Year: 2010

Edward Gorey

Edward Gorey is one of my favorite writer-illustrators. I love his lyrical and wickedly macabre stories — like a twisted Edward Lear or Lewis Carroll) and his equally macabre pen and ink illustrations!

I’ve blogged about acouple books of his in the past — Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats (illustrations) and The Curious Sofa (story and illustrations), and I’ve got a couple more to show you in this post: The Iron Tonic and the pop-up book The Dwindling Party, both rummaged in bargain bins in two separate occasions, at P20 (US$0.5) and P95 (around US$2) respectively.

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Art in Fiction (Flips Flipping Pages May Book Discussion)

Last Saturday, the Flippers met up again for our monthly book discussion, this time moderated by Raissa and Joel on the theme of “Art in Fiction.”

It’s a theme I personally love — ever since I read Tracy Chevalier’s Girl with a Pearl Earring around five years ago, I was hooked on this subgenre, and I still read one every so often.

Our afternoon was packed for this discussion, we had a drawing session, a discussion, and a museum tour!

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Reading in the Time of Elections

It’s been a crazy week: Monday marked the much-awaited national elections here in the Philippines. This isn’t the first time for me to vote; I’ve already voted at one national election and one senatorial election, but this is the first time the country is using automated elections and there was much anxiety about the new technology.

The family walked to the voting center just before 9am. We checked our names in the master list, where I sighed with relief at finding my name listed because I couldn’t find it on the site — it turns out they misspelled my middle name. We proceeded to our clustered precinct to find that the line was snaking down the hallway, packed with other voters.

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Pocket-size!

I love little books, and I’ve got a growing collection of them on various different subjects — they’re just so much fun to read, they often feature great art or photos, and they’re easy to stuff into odd nooks and crannies in my bookshelves!

Here are a bunch of  pocket-sized reads I finished recently: Fountain Pens by Alex Fortis and Antonio Vannucchi, Bad Cat by Jim Edgar, and Treasures of Disney Animation Art.

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Of Vampires and Werewolves


It’s a well-known fact that I harbor no love for the Twilight saga. To put it succinctly, among a host of other reasons, I am not a fan of the teen paranormal romance genre in general, I find Stephenie Meyer’s writing abhorrent, I prefer vampires who don’t sparkle (and  pasty-faced Rob Pattinson doesn’t do anything for me, either, not that I would spend good money on any of the movies), and I consider Bella Swan one of the worst characters I’ve ever read in print (Twi-hards, please don’t spam me with hate messages!).

That said, I didn’t have high hopes for the Twilight graphic novel, which my boss lent me to review.  I was curious for two reasons: local bookstores are having price wars to drive the sales of the books (there are even billboards for the book!); and I wanted to see how it was adapted visually, given its base material.

I also had a chance to review Maggie Stiefwater’s Shiver, which, despite my apprehensions, turned out to be a pleasant surprise.

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