Author: Sumthinblue

Soledad’s Sister

I’ve seen some of Butch Dalisay’s work in the movies and I’ve read his newspaper column every so often, but I must admit that I’ve never read any of his stories, and I thought I’d start this year. I normally try out authors by starting out  with their shorter works, and I’ve got a copy of Dalisay’s Old Timer and Other Stories somewhere in my Everest of TBR book. But I’ve always wanted to read Soledad’s Sister, not just because it was shortlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize in 2007, but because I read the back-of-the-book summary and it seemed quite interesting to me.

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Banana Heart Summer

For those who love to love and eat
For those who long to love and eat

I fell in love with the book Banana Heart Summer by Merlinda Bobis as soon as I read the title of the first chapter of the book (quoted above). Those words, strung together, told me I was going to like the novel —  I’ve always subscribed to the idea of a correlation between loving and enjoying food.

Banana Heart Summer is a Filipino novel published locally by Anvil Publishing (internationally by Delta), which tells of a summer in  Bicol (right at the foot of the Mayon volcano) in 1960. Twelve-year old Nenita,inspired by the myth of the banana heart (Close to midnight, whent the heart bows from its stem, wait for its first dew. It will drop like a gem. Catch it with your tongue. When you eat the heart of the matter, you’ll never grow hungry again), leaves home to become a helper in the house next door so she can earn her mother’s love and put food on her hungry family’s table.

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So glad to be back!

*Insert triumphant whoop here*

And I’m back. Finally. And with that comes a huge sigh of relief.

You might have been wondering why there have been no updates for several days now — it’s because funky things were happening under the hood. The site did not go under (if you had seen it, it appeared to be up and running, and I even got comments on the posts), but I was actually locked out of the site for the past week!

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Best and Worst

And I’m back! Finally, order has been restored in my little corner of the world. I apologize for the sporadic blogging — the year had a crazy start: I’ve been battling with a bad allergy for over a month (subsiding now, thank goodness, after a small fortune spent at the drugstore and a huge pile of specialized creams and beauty products); one of my biggest campaigns kicked off at work; and the family marked a major event: my 48-year old uncle’s wedding!

I feel like the year is just beginning on my blog (and technically, it is…), so here’s a recap of my best and worst reads for 2010:

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The much-dreaded 2666

Earlier in the year, I started reading Roberto Bolaño’s 2666.

I was eager to read it because I’ve heard book club friends raving about it, and I’d splurged on a lovely hardcover copy because I wanted to be in the mood to read such a long book. I’d also signed up for the Chunkster Challenge because it seemed to be a promising start. And I’d designated it as the B book in my A-Z Challenge!

I’m not even sure if I should count 2666 as one book, because technically there are five books in this hefty volume. 2666 was Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño’s last work; he died shortly after the first draft was presented to the publisher. His original intention was to publish the books individually, but then he passed away and the heirs decided on compiling all the parts in one massive volume, the English translation of which was named by Time Magazine as the Best Book of 2008.

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