Review: I Am the Messenger

Author: Markus Zusak
Genre: Young adult, mystery, inspirational, humor
My Rating: ★★★★★



Ed Kennedy’s CV isn’t at all impressive. All that’s in there are underage cabdriver, hopeless friendzone-dweller, and professional nobody.  He lets most of his time trickle by in his shabby shack, playing cards with his friends and drinking coffee with his smelly dog. At nineteen he has come to accept that his life is headed nowhere…until he inadvertently foils a bank robbery. For a time he is hailed a hero by the local media, and just when he thinks the hype is dying, he receives an ace in the mail that details his next “missions.” Ed is chosen to care—he is chosen to be “the messenger.”

The messages, which Ed himself should ‘decode’ first, are eclectic. Some are larger than life and some are seemingly trivial, but all of them are guaranteed to mark a change in the lives of their recipients. Ed reluctantly embarks on a journey to “protect the diamonds, survive the clubs, dig deep through the spades, and feel the hearts.” A spark in him eventually grows and he begins to believe that after all of this, he will be able to move on from being a ‘nobody’ to being a ‘somebody.’

When I picked up I Am the Messenger, I lowered my expectations because I know that The Book Thief will always be my favorite Zusak gem. The latter set the bar at an incredible height. The former, however, proved to be a completely different beast; it doesn’t hold the beautifully quiet albeit intense tone of The Book Thief, but it gets wrapped in the raw voice of youth—the kind that easily resonates with its target audience and doesn’t need to bask in embellished words to elicit gasps from its readers. It may not land on the same tier as The Book Thief but it definitely will on a different ladder, more or less on the same level.

One of the things I really loved about I Am the Messenger is, of course, Zusak’s writing. All 357 pages of this book only vindicated that his wordplay will always be my personal kryptonite. It’s as if his prose contains magic that can leap off the page and touch you in ways no other book can: they stick onto your memory like a good mind barnacle and clutch to your heart like a much-needed emotional drug. How he does that, I will never know. All I know is that I’ve been under his writing spell and enjoyed every minute of it. Who can’t get addicted to a style like this? -

“I know that all of this will stay with me forever… things just keep going as long as memory can wield its ax, always finding a soft part in your mind to cut through and enter.”

If you think every sentence curls all poetic-like, you’re mistaken. I commend how the book manages to be largely lyrical and inspirational despite being a rather raunchy treat. It rounds up an average of three expletives per page and presents a wide array of lust-charged sections. Oh, and Ed, being the sarcasm-on-two-legs that he is, narrates his story in a tone edged with a cynical sense of humor. If you combine all those and plaster the word “motivational” across its bull’s eye, what you may imagine as an end product is one chaos of a novel that doesn’t know what it wants to be. But this book successfully presents a seamless blend of its clashing elements. It is both laugh-out-loud funny and heartwarming, both serious and hilarious. You don’t get a lot of that nowadays.

I love Ed as a character. His charm radiates from the fact that he has cataloged himself as a “nobody heading nowhere” and “just another stupid human” where in fact he is as extraordinary as one could get without donning capes or superhero spandex. His self-deprecation makes him all the more appealing. He may be a self-proclaimed Mr. Insufferable with a penchant for brooding about his stinking life, but he is not empty. His spirit isn’t drained out by the kicks life has given him prior to the beginning of the novel; he still has dreams, even if they are in a slumber inside him.

Even though the only “all access” pass we have is for inside Ed’s head, most of the other characters also appear to be well-molded. They are as multi-layered as real humans, dealing with their problems in the only way they can. But the thing here is, Zusak doesn’t try hard to make everyone pop out of the pages. Instead, he writes a realistic portrayal of other people from the limited perspective of a flawed human like Ed. We don’t get to know all their problems or thoughts or what drives them in life, but we do get to feel them the way Ed felt them.

Ironically, I find it odd that Audrey, the very person whom Ed has the strongest feelings for, is the one character that seems to be a little underdeveloped. Depicted as the girl who makes love to everybody but is afraid to love anybody, Audrey’s character almost has no concrete back-up to make the portrayal realistic enough. Maybe that’s why I’m not really satisfied with the fluffy contribution she had at the ending. For me, it’s a chink in this book’s armor.

World-building is handled well. The town Ed has known as his whole world emerges like a separate entity. Its restrictions, its inexplicable pull that seems to tuck everybody in, and the gamut of opportunities lying just outside its borders all seem to be real. If anything, the place contributes a lot to the character’s growth:

“It’s the person, not the place. If you left here, you’d have been the same anywhere else. If I ever leave this place—I’ll make sure I’m better here first.”

The build-up of the plot is a tad unconventional. Throughout the novel we are in constant search for Ed’s assignment sender but we are made to focus on Ed’s missions, reveling in how each of them is solved differently. The answer to the Big Q is revealed as a major twist in the end, and I have to say it’s one of the most unique turns I’ve seen to cap off a novel. I can’t say it’s the best twist ever, but I expected something else entirely—something that stays within the four walls of the story. I liked it, though. I think it made the impact of the message a hundredfold greater.

All technicalities aside, I want to say that the best thing in my reading experience with I am the Messenger is how the “messages” shot straight to my heart. It’s no news that apathy could rival oxygen in terms of its abundance in the air nowadays. We often fall victim to the “I have loads of problems of my own, why should I take care of his?” mentality that often shadows the “what’s in it for me?” question, but what if you’re a stranger’s only hope? You don’t need to be a superhero to save a life; a hope can be a simple smile, a genuine greeting, or a small conversation between passenger seats. I still believe in the power of small things because once upon a time in my life, I’ve been saved by them too.

This novel also reminded me that we shouldn’t be afraid to connect with other people. I know that trust is too precious a thing to invest in someone we don’t know well, but what we seldom realize is that we get a lot more when we build new relationships. Ed has realized this too. He repeatedly muses about how he gets nothing in exchange of all the good things he’s doing for other people, but he finds out in the end that he—in his own words—“the privileged one.” His dormant life compass functions well again after he touched other people’s lives.

The other message that struck a chord with me is that we can all be somebody…but for that to happen, each of us has to be nobody first. :)

This book made me laugh and cry. I think the very good things about I Am the Messenger eclipsed its flaws so I’m giving it five well-deserved stars.

Slipping into another person

-Joyce Carol Oates

A new chapter begins.

May 10, 2013 marked my last day as the Associate Editor of Gala magazine. If you just dropped by my blog, you can read my stew of apprehensions, epiphanies, and a handful of different emotions about this event as the drama-rama post called “The Future Freaks Me Out.” To tell you the truth, I can’t tell if I’m unnerved or excited about the new chapter in my life. But I can feel in my bones that I’m ready for it and all I needed to do is breathe and step into it. :)

My next job will be completely different from the world I temporarily left behind. I’ll still be writing, but my articles will no longer be about concerts, gigs, plays, or interviews with prominent people in the local tinsel town. My pen will instead be focusing on the business world. It’s an industry I’m not really familiar with, but I’ll try to learn the ropes as quick as I can. (One odd thought that flitted in my mind when I accepted the job: “Background, finally! I can now write legit business-savvy characters in my stories!” Yes, my friends. This is how I roll.)

There are several factors that cemented my decision, but this quote by Markus Zusak probably encapsulates all of it: “I’d rather chase the sun than wait for it.” :)

Cheers to the future and wish me luck!

The future freaks me out.

In one of my old sketchbook-diaries, I once doodled a ghost against a storm of black scribbles. I named it “past,” and right beside it are the words “Sometimes it haunts me in my sleep.”  One tossed grad cap and several steps into the proverbial Real World later, a new kind of ghost started to haunt every nook of my head. It was scarier, bigger. It named itself “the future.”

  “The future freaks me out.”

In so many ways, I’ve always been a coward. It ironically took me a certain amount of courage to admit that, but yes, I’m a coward. The worst part is that I’m responsible for cooking up most of the things I’ve become afraid of. Thoughts of the past, thoughts of the future, uncertainties of the present. I’m afraid of making the wrong decisions. I’m afraid that things, instead of falling into place, would fall down domino-like into a big mess that would never be the same again even if I try to rebuild them.

I try something new every once in a while; I break out of the comfort zone to learn more. But I eventually realized that the steps I was taking were too small to make a difference, that when I put my foot out, I still have the other one planted on a supposedly “safe” place. I’m afraid to take a big leap.

I’m afraid to fail.

And that, perhaps, was the biggest block on the road to my goals. It’s said that if you want to succeed faster, the only thing you have to do is to fail and make mistakes faster. There are no real shortcuts here. You have to go down if you want to go up. Plunging headfirst into the future is scary, but life only goes forward if you go forward. Simple as that.

So gradually, I stopped to clobber myself with my own fears. It’s time to explore more of the world, try something new—the kind of new that would actually leave a mark in my heart and at the same time make a difference to the people I love. The universe doesn’t revolve around me or my dreams alone. When I graduated, I built tall fences around my goal and swore I would target only that. But I couldn’t see the horizons because of the fences’ enormity. I decided that if I want to move forward, I have to tear them down.

Now, I acknowledge the open doors I’ve blocked in my periphery in the past. Now, I acknowledge that my true happiness doesn’t just lie in the fulfillment of my dreams, but also in the happiness of the people around me. Now, I acknowledge that even if risks are such scary things to take, you can never really grow up without them. Now, I am ready.

Wherever I’m going, I believe it’s somewhere beautiful. Different perhaps, but beautiful all the same. It's somewhere I can grow more. I will go forward without forgetting the past—hopefully not a ghost this time, but a mosaic of memories that I can use as a fuel when I find myself low on inspiration.

Nothing spells confusion like wallowing in a quarter-life crisis, but I'm ready to take on the new challenges.

Bring it on.

Review: Cat’s Cradle

Author: Kurt Vonnegut
Genre: Science fiction, classic, postmodern
My Rating: ★★★★



Exploring more of literature’s moral badlands is one of the things I included in my list of bookscapades this year. I’ve considered plunging back into the worlds of Chuck Palahniuk and Bret Easton Ellis, but my sudden need to return to classics led me to Kurt Vonnegut. Cat’s Cradle, my first taste of his oeuvre, can be well considered a good postmodernist romp into the badlands I’m referring to. What made it stand out from its classic kin is its deadpan humor, packing a punch like no other and propping up his rich commentary on human folly.

Cat’s Cradle, like its string game namesake, has an intricacy that seems to back up the statement ‘the best lies create the best stories.’ It follows the narrator who calls himself Jonah (“Jonah—John—if I had been a Sam, I would have been a Jonah still”). He goes around collecting material for a book he’s planning to write, which is supposed to focus on the day the atomic bomb obliterated Hiroshima, Japan. He researches about Dr. Felix Hoenikker, one of the so-called fathers of the atomic bomb, and eventually finds his life entangled with those of the three strange Hoenikker children—a charmless wench, a train model designer, and a midget. On the process of acquiring potential materials, he gets to know the “outlawed” religion Bokononism, the impoverished San Lorenzo island with its stunning mulatto muse, and the powerful chip called ice-nine.

Vonnegut’s brand of social satire is a joy to read. Living in the 21^st century didn’t prevent me from relating to his points; Vonnegut captured the 60s zeitgeist in the book, but it contains timeless threads that hook themselves in our generation.

With black humor in his lit voice box, the author speaks subversively of the little dystopias we build in our societies—science, religion, and politics, particularly their unlikely enmeshments and expected clashes—until we finally reach the end of times. He speaks of the truth that a man will always be half-bad and half-good, because full proportions of either would only drive anyone insane. That sometimes, the “good guys” themselves have to create something “evil” to fight against just so they wouldn’t lose the essence of their existence. The story, fragmented and flawed in its own way, detail more facts about the society that we often refuse to acknowledge.

Of all the countless things I could love about this book, perhaps the very characteristic I gave a big nod to is how Vonnegut didn’t try to bury his points underneath flowery prose. I love a good word play, but Vonnegut’s simple and somewhat flippant approach to his chosen themes seems to intensify the power of his writing. I bet anyone who would read his terse sentences would know that every phrase means a whole world of messages and meanings.

Humorous, off-the-wall, and thought-provoking, Cat’s Cradle is an unforgettable trip to another classic author’s world. Four stars for a good read.

Books are alive.

“Reading the right one at the right time can make all the difference.” (Brandon Sanderson, Alcatraz and the Evil Librarians series)

Review: Steampunk!

Editors: Kelly Link & Gavin Grant
Genre: steampunk, young adult, fantasy, romance
My Rating: ★★★★ (3.5 stars)



The steampunk genre snagged my interest when I realized it can pass as some kind of a magical blend between the past and the future. I really get a kick out of tales about Victorian retro-futurism. But to tell you the truth, I haven’t read tons of books in the genre, so the image I can concoct in my head is pretty run-of-the-mill: a world that basks perpetually on vintage vogue, mixed with loads of gears, clockworks, and cogwheels of steam-powered gadgetries. My latest exposure to steampunk is Scott Westerfeld’s Leviathan series. I haven’t picked up the last book yet but it was good—too good that it made me want to pick up more works from the genre.

Steampunk! An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories is what I chose to satiate this lit-hunger. I didn’t expect much since I know that collections are always a mixed bag, but I’d say I really enjoyed this. The 14 tales here—written by a gamut of talented sci-fi authors—range from raunchy to majestic, from commonplace to dreamlike, and from droll to poignant. There are duds as expected, but there are a bunch that is nothing short of amazing, containing stories that continue to haunt me up to now (in a good way).

Libba Bray’s “The Last Ride of the Glory Girls” tops my list. The tale takes place in some Old Western town where a gang of girl robbers raids trains with the help of a time-freezing gun. Bray’s style made the whole story pop out of the pages; each phrase seemed to create an extra layer of atmosphere, and the narrator’s thick country accent made me feel as if a true-blue daughter of a wild-west colony is really relaying the story to me. Also hard to ignore are the glimpses about religious fanaticism there. If the whole thing doesn’t summon a busload of questions about beliefs, decisions, and life as a whole in the readers’ minds, I don’t know what does.

Cory Doctorow’s “Clockwork Fagin” also left a deep dent in my memory. It’s a Dickensian account about decapitated orphans and how they snatch authority from their ruthless benefactor. For some weird reason, I think the story has a very Burton-esque feel to it, in a Sweeney Todd kind of way. It has a lasting grimness, occasional morbid humor, and overall filthiness that are enmeshed together by good writing. When I reached the last page of the tale, I sort of wish that Doctorow expands it into something longer. I will definitely check out more of his works.

“Steam Girl” by Dylan Horrocks is also pretty memorable. It’s about a girl who may or may not be an inhabitant of another planet, churning out out-of-this-world stories (no pun intended) to her misfit friend. Aside from her quirky gadgets, she has this Reality Gun that stuns everyone when she pulls it out. The beauty is that the reader may feel like he’s taken a bullet from this incredible weapon—you would be left guessing which events are real and which are not.

Other stories that I loved include Christopher Rowe’s “Nowhere Fast,” a post-apocalyptic account where America has run out of oil; Ysabeau S. Wilce’s “Hand in Glove,” a quasi-detective story centering on a petulant femme constable and a rogue killing hand; “Seven Days Beset by Demons” by Shawn Cheng, a comic strip-style tale where a man commits all seven deadly sins when he falls in love; Cassandra Clare’s “Some Fortunate Future Day,” where it is shown that innocence can instantly be transformed into something beastly by mere infatuation; and Garth Nix’s “Peace in Our Time,” a dystopian anecdote of revenge by a representative of an almost extinct race.

The others are unfortunately forgettable. Some of them don’t even appear to have a touch of steampunk (as I know it) in them. Be that as it may, I really had a ball reading this anthology, and I wouldn’t be surprised if I started getting thirsty for more steampunk. I’m giving this book 3.5 stars. :)

Project 01: Jar of Smiles

Back in the beginning of the year, I and a couple of friends decided to keep a “Jar of Awesome.” It’s a project circulating in the info superhighway for as long as we can remember and it's been favorite of many Tumblritas. The idea is you take a container and you fill it with papers detailing the awesome things that happen to you throughout the year. On New Year’s Eve, you open the jar and reflect on all those things. Think of it as the literal ‘counting of blessings’ in your past 365 days.

I want to call mine a “Jar of Smiles.” What I write about aren’t just happenings that virtually carry the tag “awesome”  in my book. I also jot down fleeting fragments of happiness from  instances that manage to coax out a genuine beam from my lips. Little things matter the most in my life right now; they have to count into the tally somehow.

By the end of February, my container is already crammed to the lid. I know that if I would continuously follow my it-made-me-smile formula, I would perhaps be in a possession of half a dozen jars by the end of the year. Maybe more. A pail is really what I need, haha! Or a chest box. :)

Anyway, the thing about my Jar of Smiles is that the “memories” inside aren’t just recklessly crumpled or rolled or folded. Nor are my notes just plain notes. When a really special thing made my day I’d scribble it down on a strip of paper, which I will then transform into origami cranes, frogs, and planes. One example is this paper butterfly that I dedicated to Carol Rifka Brunt’s Tell the Wolves I’m Home.  Aside from the fact that a main character from the book has a habit of folding napkins into butterflies, the novel is also one of my favorite books this year (yep, that's already decided even if it's still the first quarter of 2013). I wrote bits of my book review on it before I began folding. I made two, and I keep the other one at my office cubicle. :)

Sometimes, I write in haiku; sometimes in a two-stanza poem. Sometimes I just jot down quotable quotes on the strips, or maybe doodle a little. I always make it a point that this jar contains some kind of vivid variety, not only in colored strips but also its honest and raw contents.

What do you think about this project? Do you have a “Jar of Awesome” too? :)

Peter Lerangis in Manila

Bestselling author Peter Lerangis is coming for a book signing event on May 4! National Book Store gave me a heads up about this event and thought about sharing it with you:

New York Times bestselling writer Peter Lerangis, author of Seven Wonders: The Colossus Rises, will visit Manila for a book signing event on May 4, 4 pm, at the National Book Store flagship in Glorietta 1.

Described by Publishers Weekly as “a real page-turner,” The Colossus Rises narrates the extraordinary problem of thirteen-year-old Jack McKinley who is told he has six months to live. After being kidnapped and brought to a mysterious island, he learns that he and three other kids must set on a mission, planned by a secret organization, to retrieve seven lost magical Loculi that, if mixed correctly, can save his life. However, the Loculi are relics of lost civilization and haven’t been seen in thousands of years.

Peter Lerangis is the author of more than 160 books including the New York Times bestselling The Colossus Rises, book one in his new series the Seven Wonders. His books have sold more than five million copies and been translated into 30 different languages. He was the man behind the two books in the New York Times bestselling series The 39 Clues – The Sword Thief and The Viper’s Nest and co-author of Vespers Rising and The Dead of Night in The 39 Clues: Cahills Vs. Vespers series, along with Rick Riordan, Gordon Korman and Jude Watson. He has conducted workshops in the National Book Foundation and the Highlights Foundation among others and visited schools all over the world for humorous and informative presentations.

Seven Wonders: The Colossus Rises is available in hardcover (P629) and Trade Paperback (P349) in National Book Store, Powerbooks and Bestsellers branches. Shop online at nationalbookstore.com. Follow National Book Store on Facebook and Twitter (@nbsalert) for the latest events, promos and contests.

___

I honestly haven’t read any book of his, but Seven Wonders does sound interesting. I might pick it up before he comes here. :)

Happy Birthday, Gundam Wing!

Operation Meteor is now only two years shy of being two decades old! On April 7, 1995, Mobile Suit Gundam Wing was aired in Japan for the first time. The anime premiered in the Philippines in 1998 (yes, remember the horror that was the Tagalized version?) and debuted in the United States in 2000. This year marked the show’s 18th year as well as Relena Peacecraft's—its main female protagonist's—33rd birthday.

I’m not really into stories laced with too much politics and warfare, but Gundam Wing readily snagged my attention from episode 1 and held it down to episode 49 (plus its three-episode OVA, Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz). I’m captivated by the ideological debates, questions about humanity, and how the creators managed to flesh out each character with their own unique personalities.
The story was diverse, and it was in this universe’s sandbox that I began to play (I'd be lying if I say I'm not a shipper). The pen and the imagination are such amazing toys. ;)

Here’s the premise of the story from Wikipedia:

“In the distant future, mankind has colonized space (with clusters of space colonies at each of the five Earth-Moon Lagrange points), and, down on the Earth, the nations have united as the United Earth Sphere Alliance (UESA). However, the Alliance oppresses the colonies with its military power. The colonies desire a peaceful resolution to the situation, joining together in a movement headed by the pacifist Heero Yuy. In the year After Colony 175, Yuy is shot dead by an assassin, forcing the colonies to search for other paths to peace. The assassination also prompts five disaffected scientists from the Organization of the Zodiac (OZ) to turn rogue after the completion of the mobile suit prototype Tallgeese.

In the year AC 195, Operation meteor was launched. In a move to counter the Alliance’s tyranny, rebel citizens from certain colonies scheme to bring new arsenals to the earth, disguising them as shooting stars. These are the gundams.”

Check out my other Gundam Wing posts at my fandom tumblr:
Essays and Metas | Little GW Things | OTP Graphics | GIFs | Photosets

Back to Bolinao

Have you ever felt an experience so precious you wish you could physically bottle its essence and keep it on your bedside table forever? I have, lots of times. Mostly it’s related to eargasm from new music and non-stop bookscapades, but I do pull myself a notch away from being a total social pariah from time to time. And it’s always worth it. The last time I wanted this proverbial ‘bottling’ is when we went to Bolinao—finally, after seven summers.

Here are some of the highlights from our two-day vacation at the province.

Dipping at the beaches.

We all know it: beaches are places that can give you some kind of lacunar amnesia. They can temporarily rub out your brunt of cosmopolitan stress and responsibilities. When you’re caged within city walls for a very long time, you get to treasure the littlest things that a tropical paradise lets you to bask in, yes?

 

Everything was a gem, of course. I love how the powdery golden sand got stuck between my toes. I love how the film of water rushed under me when the waves lapped on the shore. I love the coolness of the waves when I first plunged. I love the sun’s kissed on my skin. Honestly, it seemed like everything on the beach was a sensory treasure.

Before settling in our humble abode in Pilar, we beach-hopped the last few hours of our first day in Bolinao: we went to El Pescador, Puerto del Sol, and of course, Patar. It was in Patar where we went back to swim on our last day.

  

Last March, I spent three days at Puerto Galera’s White Beach with my friends and officemates. We had unadulterated fun, but I had to admit it was a different kind of enjoyment when you’re spending your vacation with your family. It wasn’t everyday that I get to bond with them and from then on, I swear that I’d rectify that soon. That epiphany, too,  is both a treasure worth keeping and a promise that begs to be kept.

 

Letting out the inner kid.

Actually, my inner kid always shines. She’s out when I’m doing art, when I get overly enthusiastic about the simplest things, when I’m about to learn something new, or just when I let myself be completely carefree. But being in the city gives me a mute order that she must be tucked in as much as possible, because exposing little bits of childlike delight can be misinterpreted by the narrow-minded as immaturity (not that that fact ever got in the way, but you get my drift). The province just opened the floodgates for the kid-in-me.

I climbed trees again. I’ve always been awed by panoramic views of just about everything: skylines and metropolitan vistas, city lights at night, the off-kilter chess boards of the metro’s tree-clumps and stucco establishments. The views calm me for some reason, more so if it comes with an undisturbed solitude. So emo, I know.

But climbing trees and admiring the view from the branches? It’s all a different beast. The joy starts when you hook your foot in crevices and dips in the trunk, grab a low-hanging branch, and haul yourself up. The repetitions of the process, the roughness of the bark against your skin, and that little gasp you let out when you accidentally touched an insect or a trickle of sap…they are priceless.

The tree I climbed that time wasn’t very tall. I even think I could jump without breaking my legs (well, granted that there are layers of dried leaves on the ground to cushion the fall). All I could see from the branch are portions of the woods and our little house. But I was happy all the same. I sat on the branch, slid my headphones snug on my head, and admired the fragments of sunshine falling through the breaks in the tree’s foliage. I would’ve stayed up there for hours if ma’s voice telling me to go down didn’t break through Natalie Walker’s syrupy singing in my ears.

The province life + chillax mode.

It’s some kind of a more general sister of the above item. Our house stands at the mouth of the baleful-looking woods—there is electricity but there is no network signal for Globe or Sun; there are wells and septic tanks but no NAWASA taps. The TV doesn’t get enough signal most of the time, which doesn’t matter much because we don’t want to fry ourselves inside the house. The whole thing emits heat like an h-e-double-hockey-sticks hole on earth. True story.

Goats, cows, and peacocks loiter everywhere, especially on the sides of the un-cemented roads (see above image). I also found there the fattest chickens I’ve ever seen in my life. When you wake up, the first thing you’d hear are the cicadas’ summer screeches, nature’s songs that I missed terribly from the last time I went here. Walk a couple of meters from the sidewalk to the other side and you’ll get to the shore. We used to stay on our house by the sea but since it can’t accommodate us that weekend, we have to take the other one near the woods. Fine by us because it’s shadier there.

Relaxing is the whole point of the vacation, and relax we did. We lounged on bamboo benches and wooden tables, sharing stories or drowning ourselves in our own music and musings. The latter rarely happened; everyone is a chatterbox. The gaggle of kid-cousins from my Pa’s side was keen on doing their versions of Eat Bualaga’s famed cha-cha or belting out their rendition of Jireh Lim’s “Buko” every chance they get. We have to play the audience role for the most part. It was enjoyable, I have to admit.

As expected, there’s no house in Pilar that doesn’t shelter either a fisherman or a hunter (Pa is technically both before he went to Manila about two decades ago). I left my hammock when I saw these men setting up fish top be dried under the sun. They’d totally make for a good, appetite-whetting viands.

The food.

You don’t think I’d forget the chow, do you? When we arrived on Thursday, I almost forgot what their dietary routine is like. It’s customary for people in the province to eat bread and swill cups of coffee or tea at dawn’s break, have a full meal of breakfast at 10:00 AM, get ready for lunch at 1:00 PM, and prepare for dinner at 5:00 PM. We adjusted easily though. We set up a wooden table under the tree’s shades and helped ourselves to the meals there all the time.

Considering our location, the easiest ways to put edibles on the table are to fish and to pick fruits and vegetables. One of my aunts served us sinigang sa kasoy on the first night. I liked its unconventionally sweetish tang; the cashew flesh made me want to pick armfuls of the fruit again, just like what I did seven years ago. We also opened the canned luncheon meat and hotdogs that we brought for my kid-cousins.

On the second day, Pa prepared a grilled swordfish and a pair of flying fishes dipped in soy and mango sauce. There was a gamut of vegetable-strewn, soupy seafood recipes that our grandmother served in our whole stay. Apparently she’s just experimenting and there’s really no names to call these dishes, but they weren’t bad at all. I asked for seconds in every meal.

Hungry is perhaps a word they seem to forbid there. They’d feed you every two hours at the most. For merienda, we ate rice cakes cooked straight from bamboo stalks, crabmeat, anything that we can make from freshly picked mangos, and even the mouthwatering jackfruits. They abound in our yard, so the only thing you need to do when your stomach rumbles is to stand on your tiptoes or climb trees. Ah, the easy life.

The stories + the memories.

Allow me to slip into my notorious sap mode, please? All the things we found there would have a boring pallor were it not for all the stories we shared and the new memories we made. From our eight-hour road trip to Bolinao right up to the long drive we took on our way home, I could say that every minute was colorful. Banters, discussions, teases, and anecdotes galore—they all made the vacation  totally one for the books.

We’ve imbibed many stories during our stay in Pilar. We leafed through photo albums and laughed at them; Pa re-introduced me to my aunts and uncles in the pictures and accompanied them with funny tales. We learned about the ways of the province. I even learned loads of new stuff from my kid-cousins! We visited my grandmother’s sister about two “blocks” away from our house, and she shared with us as many stories as she could, starting from her daughter working in Brunei to our twenty-year-old cousin who committed suicide. It was a medley of all things tears-of-joy-inducing and heartbreakingly poignant.

What filled our boat rides and road trips? Mini-discussions about Hacienda Luisita when we passed the place, the Aquinos, the elections, and politics in general; funny  moments during our stay in Bolinao; endless joshing and joking around; sketches that we weren’t able to tell each other in dinner tables back in Manila because of the incomplete attendance of its occupants; abstract things that we leave in Pangasinan, and the things we’re bringing to the city from it.

We stopped to eat in random diners in two towns miles away from Bolinao. If we hadn’t found the nearest Chowking right away, perhaps we would have continued our diner stops and I could imagine we’re in a different version of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road-ish pancake tour of North America. Haha!

Well, good things come to an end. We arrived in Manila at about 9:00 PM on Saturday. We’re too tired to even get our unwashed clothes to the laundry basket. I was glad to see the house again with all its heaps of books and comforting atmosphere that I wouldn’t find anywhere else. After playing with my grand-niece for a couple of minutes, I went to my room and hit the sack.

Confession: I’m a little saddened the next morning when I woke up and saw the hard shapes of the roofs between our venetian blinds. I honestly thought I was still in Pangasinan, and it confused me a little when I realized there were no cicadas singing or why we weren’t summoned to the wooden tables for coffee and stories. We’re back to the city again, back to our responsibilities, back to our realities. But that doesn’t mean the magic of Bolinao has to end, right? In my mind, all those moments will always be alive. And perhaps same time next year, I’d be able to revel in its glory by visiting the province again.

“I Don’t Want to Go Back Alone”

The best thing about the wild blue jungle of Tumblr is that you get to stumble upon little treasures that can lift a layer of stress off your back. I was aimlessly scrolling down my dashboard one afternoon when I spotted a link to this Brazilian short film called “Eu Não Quero Voltar Sozinho,” which loosely translates to “I Don’t Want to Go Back Alone” in English.

The small screen treat follows the story of Leonardo, a blind teenage boy whose world was turned upside down upon the arrival of a new student in his class. Simply put, it’s a short film about young love. You can watch it below (don’t forget to turn the English subtitles on!)

I guess the charm of this short film lies in the fact that it treats homosexuality with so much simplicity—no frills, no out-of-the-closet complexities, no twisting pathways before landing to the problem of romance. It’s not like the film is boxed in a gay utopia; it’s just treats how gayness should be treated. Natural.

Just a couple of minutes ago, I received news that Daniel Ribeiro, the director, is spinning off a full-blown feature from this short film in 2014! It’s now entitled “Todas as Coisas Mais Simples,” or “All the Simple Things." While I think the short film itself is already a portrait of succinct perfection, I’m not averse to seeing what Ribeiro can tell in 90 minutes. I’m even excited! :)

Check out the FB photos of the production team.

Review: Jellicoe Road

Author: Melina Marchetta
Genre: Young Adult, Contemporary, Romance, Drama
My Rating: ★★★★★ (5/5 stars)



Many pop literature junkies are getting more vocal about giving up on the stories churned out by most of today’s YA authors. And no wonder—if you've noticed how ‘bestseller ideas’ are being downcycled again and again to populate the genre's shelves, you may even agree with them when they huff, "Oh well, can’t blame the writers; kitsch sells.”

Fortunately, novels like Melina Marchetta’s Jellicoe Road emerge to reassure us that the Young Adult section isn’t in any way heading for an aesthetic holocaust. It’s the kind of book that stands stark against its slew of peers; it’s the kind of book that says, “Just dig in, there’s still a multitude of us here.”

Jellicoe Road follows the story of Taylor Markham, who was abandoned by her mother on the Jellicoe Road when she was eleven. She hasn’t moved on about it six years later, but she tries to swim with life as it surges forward. She takes over their school’s Underground Community in their annual territory wars against the Townies and Cadets. But Lady Luck has a way of tethering Taylor to the past. Taylor finds out that Jonah Griggs, the boy who betrayed her when she ran away to find her mother three years ago, is the current Cadet leader. Problems and internal issues heap up when her guardian Hannah goes missing, leaving only a story about five kids that Taylor feels a strange connection to. Taylor acknowledges then that only when she is able to properly arrange her past’s puzzle pieces would she only find the key to her present and future.

Honestly, I don’t think there’s any summary that can do justice to Jellicoe Road’s real magic. If anything, the book itself refuses to be boxed by its own blurbs and nondescript excerpts. Marchetta’s storytelling talent is evident in the fact that even if the book is built on the same foundations of a hackneyed YA novel, it manages to morph into something so tastefully refreshing and intricately beautiful. It veers off the kitsch high way, if you get my drift.

Marchetta’s prose flaunts an even blend of insightful and crude. It gets deep and lyrical during Taylor’s introspections; it gets laugh-out-loud funny in the punchy, profanity-peppered dialogues between the main characters. In both sides, Marchetta showcases a kind of writing style that I can only describe as a breath of fresh air from the heaps of YA lit that I’ve previously devoured. Add to that a certain edge that gives off a vibe of magical realism, and I can totally say the book is nothing short of unforgettable.

Onto one of its distinguishing points: Jellicoe Road contains a story within a story. As I’ve heard, the first hundred pages made most readers mistake the book for mind-screw galore, discouraging them to leaf through the next three hundred pages. It’s understandable because the two parts read like very different entities. But as the plot charges along, Marchetta drops clues that glue both stories, filling in the gaps little by little until the two meshed together to form an intricate masterwork. The mystery is not so hard to crack, though. The wham! lines would elicit an “About time you figure it out, Taylor!” instead of an “I didn’t see that coming!” from the thinking audience. Be that as it may, the emphasis given on the anticipation factor was excellent.

Taylor as a character doesn’t stray so much from her antiheroine peers: she’s angst-on-two legs, carries an emotional baggage heavier than herself, snarky, unapologetically selfish, and has lots of trust issues. But akin to all the characters I’ve loved in literature, it isn’t about how unlikable Taylor seems to be—it’s all about how she emerges as a well fleshed-out person from the pages. Her humanness shines the brightest when she tries to be tough but grudgingly acknowledges that she needs other people to hold on to.

Standing alongside her is a ragtag bunch of other memorable characters: Aboriginal Townie leader Chaz Santangelo, the amiable ex-Townie Raffaela, the self-deprecatory muso Ben, and the damaged and stoic Cadet Jonah Griggs. This group as well as the other in the accompanying story are caught up in complicated relationship polygons—enemies, friends, friends-but-not-quite, lovers-that-aren’t—that somehow contributed to their dimensionalities.

Reading about their petty territory disputes was somewhat fascinating, though it made me extra-afraid of the actual territory wars our country is engaged in with Sabah and China. In the book, violence is the punishment for whoever trespasses into enemy terrain. That’s just black eyes and broken bones, but it’s violence just the same. Imagine this system blown up as the people involved fight over international lands. Death tolls, negotiations, pleas? Our newspapers carried headlines about those for weeks.

Anyway (sorry for digressing), since we’re already talking about boundaries and places, I commend Marchetta for her first-class world-building. The weight of the realm she created is as palpable as the lives of the people who inhabit it.

As a whole, I can say that Jellicoe Road is one of those books that deserve an improper fraction—I’d totally give it 6 out of 5 stars if I could! Hands down, this is definitely one of the best books I’ve read.

The Power of Words

-from One Hundred Names for Love: A Stroke, A Marriage, and the Language of Healing by Diane Ackerman

Book-to-screen news!

Apologies for not regularly updating this  little online abode of mine! I hope you’re still there and that you’re forgiving my being asleep at switch, blogger-wise. Lots of things have happened both in my offline and online world, and here’s a book-related chunk of the latter that you might have missed (or not):

YA Heroine Jackpot: Shaileen Woodley
Casting announcements about two of the most popular YA titles today—Veronica Roth’s Divergent and John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars—brought fans in a screaming frenzy. Not of the purely positive kind, of course, since a lot of them naturally engaged in a heated volleyball of opinions about the casting. Shaileen Woodley landed the role of Tris Prior in Divergent and Hazel Grace Lancaster in TFiOS. What do you think?

I haven’t seen her act but like what I did with Jennifer Lawrence’s Katniss Everdeen, I’m giving her a chance. There must be really good reasons why she’s chosen and why the authors seem so glad to have her in the forefront of their masterpieces. I’ve no complaints looks-wise (I’ve stopped expecting there are actors that would look exactly like what I’ve imagined them in the pages).  Hey, never underestimate the power of Hollywood makeup! In the mean time, I’ll pick up The Descendants or check a few episodes of The Secret Life of the American Teenager to see what suddenly made everyone think she’s perfect for the roles of leading girls in gigantic franchises (I just realized she’s also playing Mary Jane Watson in The Amazing Spider-Man 2).

See Divergent’s IMDB page | See EW’s article on Shaileen’s involvement with TFiOS

Jellicoe Road film update:I was told that Jellicoe Road is going to be turned into a movie not long after I finished rereading the book, and I’m beyond excited! I used to be overprotective of my favorite novels when it comes to movie adaptations, but I’ve learned to love the screen translations for a number of reasons (first one is that the movie will be a good instrument to point more people to the source material).

Here’s a snippet from the script as posted by Melina Marchetta in her blog:

TAYLOR: So who’s their captain?
(Ben painfully unbuttons his shirt. Written across his chest in green paint are the words: I AM.)
BEN: He seemed to think you’d know who “I am” is.

Props to you if you’ve read Jellicoe Road and know who “I am” is! Dang. How can Marchetta cram a lot of intense personality in just two words? Have I mentioned that I’m excited?! On a recent interview with Hypable, Marchetta says they believe it will be “an international film, and you can’t make an international film if you don’t have international names…It’s just the two leads, as in Jonah and Taylor, they will have to be international leads. My rule is that I’m totally fine about that, except they have to be the right person for the role, rather than just an international name.”

Anna Dressed in Blood to be developed into a movieLast January, I tweeted Kendare Blake about the rumors of Anna Dressed in Blood being developed into a movie. And guess what? Good news! It certainly is! But my heart is only half-celebrating, as it is Stephenie Meyer’s production company that’s doing the work.

I’m not jumping on the hate bandwagon, it’s just I’ve seen the kind of ‘artistic abilities’ Meyer possesses. I love Anna Dressed in Blood so much and I’d be glad to see it unfurl in the big screen…but I’ve always hoped it will happen in the hands of the right people. Ha. Well, I guess that as long as Meyer doesn’t touch a pen in the movie’s production (leave that to Blake!) then I’ll live.

See LA Times’ article about this  item.