Reading something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue
School officials, librarians, teachers, professionals, reviewers, tutors, and book enthusiasts will gather for the 14th Philippine Academic Book Fair,* the annual five-day event sponsored by the Academic Booksellers Association of the Philippines (ABAP) on July 6-10 at the Megatrade Hall, 5th Level, Building B, SM Megamall, Mandaluyong City.
Continue reading “14th Philippine Academic Book Fair opens this week”
I’d never heard of Joyce Maynard before an uncorrected proof of her book, The Good Daughters, came into my hands, but a little Googling gave me a juicy an interesting discovery: when she was in college, she was in a relationship with a fifty-plus J.D. Salinger!
Here’s a snippet from Wikipedia:
She entered Yale University in 1971 and sent a collection of her writings to the editors of The New York Times Magazine. They asked her to write an article for them, which was published as “An Eighteen Year Old Looks Back On Life” in the magazine’s April 23, 1972 issue. The article prompted a letter from J. D. Salinger, then 53 years old, who complimented her writing and warned her of the dangers of publicity.
They exchanged 25 letters, and Maynard dropped out of Yale the summer after her freshman year to live with Salinger in Cornish, New Hampshire.[1] Maynard spent ten months living in Salinger’s Cornish home, during which time she completed work on her first book, Looking Back, a memoir that was published in 1973. Her relationship with Salinger ended abruptly just prior to the book’s publication; according to Salinger’s daughter Margaret, he ended things because Maynard wanted children but Salinger felt he was too old.[2] According to Maynard’s memoir, he cut off the relationship suddenly while on a family vacation with her and with his two children; she was stunned and begged him to take her back. According to Maynard, she had dropped out of Yale to be with him, forgoing a scholarship. She never finished college.
Geek Fighting is Manila’s latest sport. What’s a book geek to do? :D
(First published in Manila Bulletin, Students and Campuses Section)
The trivia culture has invaded Manila!
Pub quizzes, the quaint British tradition of publicly matching wits and exchanging useless information over drinks and bar chow, have been a great addition to the social scene around the city. On any given week, you’re bound to find one or two trivia showdowns in bars around the metro, and for geeks such as myself, the glory of being the geekiest of them all proves to be difficult to resist.
I’d heard about Geek Fight for some time now, and I’d always intended to join, as I’ve never been known to back down from any geeky challenge. So when I chanced upon the Facebook page calling for an all-Pinoy Geek Fight Friday of last week, I was determined to give it a good try.
On Friday night, the ragtag team I assembled met up at the Quantum Café in Makati for what (save for two of the members) was our first foray into Geek Fight: me, my cousin Dianne, our book club friends Czar and Marie (a writer and a geodetic engineer), my office’s finance officer Ate Chi, my lawyer friend Ryan (also a political science teacher), my long-time friend Joseph (who works in advertising), and his pal Norman (a banker).
I’ve missed doing picture book roundups, and I don’t think I’ve done a proper one yet this year so here’s a bunch of picture books I’ve enjoyed recently: Stephen T. Johnson’s Alphabet City, its companion book City By Numbers, and The Girl’s Like Spaghetti (Why, you can’t manage without apostrophes!) by Lynne Truss (illustrated by Bonnie Timmons).
The books were shamelessly scavenged, as usual — I’d been wanting a copy of Alphabet City for a long time and finally got it via BookMooch, and shortly after found a copy of City By Numbers for a very cheap P40 (less than $1) at a bargain bookstore. Then a few weeks back, I found Girl’s Like Spaghetti for P35! Wonderful additions to my ragtag picture book collection, none of which I buy brand new or full-priced, tee hee hee.
Continue reading “Picture Book Roundup: letters, numbers, and apostrophes”
A couple of weeks ago, I went on an Old Manila Heritage Tour sponsored by the Pilipinas Stamp Collectors’ Club, a tour that covered the Metropolitan Theatre, the Arroceros Forest Park, Liwasang Bonifacio, and the Manila Post Office. It was not as organized as I would have liked, but then again it was a free tour, so I shouldn’t be complaining.
At the end of the tour, there was a stamp collecting seminar and by then my book club friends had decided they’d had enough geekiness for one day. I was tired, too, but I couldn’t resist staying. I’ve never had any formal instruction in collecting stamps and I’ve got two albums bursting full of them, some from my childhood collection and some accumulated after two years of BookMooching.
