Reading something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue
I hope the weekend went well for everyone.
As I updated last Friday, I am giving away 2 sets of Ambeth Ocampo’s Looking Back books (to the top two names that come up on the list randomizer), thanks to an additional set pledged by Anvil Publishing.
Each set contains the books Looking Back, Dirty Dancing and Death by Garrote.
Squee — Ambeth Ocampo featured my Looking Back post on his Facebook page (special thanks to Jzhun and Marie for pointing it out to me). That made my day, so I’m sharing some love! Here’s a new giveaway: a three-book set of Looking Back (volumes 1-3: Looking Back, Dirty Dancing, Death by Garrote), which I reviewed in my last post.
UPDATE: Am now giving away two sets on Sunday, thank you Anvil Publishing (through Ms. Gwenn Galvez) for pledging another set!
Each book is a compilation of historian Ambeth Ocampo’s essays on Philippine history and culture — some from his out of print books Looking Back, Aguinaldo’s Breakfast, Mabini’s Ghost, and Luna’s Mustache, and some recent selections from his weekly newspaper column.
I discovered historian Ambeth Ocampo’s essays back in high school: we were taking up the Noli and El Fili in Panitikan (Literature, in Filipino) class and our teacher wanted us to compile newspaper clippings about Jose Rizal. We didn’t have a newspaper subscription, but I lived a few blocks away from the Inquirer office so I went to their library to get some clippings. The library lady handed me a whole folder of articles (pre-digitization; this was the late 90’s) — most of them were from Ambeth Ocampo’s newspaper column, and I remember being so engrossed reading them that the librarian had to walk over and nudge me to let me know they were closing for the afternoon.
As soon as I enrolled in Ateneo for college, I had my heart set on taking Ambeth Ocampo’s History 165 (Rizal and the Emergence of the Philippine Nation) class, and fortuitously, I got a good random number during reg that sem I was scheduled to take that subject so I was able to enlist in his class.
