from GASFI. Thank you so much! :D

I don’t know if the book has already hit the book stores, but if you ever come across a copy, flip through the pages for a preview and maybe buy one for the kiddies? :) The book is published on glossy paper and the art is lively and bright. I really love Ray Sunga’s artwork here. My first children’s book! *squee*

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And speaking of stories, thanks to Don Jaucian for including “The Just World of Helena Jimenez” in his list of spec fic best-reads in 2009. You may read that story here.

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A lovely sound: Former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

Halfway through this year and I’m lovin’ it.

Mareklamo nga lang ang ating bise-presidente. Hay, kuya. Ang buong Pilipinas AY HINDI MAKATI.

Nakaka-turn off ka. ‘Yun lang.

scenes from last night’s book swap

Read about our first book swap here!

Book swap last night at Starbucks 6750 with m’lovelies Andrea, Kate, and Kat. I invited Jaykie (so he could finally meet Andrea and Kat) and he was nice enough to drive Kate and I from the office. (LOL proper name overload sorry.) We stayed till midnight for some late-night coffee, cake, Pinoy Henyo (yes) and quality tsismisan.

I lent Kat Joshua Ferris’s excellent Then We Came to the End and Atwood’s The Blind Assassin. Andrea ended up taking Revolutionary Road and Big If. I got er so many books I forgot to take note of them all haha. Will sort through them next week. Oh, God have mercy on my TBR pile now quickly turning into a mountain.

I loved the girls’ accessories last night. Pictures!

catch that story idea!

I’ve set aside Falling Man to read this. Thanks Jaykie for the pressure buying me a copy. Note the lace bookmark. (I make bookmarks out of everything. Folded receipts, shirt tags, etc. This one came from a top I own. I still wear that top – amazingly the subtraction worked.)

I have an idea for a story, but every time I sit down to start writing it just runs away. It simply won’t take shape. Very frustrating. One of these days I’ll sit down in a quiet corner with a pen and my Spongebob notebook (the white, empty screen of my laptop is making me puke) and a cup of coffee and brainstorm until I churn out an outline. (“Outline” is a fancy term I use for snippets of scene descriptions and dialogue arranged in more or less chronological order. I don’t do the academic outline with the Roman numerals and shit, I’m not that crazy.)

Also, I just learned at the PSF V launch (thanks Charles for the head’s up) that my poem, “Tour Guide” (the last poem I wrote before the pesky poetry writer’s block hit), is in the April 4 issue of the Free Press. Yeah, I’m late, I’m sorry, I forget to monitor these things. Hope you can get a copy. :) National Bookstore and the convenience stores (7-Eleven, Mini-Stop) carry back issues; Jaykie and I even saw some inside a Mercury Drug branch. So yes, my poetry can be found inside a drug store, or on the shelf beside the booze. Coolest thing ever.

on fragments


Don DeLillo’s Falling Man. Reading this now. The prose is just perfect.

Yesterday I re-read this piece I had been working on and had set aside for what felt like forever, and lo I still like it. I was pleasantly surprised. Maybe I can finish this thing.

I don’t think I  can write poetry anymore, hm. Everything turns into prose. But meh, the words can take whatever form they want, as long as they leave my head.

dot.bomb

The hottest thing right now is the social networking site. YouTube and Facebook were founded by twentysomethings messing around with technology and a vision in their college dorm rooms – and now they’re billionaires. Never mind that YouTube contains the stupidest video clips mankind has ever made; never mind that Facebook may very well turn into Friendster (remember Friendster?) in a few years or so. Who cares? There’s money in the dot.com universe.

Back in the mid-90’s, internet retailing is the shiz. Amazon stocks are selling at more than $100 per. And fortysomething businessman named Craig Winn has an idea: what if one created an inventoryless Internet superstore, wherein customers can get their goods delivered straight from the manufacturers? He gathers his friends and jets around for investors (he is Craig Winn; if he wants to sell something, boy will he sell) and receives enough money and promises to jumpstart Value America. Who cares if the founder is in his 40s and hates the Internet? Who cares if they’re selling more over the phone than over the company website? (Wait. What?) Who cares if they’re generating little profit, and that customers are complaining about missing or incomplete merchandise, or that the company website’s home page is taking five minutes to load? (Even in 1995 that kinda sucks.) Also, who cares if Craig Winn’s last company – Dynasty – crashed and burned under his leadership? But really, who cares – Value America stock is selling nicely. It will make even its janitors billionaires.

Right smack in the middle of all this chaos and excitement is author J. David Kuo, who so loved Winn and the company that he was able to entice his bride-to-be to leave AOL to become a Value American.

Of course, we can glean from the title what happens in the end.

This is a fast, easy read, thanks to Kuo’s engaging style. I read somewhere that he worked for the Bush White House. God, this guy can’t get a break. Wonder how he’s doing now.

book launch

From Dean Alfar’s blog:

Philippine Speculative Fiction has become one of the country’s most consistent and highly-anticipated yearly anthology series, showcasing the continuing development of the exciting field of speculative fiction writing. This fifth volume, edited by Nikki Alfar and Vincent Michael Simbulan, collects a broad spectrum of short stories that define, explore, and sometimes blur the boundaries of science fiction, fantasy, horror, and all things in between—featuring the work of both literary luminaries and very new voices, from across the archipelago and the globe. PSF 5 contains stories by:

Angelo R. ‘Sarge’ Lacuesta Dean Francis Alfar
Rica Bolipata-Santos Paolo Gabriel V. Chikiamco
Timothy James Dimacali Joseph F. Nacino
Charles Tan Dominique Gerald Cimafranca
Isabel Yap Christine V. Lao
Raymond G. Falgui Mia Tijam
Joseph Anthony Montecillo Ejay Domingo
Apol Lejano-Massebieau Veronica Montes
Alexander Osias Fidelis Angela C. Tan
Andrew Drilon Gabriela Lee
Aileen Familara Marla Cabanban
Eliza Victoria Kate Aton-Osias
Kenneth Yu

The fifth volume will be launched on April 24 (Saturday), 3 pm, U-View Theater, Fully Booked High Street. If you see me there, say hi! (And, if you have money to spare, buy the book!)

This post has way too many exclamation points!

Flashback! Look at them covers. :) I am also in the fourth volume.

house of leaves

In 2000, author Mark Danielewski was asked to tell “a bit” about his book in an interview. “A bit”? Hoboy. How to tell “a bit” about a book that you have to literally see in order to fully appreciate, a massive, insane story that plays with typography (there are moments where you’ll have to turn the book upside-down in order to read it, or use a mirror, or write down the first letter of every word to read the hidden message – no, seriously) and refers to itself (house of leaves = house of pages = a book, get it)?

Here’s what the author said:

House of Leaves is about a family who move into a small house in Virginia. One day they go away for a wedding and when they come back discover that a space has appeared between the master bedroom and the children’s bedroom. The walls that appear are black and perfectly smooth. Will Navidson (the protagonist) begins to measure the inside of the house and soon discovers that the inside is larger than the outside by a quarter of an inch and that’s where it all begins to happen. What it comes down to is how this family deals with a house that is larger on the inside than the outside and how it begins to influence those who live there and those who hear about it and those who write about it and maybe even those who read about it.

That doesn’t even begin to describe it.

But yes, in its simplest, the House of Leaves has three characters: Johnny Truant, who writes the introduction to this book, finds an old manuscript in the apartment of a blind, old man. The man, named Zampaño, lived alone and was found dead in his own apartment earlier.

Zampaño’s manuscript is an analysis of a film called The Navidson Record. The Record is a documentary shot by Will Navidson, which deals with several explorations of their house on Ash Tree Lane.

And yes, the house on Ash Tree Lane indeed is bigger on the inside than on the outside. Much bigger. Much, much bigger. So big you can get lost for days, run out of food and water, and go mad in the darkness.

And here I thought no novel can ever terrify me.

It was such an experience to read this book. I bow before Danielewski’s patience (it took him 10 years to write this), imagination, and inventiveness. I’ve never read anything quite like it.

(And that’s all I can say, really. In order to fully discuss this book’s use of intertextuality, deconstruction, chaos, self-reflexivity and obscurity, we’ll have to sit down talking and  drinking beer for hours on end. My head hurts just thinking about it.)