Some reviews from my previous blog:


February 13, 2007
Lit Geek Update #1

Last book I read: Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami- Poignant without the pathos; in this book, Murakami deviates from his trademark "strangeness." No elephant vanishes here, no dancing dwarf, no man-sheep-- just real people whose paths intersect and whose lives intertwine, a coming -of-age story set in 60's Japan, in the era of the Beatles, of Carole King and The Doors. No Murakami creation would be complete without references to Music (see sentence before this one) and Literature-- here he mentions Dostoyevsky, and has the main protagonist declaring admiration for Jay Gatsby. An emotional read. Too many suicides, though.
What I'm reading now: Tomcat In Love by Tim O'Brien


April 01, 2007
Lit Geek Update #2

Last Book I read: Tomcat In Love by Tim O'Brien- If you liked Nabokov's Lolita, you're gonna love this one. Not that there's any similarity between the plots, though, just in the delivery. The genius who wrote the unforgettable The Things They Carried strikes again, this time in a hilarious story of the thwarted obsession and madness of one Thomas H. Chippering, a self-proclaimed war hero and "sex-magnet," whose attempts at honesty and transparency make it hard for the reader to guess just exactly when he is telling the truth, and when he is not. This ambivalence will keep you glued on the book and give you the itch to go to the next page! The main character made me shake my head and laugh out loud in turns, and the other people in the novel made me realize, with grudging agreement, just how dysfunctional this world of ours could get (or the people in it, at least).
What I'm Reading Now: The WInd-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami


May 16, 2007
Lit Geek Update #3

Last book I read: Over A Cup of Ginger Tea by Cristina Pantoja Hidalgo- Reading this book meant being reunited not only with one of my favorite Filipino writers, Cristina pantoja Hidalgo, but re-encountering some of my best-loved pieces by Filipino women writers, as well. In example: the venerable Gilda Cordero Fernando's fairy tales like "The Dust Monster," "The Level of Each day's Need" and "High Fashion." The piece that I liked most, though, was the part entitled "Rewriting The War," wherein Hidalgo discussed some noteworthy women's experiences during the Japanese war (these entries--most of them from diaries and unpublished memoirs--compiled into books only recently). These harrowing tales, as told from the perspective, not of the men who fought in the frontlines, but of the women who were staging a different kind of battle, that of trying desperately--but with much determination and resilience--to fight for survival, to glue together the pieces shattered by the war and its atrocities, make for eye-opening reads, pieces from which we have a lot to learn, and which will further elucidate our views on the Japanese occupation and the horrors that came with it. Towards the end of the piece, Hidalgo quoted Brenda K. Marshall on Foucault: History then, in Foucault's terms may become "counter memory": the process of reading history against the grain, of taking an acknowledged active role in the interpretation of history rather than a passive, viewing role. Counter-memory intervenes in history rather than chronicles it.(1992, 140). And this is precisely what these women have done with their war memoirs: they have gone past looking at the war with just their stares, their senses. They have taken the extra step to intervene, to re-write it for the sake of changing history and transforming our perceptions, not with the might of weapons, but with the beauty, the honesty and candor of their words, their truths.
What I'm reading now: A Portrait of The Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce


Lit Geek Update # 4

Last book I read: Written on the Body by Jeanette Winterson- I saw this book at the South Mall branch of Book Sale and I grabbed it even if I had only the faintest idea of who the author was (I vaguely remembered my professor mentioning her name in our Erotic Writing class back in college). The title was an arresting one, as well. True to the words on the cover, the pages did have a lot to say a lot about the body, but not just the body, superficially. It was also about the complexity of human relationships, the richness of the senses, and the sparks of chemistry that go through the skin, the muscles, the sinews and the bones when two people touch and discover each other through all these passages. The story is told from the first person point of view, transitioning from speaking to a particular "you" to addressing the reader (who could just as well be the "you" in every "you and me"). The language is lush, sensual, powerful. One particular thing that I liked about it is that the story spoke to me. The words seemed to be reaching out from the pages to my consciousness and memory. It is a book that I know I will keep coming back to, over and over, if only for the truths in its pages and the lack of pretense in the telling.
What I'm reading now: The Journals of Sylvia Plath; Ted Hughes and Frances McCullough, editors- this book will most probably screw up my head even more, but what the hell. Sylvia Plath is just something else.