Naermyth by Karen Francisco

It’s a little weird, writing this post months after having read the book and having given my copy away, but my personal need to chronicle my reading life is compelling me, so here we go.

Naermyth by Karen Francisco is a take on post-apocalyptic YA that combines the tropes of the genre with uniquely Filipino references. In this world, the creatures of mythology suddenly emerge and lay waste to most of civilization. In the Philippines, these are the creatures parents used to invoke to strike fear into children’s hearts, such as the aswang, sigben, and the manananggal. Only pockets of surviving and resisting bands of humanity continue to exist, including a fort in Manila that is protected by the so-called Shepherds.

The Shepherds venture to the aswang-infested territories of Manila to find surviving humans and lead them to relative safety. One of the most efficient and competent aswang-killers among this ragtag group is a girl that answers to the name Aegis. One day, she finds an unconscious man who is about to be attacked by aswangs and saves him, only to find out that this man has absolutely no recollection that the end of the civilization has occurred.

So far so good, right? I was initially interested in reading this book because of the premise. A sustained novel of this genre from a Filipino author has been a long time coming. I was ready to experience some intricate worldbuilding, a spunky heroine, and copious amount of Filipino mythology thrown. All requisite boxes are checked. However, I found no pleasure in reading it because the first person point of view, the dialogue, and the plot twists struck me as utterly unconvincing.

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

My personal assessment of Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad changes each time I think back on it. Sometimes I think it’s a trifling thing, made up of airy stories that don’t really have any staying power beyond the act of reading them. Other times certain passages simply haunt me. I change my mind even further whenever I read other people’s reviews of it, especially since time and winning the Pulitzer seems to have turned some people into dismissing Goon Squad and its importance. But after hearing Slate’s Audio Book Club Podcast discussing the book I think that I can comfortably put a stake in the ground: I love this book.

The buzz surrounding this novel originally came from its stylistic inventiveness and subject matter. It is series of loosely interconnected short stories that track the lives of several individuals across space and time. Many of them, like Benny and Sasha, are heavily involved in the music industry while others are more tenuously so. People pop up and disappear all throughout, turning the entire novel into a a treasure hunt of sorts as you try to discover what happens to characters that you care about. Time is the goon that the title refers to, a shadowy figure that roughs you up and beats you down when you least expect it.

Blue Angel, White Shadow by Charlson Ong

Nostalgia for a Manila slowly ebbing away lies at the heart of Blue Angel, White Shadow, the newest offering from one of the Philippines’ most renowned novelists, Charlson Ong. With references to Marlene Dietrich, John Coltrane, Old Binondo, World War II, dogfights and summary executions, his foray into the mystery genre results in a symphony about the constant push and pull between the old and the new, the artful and the brutal.

The story begins with an iconic noir image: the beautiful woman in a red dress. Rather than a seductive shift, however, singer Laurice Saldiaga was wearing a red cheongsam when she died in the upstairs apartment of the Blue Angel, a decrepit jazz bar in the middle of Chinatown. A Hokkien-speaking mestizo policeman named Cyrus Ledesma is brought into the investigation because of its delicate nature, even as he comes to terms with his own dodgy past. He encounters a list of people with motives and opportunities to kill Laurice. The implication even goes as high up as the Mayor of Manila himself, Lagdameo Go-Lopez.

Tongues on Fire by Conrado de Quiros

Conrado de Quiros is among the country’s most articulate and widely-read political voices. His weekly column called There’s the Rub consistently causes pundits and politicians to either lionize him or accuse him of persecution. To put his influence in perspective, he is one of the very first people who called for Noynoy Aquino to run for the presidency, writing “Noynoy for president” in August 2010, following the death and funeral of Former President Corazon Aquino. Noynoy was not even contemplating the bid at this point, but the phenomenal outpouring of grief during Cory’s funeral and the call of people such as de Quiros snowballed into a movement and eventually became the state of Philippine politics today.

Tongues on Fire do not contain materials from his columns but are either speeches or longer essays that are not necessarily political in nature. However, many of the pieces allude to different administrations–from Marcos to Macapagal-Arroyo–and the scandals and indignities to which they have subjected the country. De Quiros is a political animal and it shows, with even speeches about the Boy Scouts of the Philippines containing jibes about corruption. In one essay (“A real book”), he talks about well-meaning friends and usiseros telling him that his talents can be better showcased in other ways, since writing about Philippine politics is an ultimately doomed endeavor. He blithely tells them to get lost.

Stiff by Mary Roach

In my quest to read more non-fiction this year, I went ahead and bought this book which I’ve been hearing about for a long time. As someone who gorges on police procedurals on a regular basis (let me tell you about my feelings for Idris Elba’s Luther one of these days), the subject matter is right up my alley.

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers is a series of long form essays by journalist Mary Roach that tackles the adventurous (after)lives of corpses that are used for scientific research. From the long-standing and ghoulish tradition of bodysnatching for medical schools to the relatively recent educational facility called the “body farm,” Roach examines not only the mechanics of corpse-related experimentation, but also the ethical and practical implications of doing such work.

Emma, Jane Austen

Tai: Why should I listen to you, anyway? You’re a virgin who can’t drive.
Cher: That was way harsh, Tai.

I wonder how many people begin Emma with the movie Clueless as their point of reference. This revelation pegs me as an irredeemable child of the 90′s, it’s true, but the contemporary reimagining of Jane Austen’s novel by director Amy Heckerling provided a level of accessibility that would’ve never existed had I entered the text cold. The lives of gentlefolk in a small English countryside is hardly something I can relate to, but conjuring up images of a young Alicia Silverstone traipsing around Beverly Hills prepared my expectations for a ridiculous, over-the-top romantic plot peppered with insight and comedy. While I loved the movie as a young kid, the novel itself is a surprise as an adult, the humor so fresh and razor-sharp two centuries after its first publication.

Emma Woodhouse is the darling of Highbury, heiress of her father’s estate, and–in her own mind–an unparalleled matchmaker. She’s young, rich and precocious, certain that she will never marry and therefore committed to pairing off the people she loves in a tidy fashion. Everybody in town defers to her except for the gentleman George Knightley, Emma’s brother-in-law. He is constantly unimpressed with Emma’s insights about romance because underneath her seemingly altruistic intentions lies the heart of a spoiled young girl.

The Power and the Glory, Graham Greene

I haven’t yet decided if reading this novel at the height of summer in the Philippines was supremely prescient or foolhardy. The first few chapters are alienating in their bleakness, approximating the aridity of a soul so far from grace. Graham Greene’s prose sucks out all the oxygen from the story, leaving a nihilistic parable suspended in time.

The Power and the Glory is ostensibly grounded in a historical event. Set in the 1930′s, it dramatizes the period when a wave of revolutionary fervor led to the persecution of Mexico’s Catholic Church. Priests are hunted down–either forced to renounce their vows through marriage or executed. Graham Greene creates what is a essentially a man-on-the-run thriller here, as an unnamed character called “the Whisky Priest” struggles to elude capture in the countryside of rural Mexico. He is chased by a bloodhound simply known as “the Lieutenant,” whose desire to annihilate the old, corrupt ways propels this all-consuming vendetta.

Ilustrado

Ilustrado is a novel full of and about fakes. The fragments that make up the book are themselves knockoffs of different genres–murder mystery, satire, interviews from The Paris Review, everything but the kitchen sink. Miguel Syjuco’s brassy debut novel turns on its head the first accusation thrown in the face of every expat writing a novel set in the Philippines: “Just how authentic are you?”

A manuscript by lionized (or should it be “pantherized?”) Filipino writer Crispin Salvador disappears after his death in New York. This propels his student Miguel to travel to the Philippines, taking it upon himself to connect together the different threads of his mentor’s existence and hopefully retrieve the lost magnum opus. Interspersed between fragments of Crispin’s earlier novels, plays, and newspaper columns, the narrative follows Miguel as he tracks down the different people that Crispin had loved and wronged, unearthing a portrait of a sublime failure.

Fargo Rock City

Pity those with the compulsion to rationalize their obsessions; theirs is a battle with no end. Chuck Klosterman proves with his oral history of heavy metal, filtered through the eyes of a perpetually uncool kid from rural North Dakota. A freewheeling meditation on bands like Mötley Crüe, KISS, Poison, and Guns N’ Roses, Fargo Rock City is already significant as one of the first attempts to legitimize the cultural importance of the spandex-clad, hairsprayed army of badasses who saw their heyday in the late 80′s to early 90′s. But it is also a love letter to a childhood where love of music was tied to a sense of self and belonging. And the undying desire to rock.

Klosterman declares early on that he wants to confront two of the most egregious accusations hurled at heavy metal: that 1) it is frivolous and disposable (therefore “not art”), and 2) it is offensive and dangerous. He argues that these two sentiments can’t both be true at the same time. Being a danger presupposes a potency that contradicts frivolity. It may not be elevating art but heavy metal mattered, particularly to the crop of hormonal teenagers of post-Reagan Middle America.

Giovanni’s Room

I’ve always held this notion that there is such a thing as missed connections when it comes to novel-reading. Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin is one such book for me–it is a deeply moving story in many ways, but I think its effect would’ve been more profound on me if I had read it when I was younger. Which means that the fault is mine and not the novel’s, of course.

Giovanni’s Room is a novel of claustrophobia, of physical smallness and emotional suffocation. The title refers to the rented Parisian room that an American expatriate named David shares with a bartender he meets at a gay bar. He is a typical example of the young, disaffected Americans who traipse around Paris in the post-war period, but his life takes a turn the moment Giovanni strikes a conversation with him. Passion is ignited in an instant, but while their mutual attraction is acknowledged and consummated early on, their happiness is far from assured.

The Magicians of Caprona

Diana Wynne Jones recasts Shakespeare’s warring families of Verona into two magical houses in the charming book The Magicians of Caprona. Instead of the Montagues and Capulets, however, we have Casa Montana and Casa Petrocchi, rival families as old as the city-state of Caprona. Their rivalry often causes the citizens to run away and take cover because their confrontations inevitably lead to spells flying all over the place, littering the streets with cowpats and the like.

The story is told through the eyes of brothers Paolo and Tonino Montana. They grew up hating the Petrocchis like true Montanas, and they strive to be as good magicians as the older members of their family. When a series of bad things begin to happen around the city, the Montanas naturally suspect their old rivals. But when the magical disturbances start becoming more sinister, causing even the Chrestomanci to take notice, Tonino and Paolo begin to suspect a force much stronger than petty rivalry.

Moneyball: In Praise of Sabermetrics

I must admit that I like reading about baseball much more than watching it. I can lap up article after article about Ichiro Suzuki by Time Magazine, but sitting through a baseball game is something I can only afford to do when I’m already under the influence of Advil. Still, sportswriting remains an affecting genre for me. Despite being prone to romanticism, there is a lot of naked emotion inherent in it, chronicling the triumphs and follies of grown men risking life and limb to chase after a ball.

Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game is a crusade under the banner of sabermetrics. Michael Lewis’s infamous book about an underfunded baseball team that manages to outsmart several richer teams hinges on a single point–that the old boy’s club of Major League Baseball inaccurately measures the merits and skills of their own players and that this shortsightedness can be exploited by a smarter, if poorer, team. The secret weapon? Statistical analysis.