Latest book hauls: PBF and the UK trip

-

I’ve been actively avoiding posting content on Meta (FB/IG/Threads) for ethical and practical reasons, i.e., Z*ck seems to be a douchebag who apparently enjoys manipulating humanity for profit, and I think that in the long run, it’s better to own my own content. I haven’t left the platforms to still keep track of people, wish them happy birthday, check brands, etc, but I tell myself not to post anything of mine directly anymore.

Let me tell you right now: it’s hard. I’m chatty and I like sharing things, and my main platform for sharing was Meta. And yes, most of my communities are there. 

I do share the most on BlueSky now, which I’m using like the good ol’ days of Twitter (RIP, Twitter). But while I believe Bsky has enormous potential, right now, there just aren’t that many people there yet, or even news sites. (Shoutout, by the way, to the few #romanceclass people I do interact with on Bsky!)

So, I take photos and because I don’t want to put them on IG, I make plans to create elaborate blog posts with context for them, e.g, where I was, what I was doing, what I thought, blah blah. Which honestly reminded me of the kind of thing that was nice about social media: the fact that you didn’t have to think about all those things. You could just share a photo without context, quickly, And I have this impression that blogging shouldn’t be like that, should be more thought out. 

But the nice things about blogs? You can make it whatever the hell you want, especially because it’s yours. (Also, I’m not after monetization and stuff, which is a factor to doing what you want.) 

And this extended navel-gazing is just to tell you…look at these pretty books I got!

From the Philippine Book Festival (#PBF2025): 

There Was An Old Woman Who Lived in a Book by Jomike Tejido;
Kiss Away the Goodbye by H. Bentham;
Different Countries by Clarissa V. Militante;
The Greatest Fight of Sunny Granada and Other Stories by Kenneth Yu;
Head by the Ceiling by Anthony Shieh

Was hoping to get a couple more books from Avenida, but they were already out of stock.

From Hay-on-Wye in Wales (top 2 rows) and Waterstones Piccadilly (bottom row):

Black Phone and Other Stories by Joe Hill;
The Snow Spider Trilogy by Jenny Nimmo;
A Study in Drowning by Ava Reid;
The Diary of a Nobody by George and Weedon Grossmith (a Folio edition!);
As It Was and World Without End by Helen Thomas;
The Man Who Watched The Trains Go By by George Simenon;
The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera;
Eurotrash by Christian Kracht;
Yours from the Tower by Sally Nicholls (which is a beautiful sprayed edge book)

I was at Hay-on-Wye, the town of books in Wales and in London for a total of 11 days, so the fact that I only went home with 9 books means I was very, very controlled.

The spines!

There are lovely backstories to many of these books, though, as I like to think of book shopping as an adventure itself. So will get around to telling those stories eventually.

In the meantime, here are a couple of photos from Richard Booth's Bookshop at Hay-on-Wye!


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Soledad's Sister by Jose Dalisay, Jr.

-
Image
Soledad's Sister  by Jose "Butch" Dalisay is the first Philippine novel to be shortlisted for the distinguished Man Asian Literary Prize  in 2007. I remember reading about the Man Asian at that time and finding out about Dalisay's shortlisted novel. And I recall thinking, "Well, that sounds about right." After all, Butch Dalisay is one of the country's premier writers.This much is evident when you read Soledad's Sister . Way back in college, I was fortunate enough to have Butch Dalisay as one of my professors. The class was an undergrad course on Survey of American Literature, and I remember every single story and poem we took up to this day. I also remember him reading to us one of his essays during class. He had his Mac open on his desk and was reading his essay from the screen. Back then, I was thinking, "This should be boring. But it isn't." And I realized it wasn't boring because I was entranced by his words. The summary...
Read more

Filipino authors with internationally-published books

-
Image
Some of the books from Filipino authors published by intl. publishers. Clockwise from top left: Age of Blight by Kristine Ong Muslim; The Bone Witch by Rin Chupeco; The Courageous Princess Vol. 1 by Rod Espinosa; Learning To Fall by Mina Esguerra, Smaller And Smaller Circles by F.H. Batacan; The Last Time I'll Write About You by Dawn Lanuza. It seems an exciting time for Filipino authors. A Filipina YA author was at the Brooklyn Book Festival and other festivals, some Filipino authors just wrapped up panels during the Fil-Am International Book Festival in San Francisco , a few other Fil-Am authors are coming out with new books from a major publisher in the next few months ( literary fiction , young adult , and middle grade ), and another classic author was recently published by Penguin Classics. Not to mention that a few Filipino authors have been pitching at #dvpit and have already found agents . And I'm pretty sure I'm barely scratching the surface her...
Read more

The El Bimbo Variations by Adam David

-
Image
When reading a poetry collection, one of the last things you expect to do is laugh out loud. But, if you were to read Adam David's new edition of The El Bimbo Variations , that is exactly what you'd be doing. My advice: try not to read it in public, unless you're okay with people looking at you weird because your shoulders are suddenly shaking in laughter or you have a snap-happy grin on your face. I first read The El Bimbo Variations back when it was still in pdf format. Four years ago, the poet Adam David gave a talk to one of our high school junior classes during a yearly activity where we expose students to real-life writers. In preparation, he sent us  a copy of his El Bimbo Variations , and told me that we could distribute it to the students so that they'd know his work. We photocopied them for the classes assigned to Adam and, on the day of the talk, I went in and listened to his session where he got riled up about big publishers and their limited repertoire...
Read more