Meme-Killer!

Thanks a lot, Jay Tomio!

Since Jay has passed on this (rather belated) meme to me and promised The Death of a Thousand Paper-Cuts from Book Pages, I've decided as a calibrated response to such actions to take on the role of...

... MEME-KILLER!

So, if you want a particular meme killed, just pass it on to me and I'll make sure not to pass it on. *winks*

On to the meme...

1. One book that changed your life?

Been thinking about it and unfortunately, I don't think any particular book changed my life. I suppose I could cite a nice hardbound Lord of the Rings we borrowed at the old Union Church library in Makati (are they still there?). I remember being engrossed with the battle of Middle-Earth one lazy afternoon in our dusty garage. I could also cite The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky that we once took up in high school. It convinced me that a cat could become a Russian mystic. I still have hopes.

2. One book you have read more than once?

Have you seen my backlog of books? Do you seriously think I have time to read a book more than once?

3. One book you would want on a desert island?

I answered a similar meme like this last time with Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast and Evangeline Walton's Mabinogion, both somewhat hefty tomes. This way, if ever I need a weapon, I could lob 'em at cannibal natives or ravaging predators.

4. One book that made you laugh?

Outright? None really unless it's Terry Pratchett. I don't find most comedic fantasy appealing. On the other hand, I found amusing certain parts of Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys, Matt Stover's Shatterpoint and... well, I had to laugh while reading Stover's book because I could imagine Samuel Jackson (as Star War's Mace Windu) putting the big beat-down.

5. One book that made you cry?

None really. Yes, I'm a cold-hearted bastard. (Well, I did get teary-eyed over a book about a dog. But what do you expect? I'm a cat.)

6. One book you wish had been written?

No one book really but I wish I could write stuff like Jeff Ford. Damn, the man is good.

7. One book you wish had never had been written?

Ahhh... I better not get into this again as am sure people have grown tired of my ranting.

8. One book you are currently reading?

Right now, am officially reading Jeff Vandermeer's City of Saints and Madmen (this one's taking so long because dangerous material is better absorbed slowly), Jeff Ford's The Fantasy Writer's Assistant and Other Stories, and Carlos Luis Zafon's The Shadow of the Wind.

On the sly, am reading Chaz Brenchley's The Tower of the King's Daughter and Charles L. Grant's The Hush of Dark Wings.

9. One book you have been meaning to read?

A lot of classic and literary stuff, like Paul Auster, Dante, Bocaccio, Joseph Conrad, Ernest Hemingway, etc. To reiterate the oft-repeated phrase, too many books, too little time, my friends.

10. Now tag five people.

And here's where I stomp this meme... dead!

Easy Come, Easy Go

The bad news: I almost sideswiped a guy while on my way to work. Though it was the guy's fault (he was crossing illegally and playing chicken with the on-rushing cars), I know I'm still at fault because I'm the one with the car.

Also, the guy wasn't hurt but I thought he was looking for an easy buck because when I offered 1K in recompense, he wanted 200 bucks more supposedly because the medicine he had "dropped" was worth that much.

Me, I'm just pissed because I only had that thousand-peso bill in my wallet and now that's 1K gone.

The good news: Remember that promise I made myself to raise the bar at work? Because of the extra work load, I'm getting a raise starting this September. Not bad, not bad.

Now I can't decide if I'm ecstatic over the raise or depressed over the incident this morning.

*sigh*

And Sometimes Life Takes You By The Throat With Its Teeth

There should be a term for that, he thought. Like the French have one for missed last words: l'esprit d'escalier. In this case, the word should describe how you could know where a particular person was in a room even without looking.

To see without seeing, he mused, to mark that someone at the barest corner of your eye as you take in the room. Like a shiver in your shoulder blades or a feeling of ghosts in your brain.

Or a heartbroken radar.

In other words, I'll be working, working, working.

So what are you guys doing?

Ex Libris: A Dream of the Children's Crusade

(As matabangpusa asked, I normally do reviews of low-brow--i.e. non-literary-- books. This means genre stuff. I've read a couple that can be regarded as literary but in the primary, I'm as low-brow as they come.)

The good news about the Harry Potter juggernaut in the book front is that thanks to this profitable gusher, a lot of publishers have now come out with books targeted for the YA audience while more writers are putting out books with a YA tag. (Hey, even noted phantasist China Mieville has one while one of my favorite writers, Graham Joyce, flubbed his.)

The bad news is that I have no idea how to "handle" YA books.

You may ask: what's there to worry about? I'm not sure myself: I've read other YA books like the first Harry Potter, Garth Nix's excellent Old Kingdom trilogy (review to come soon) as well as Philip Pullman's subversive His Dark Materials trilogy. But the thing is, there's a certain element-- that "solidity" of other, more "adult" works perhaps?-- I find missing in most YA.

Still, there's no doubt that the YA books are as good as their adult genre counterparts (see aforementioned Nix and Pullman), which is why I picked up some books that piqued my interest. These include Philip Reeve's Mortal Engines and Kenneth Oppel Airborn.

Reeve's book is a post-apocalyptic steam-punk fantasy tale about Municipal Darwinism: imagine cities powered by giant engines and running on platforms with huge treads as they "eat" or take over smaller cities for needed resources and material (including people). In this future, an orphan Tom lives in a version of a city of London as it moves around a great wasteland, a Europe that's almost been stripped bare by a destructive war. Life is definitely better on these moving cities-- unless another city is about to gobble you up. However, Tom's life is turned upside down when he averts an assassination attempt on his hero, adventurer and guild master Thaddeus Valentine, by a scarred young girl named Hester Shaw-- and he is in turn betrayed by Valentine.

How Tom and Hester try to return to London becomes the meat of the story as they are chased by a maddened cyborg and kidnapped by slavers, meet members of the infamous Anti-Traction League (of course you will also have cities who don't move) and fly in airships. In the course of their journey, Tom will discover that once having left his home, nothing will be ever the same again.

On the other hand, if Reeve upends the status quo, Oppel tries to maintain it in his Jules Vernes-esque novel. Matt Cruse is an ordinary cabin boy of the luxury airship Aurora who loves to fly. Hoewver, destiny seems to have picked Matt for something greater when he rescues a dying old man in a damaged air balloon. When he later meets the old man's grand-daughter, the feisty and rich Kate de Vries, he finds out the the true reason for the balloonist's death: the mysterious existence of a brand new fauna that lives primarily in the sky.

Unfortunately, pirates, storms, and a jungle island figure prominently in Matt and Kate's lives and their only hope in returning home to safety and civilization will lie in Matt's connection to the sky.

Between the two books, Reeve's had a better handle on world-building as Oppel's is more of an alternate history/ Victorian tale where dirigibles rule the air. Likewise, I think that Reeve had a better story flow in comparison to Oppel. On the other hand, Oppel had more solid characterizations-- though I thought Kate was nothing more than a spoiled brat-- and much more exciting action scenes.

It's funny but there's definitely something to be said about the juxtaposition of these two books: Reeve's novel is almost anarchistic in tone (overthrowing the existing order by literally bringing down the city) while Oppel's story defines "people knowing their places" (Matt survives to go to Academy, giving him a chance to romance Kate-- which he wouldn't have if he'd remained as cabin boy). But I won't go into the socio-classification overtones of these books as I'll probably get it all wrong.

More to the point, I suppose my confusion in YA books stems from the fact that I'm an adult trying to 'see' a story through the filter of a young teen's eyes. Instead of being totally immersed in their stories, I feel it has 'softer' edges- maybe because of the presumed invulnerability of the young protagonist. I admit this is a wronful assumption on my part as any edges found in their stories can cut as badly as those in "adult" stories.

I suppose it's akin to a children's crusade: the name connotes a children's tale where good ought to prevail. However, one should rather expect blood and horror. Any ending that does not end in mystery is just a bonus.

The State of the Youth Today

I had to laugh (sympathetically of course) at mark's situation over a press release he posted way back in 2001.

Due to the vagaries of the Internet and search engines, kids looking for information had landed in mark's journal. Unfortunately, these kids were rather... demanding and started peppering the comment system with rather urgent calls.

A look at the comment system notes that the demands started around 2003 and these just avalanched to other requests. As of last count, the post has around 451 comments. Granted some of them were just people commenting on the funny situation. However, most of them were very, very demanding and worded their requests in the most abrupt way possible.

It doesn't help that a lot of the requests were in almost indecipherable text-speak. Ironically, most of the kids were asking that whatever it was they wanted be sent the next day ASAP for class or a report or some such. Some even berated mark for not having the information they were seeking on his website.

Some examples (mostly the English version)--

Linzel Ann: "Pls post the story of life of Rogelio Sikat now pls………" (which mark replies "Linzel Ann, please use a library now pls.")

Barbhie_18: "PLZZZ GIV ME AN EXMPLES OF TLMPTI, EPIKO, TLMBHAY, ANKDOTA, PRBLA, MITOLOHYA, SABAYANG PAGBIGKAS, KWENTONG BAYAN…. TNXXX POH… PLZZZ!" (yahh! quit shouting...er... whatever it is you're saying)

Mike: "i need a copy of an anekdota, parabula, kuwento ng katatakutan, kuwento ng katatawanan, kuwento ng pakikipagsapalaran, kuwento ng kababalaghan and kuwento ng pag-ibig if you don’t mind. tnx!" (do you want fries with that?)

Riane: "i need a poem for sabayang pagbigkas. i hope you have one. please e-mail it to me. i need it tomorrow. thanks. :-) " (at least she used a smiley face)

Mahal: "plis send me 10 examples of filipino anecdotes..tagalog po!!and 1 maikling kwento..pwede po pkicnd now na sa email ko..its urgent!!tnx alot!!muaaaahz.." (and this one gave a kiss)

Christian: "Whoever who knew people with connection in searching for commercial models please email me or call me ___. I want to auditon because I really want to appear in a T.V. Commercial even without talent fee. I hope my dreams will soon be a reality. Thanks! Godspeed." (Uh, I think you're in the wrong place, kid)

*sigh*

I'd say something snarky or sharp but this is one situation where the kids have said it all...

Seen in the wild: Here's what I've seen recently in 2nd-hand bookshops.

• Octavia Butler's last book before she died, Kindred (hardbound)
• Candas Jane Dorsey's very feminist Black Wine (tpb)
• Michael Moorcock's Gloriana (tpb) with this edition
• Peter Straub's The Throat (hardbound)

... and yes, eldritch, the last one's for you. It's funny how you can find a certain book just when you're not looking for it anymore. *grins* (And no, I still can't comment in LJ-land. Weird.)

Also, skinny, you might like Moorcock's Gloriana with its Mervyn Peake-esque style.

We will Sleep When We Are Dead

Too busy for words.

...or...

If work was money, I'd be rich. (But it's not so I'm not.)

Update: Was so busy, even this post was delayed.

Frustrated, Inc.

There are the good days, and there are bad days. But most of the time, there are days that are just damn annoying.

Up the Electronic Stream without a Paddle

Obviously, if you work in an online news company, then having 24-hour Internet is an absolute necessity. In the morning, this is quite true. However, for the past few days, as the sun proceeds to climb across the sky and the clock rushes to noon and past it, the office Internet drops sloooooooooowly to almost-nil.

Then when I get home, I find out that the PLDT MyDSL connection is almost bad.

Gaaah. Might as well grab a pencil and paper, write and then send it flying across the room as an paper airplane.

Driving Me Crazy One Lightbulb at a Time

I have a car. I like driving. Obviously, that means I have to take care of the maintenance of my car. Some of the few things that need repair right now include: the misalignment of the car window on the driver's side, new windshield wipers, a flooded spare tire compartment, etc. You know the drill.

Still, before leaving for Bicol last week, I managed to replace the right headlight bulb of my car which burn-out some months ago. Finally, one thing on my to-do list done! Moreover, the car mechanic managed to find a single lightbulb so that I wouldn't have to buy a pair.

You know what happened next? After coming back from Bicol, the left headlight bulb burns out. Sheesh.

Writing in Circles and Circles and Circles...

*sigh* I recently read dean's post in the writing front and this made me think how much a slacker I've become. Right now I'm trying to wrestle four or five stories all trying to get out my head at the same time but I know that's just an excuse and that I'm just a lazy-assed bugger.

On my plate right now is: a pirate story at the end of the world, a story about a master writer who's run out of words, a story of an unconventional romance between two monsters, and a first contact story. Of course this gets a little or a lot of spin on the weird side, depending on my mood. Obviously, I don't want to give away too much of the story.

But between reading, blogging, and writing-- guess which gets prioritized?

Back in the Saddle Again...

... though still a bit sore. *wince*

Just came from a three-day hiatus over the weekend to attend a baptism ceremony in the lovely province of Bicol . Yes, the burbling Mayon volcano was there but you can't see it from where we were (Naga City). Was sorry that I couldn't pick up a lava rock or two though nor visit the haunting ruins of Cagsawa Church.

And despite the fact that I like driving, there's something to be said about driving for 6 and a half hours on Friday night (1 a.m. to 7 a.m. though we finally got there 'round 9 because Quirino highway was pockmarked like the moon) and then 9 hours last Monday (1 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. because we took the scenic route thru Daet to avoid that blasted highway). And then there was the rain and the roaring trucks and buses intent on running you off the road and...

At least my sty cleared up by that time.

Seen in the Wild:

I don't think skinny will believe this but I actually saw another copy of Barry Hughart's hard-to-find Bridge of Birds in a secondhand bookshop. This is reportedly a classic, set in a fantastical version of ancient China, about a wise-cracking wizened old man who plays detective and his bumbling peasant side-kick.

Also, I saw a copy of Richard Matheson's collection of short stories, Shock II. Some may know Matheson for his books-turned-movies, Stir of Echoes, The Incredible Shrinking Man, Somewhere in Time and What Dreams May Come. Of course, for me, nothing beats his last-man-on-earth-full-of-vampires: I Am Legend.