Personal Library # 24: Son’s Room, Part 5

Still with the book tabulation project.  Still counting books, still in son’s room (which she’s filling with her own books, spreading like an amoeba)

The top shelf of a bookcase in son’s room has 45 books.

799 + 45 = 844 Total Books Counted So Far

Books on this self include:  Living to Tell the Tale, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez;  Tilting the Continent:  Southeast Asian American Writing, edited by Shirley Geok-lin Lim and Cheng Lok Chua;  The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, by John Boyne;  The Evolution of a Sigh, by R. Zamora Linmark;  Filipino Woman Writing:  Home and Exile in the Autobiographical Narratives of Ten Writers, edited by Cristina Pantoja Hidalgo (Chapter 1:  Writing and Re-writing the Self, begins: “In this country, autobiographical writing is not quite recognized as a literary genre.”);  When the Elephants Dance, by Tess Uriza Holthe;  Language for a New Century:  Contemporary Poetry From the Middle East, Asia, and Beyond, edited by Tina Chang, Nathalie Handal and Ravi Shankar (Browsing through, self really likes a piece by John Yau, In the Fourth Year of the Plague, that begins “Oil began dripping from the black and violet clouds bunched together near the top of the back stairs.” And, as well, a beautiful poem on Baguio:  “Hill Station,” by Luisa A. Igloria);  The Woman Warrior, by Maxine Hong Kingston;  Black Robe, by Brian Moore;  Homebody/ Kabul, a play by Tony Kushner.

Stay tuned, dear blog readers.  Stay tuned.

Personal Library 7

Bella whines, whines, whines.  Self ignores her.  There’s a swimming pool of piss on the kitchen floor.  Self spread newspapers over it, a trick The Man showed her when she got back from her most recent trip to Bacolod.  If you cover the piss with newspapers, the newspapers absorb the piss, and in a few hours, the floor is dry and back to the previous state.  Most important, the pee smell disappears.  What a genius The Man is!

Self is perched on the couch, and the TV is tuned to Syfy.  Self loves the Syfy channel, even when it’s being crappy.  Right now, the show is “Stonehenge:  Apocalypse.”  Self thinks that’s a pretty fab title and wishes she had thought of it first.  Well, she does have a story called “Stonehenge/Pacifica” but that one’s not science fiction.  If dear blog readers want to know the kind of story that is, kindly proceed to Wigleaf, January 2012.

Yesterday, The Man and self had this strange conversation:

The Man:  What shall I do for my lunch tomorrow?

Self:  You don’t have to worry about that until Monday.

The Man:  But I have office tomorrow.

Self:  You mean they asked you to come in ON A SATURDAY?

The Man:  Tomorrow’s Friday.

Self:  No, today‘s Friday.

The Man:  No, today’s Thursday.

And it turned out The Man was absolutely right.  OMG!   Self better stop taking those pain pills the dentist prescribed for her!  Onward!

Self was going to stop tabulating her books, but then she got an exciting comment from Kyi.  So she will proceed.

Self is on shelf # 2 in a bookcase in the dining room:  52 books

52 + 211 = 263 total # of books tabulated so far

This shelf includes:  Poeta en San Francisco, by Barbara Jane Reyes (signed by the author);  Fiction by Filipinos in America, edited by Cecilia Brainard;  the Peterson Field Guide to Western Birds; Delivered, by Sarah Gambito; Aguinaldo’s Breakfast:  And More Looking Back Essays, by Ambeth R. Ocampo; Field of Mirrors:  An Anthology of Philippine American Writers, edited by Edwin A. Lozada;  Malgudi Days, by R. K. Narayan (the Penguin Classics Edition); Blacker Than a Thousand Midnights, by Susan Straight;  The History of San Isidro (Nueva Ecija) Told and Retold, by Leonila C. Gonzales (San Isidro is where The Man’s Lolo was from); Thousand Pieces of Gold, by Ruthanne Lum McCunn;  The Collected Stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer;  Her Wild American Self, by M. Evelina Galang; The Peppered Moth, by Margaret Drabble; Smilla’s Sense of Snow, by Peter Hoeg (the first, the progenitor, the one that started the long run of Scandinavian-Mystery-Writers-in-Translation:  Hoeg’s translator was Tina Nunnally);  Old Glory:  An American Voyage, by Jonathan Raban (a classic, the one that started self’s many decades-long fascination with travel books)

Stay tuned, dear blog readers.  Stay tuned.

Wall Street Journal Weekend Edition (Saturday/Sunday, Dec. 15 & 16, 2012)

Today self is peaceful and content.  Which means she is happy.

She managed to get a mani/pedi from Belle Nail Spa on Broadway.  She left before fingernails and toenails were quite dry, but she wanted to collect The Man and make it to the first screening of “Silver Linings Playbook” (Only $7 per ticket).  Despite all the hectic running around, she somehow managed to avoid getting the slightest nick on any of her fingers or toes.  Quelle magnifique!

Second, she really liked that movie.  Even though it only got a wan endorsement from Eric B. Snider.  And even though, OK, she’ll concede this point:  the odds are pretty slim that two people that good-looking, both emotionally damaged, live in that close proximity to each other . . .  OK!  So what!  Self knows this movie is totally in the land of make-believe!  She’d rather see Jennifer Lawrence end up with someone who looks like Bradley Cooper than with someone who looks like, like —  John C. Reilly?  Even though chances are the right man for her would look just like John C. Reilly? (Not to knock John C. Reilly —  self thinks he is a WONDERFUL WONDERFUL actor.  But given the choice between John C. Reilly and Bradley Cooper —  oh, NEVAH MIND!)

Jennifer Lawrence is a wonder.  This is the first movie where self actually believed in a Bradley Cooper character.  But, back to Jennifer Lawrence:  Self cried at the end!  She actually cried!  Something she hasn’t done in a movie theater since watching Eric Bana and Rachel McAdams in treacly The Time Traveler’s Wife!

And then, when she and The Man got home from the movie, she got to peruse the Wall Street Journal weekend edition and —  Holy Cow!  —  it’s the one where they list Books of the Year!

But it’s not Books of the Year that self wants to post about —  Ixnay!  (BTW, it took self almost an hour to speed-read the entire books section.  But more about that later)

They interviewed all kinds of celebrities to get their lists of favorite books of 2012.  Self found a few choices enlightening.  Also, she was surprised at WHOSE choices she liked the most.  And here’s the list of people whose book choices self found the most intriguing:

• Judd Apatow, Director and creator of the phenomenon that is Seth Rogen:  He said he wanted to read Henry Wiencek’s book about Thomas Jefferson and his slaves, Master of the Mountains.  He also recommended Dave Eggers’s latest novel, Hologram for the King.
• Craig Brown, British, writer of satirical columns:  He recommended Robert Caro’s latest installment of his life of Lyndon Johnson, The Passage of Power (like almost every other person interviewed by the Wall Street Journal), and Mimi Alford’s tale of having sex with JFK when she was a White House intern, Once Upon a Secret.
• Susan Cain, author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking:  She recommended a first novel, The Song of Achilles, by Madeline Miller, and Jack Kennedy:  Elusive Hero, by Chris Matthews.
• Joseph Epstein, essayist and cultural commentator:  He recommended a novel, Only Yesterday, by S. Y. Agnon, and Once Upon a Secret (also recommended by Craig Brown, see above)
• Gary Giddins, author of Bing Crosby: A Pocketful of Dreams: He recommended Robert Caro’s book on LBJ, The Passage of Power; John Keats, a biography of the Romantic poet by Nicholas Roe; several classic westerns:  Saint Johnson and Goodbye to the Past, both by W. R. Burnett; a novel about telephone linemen, Slim, by William Wister Haines; That Winter, by Merle Miller, a “pre-Kerouacian group portrait of the disaffected generation of the postwar 1940s”; Ian McEwan’s Sweet Tooth and The Innocent; and Louise Erdrich’s The Round House.
• Robert Harris, bestselling novelist:  He recommended Soldaten, a book by Sonke Neitzel and Harald Welzer, “based on secretly recorded tapes of German prisoners of war held in Allied camps during World War II.”
• Thomas Keller, chef:  He recommended Killing Kennedy, by Bill O’Reilley and Martin Dugard, which “is not about a conspiracy.  It’s about how a presidential assassination can be at once a tragedy and a human-interest story.”
• Ted Leonsis, Founder and Chairman of Monumental Sports & Entertainment:  He recommended The End of Illness, by David Agus, “a smart look at how to extend a life of vigor by playing offense with life.”
• Joe Maddon, Manager of the Tampa Bay Rays:  He recommended Ken Follett’s Pillars of the Earth (Self has been meaning to get to these books, for quite a while), and the first two books of Follett’s Century trilogy, Fall of Giants and Winter of the World.
• Hilary Mantel, Booker Prize-winning novelist:  She recommended The Yellow Birds, a first novel by Kevin Powers, an Iraq war veteran; and The Lifeboat, a first novel by Charlotte Rogan, “set in the summer of 1914” and centering “on a shipwreck in the Atlantic.”
• Karl Marlantes, author of What It Is Like to Go to War:  He recommended The Snake Eaters, by Owen West; Blackhorse Riders, by Philip Keith; Hotels, Hospitals, and Jails, by Anthony Swofford; and Westmoreland, by Lewis Sorley.
• Sylvia Nasar, author of Grand Pursuit:  The Story of Economic Genius:  She recommended Gulag, by Anne Applebaum, a book which “takes readers back to the events that triggered the half-century long standoff between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R.”
• Arthur Phillips, author of The Tragedy of Arthur:  He recommended The Vanishers, by Heidi Julavits, The Sugar Frosted Nutsack, by Mark Leyner, Gone Girl, by Gillian Flynn, and A Partial History of Lost Causes, by Jennifer DuBois.
• Marcus Samuelsson, chef:  He recommended This Is How You Lose Her, by Junot Diaz, and The Click Moment, by Frans Johansson.
• Colm Toibin, novelist:  He recommended Edmund Spenser:  A Life, by Andrew Hadfield and Robert Caro’s The Passage of Power.
• Jim Webb, senator from Virginia:  He recommended The Last Lion, by Paul Reid (the last installment of a trilogy begun by William Manchester, on the life of Winston Churchill), and Stilwell and the American Experience in China, by Barbara W. Tuchman.

Self is pretty sure she can get to these books in about five years.

Self was going to make a count of the men who recommended women writers, but, alas, today self is very — and she does mean VERY — short of time!  She thinks Jim Webb did.  Yup, he most definitely did.  And Arthur Phillips.  Yes, most definitely Arthur Phillips.  In fact, the good man recommended three books by women writers.  Good for you, Arthur! And Gary Giddins recommended Louise Erdrich.

(She won’t single out women who recommended women writers because — hey, just because!  Let’s get on with it, or self will never get free of this post!)

Stay tuned, dear blog readers.  Stay tuned.

Books, Books, A Wealth of Books!

Books self wants to read after digging into her pile of stuff and finding:  a)  The New York Times Book Review of Sept. 23, 2012 and b) The New Yorker of Oct. 8, 2012:

• This Is How You Lose Her, Junot Diaz’s new novel
• Mary Poppins, by P. L. Travers
• Dancing to the Precipice by Caroline Moorehead
• Bring Up the Bodies, by Hilary Mantel
• Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
• A Strange Eventful History by Michael Holroyd
• War and Peace (all three volumes)
• Battleborn, a first story collection by Claire Vaye Watkins
• Double Indemnity by James. M. Cain
• The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain
• Mildred Pierce by James M. Cain
• Subversives, a history of J. Edgar Hoover’s snooping chicanery, by Seth Rosenfeld
• The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving, the third novel of Jonathan Evison
• The Thing About Thugs, a novel about a “young man from an Indian village,” a spinner of tall tales in 19th century London, by Tabish Khair

Stay tuned, dear blog readers.  Stay tuned.

For Kyi: More of “The Seeker of Buried Treasure”

Self decided to post a little more of self’s Yamashita/ World War II story, “The Seeker of Buried Treasure.”  (She repeats a few paragraphs from the last post.  Then adds two more paragraphs)

Tell me why Yamashita was happy when he received the orders to go to Luzon.  Go!  Go!  He was ordered.  Go lead the Imperial Army, salvage its honor, do not retreat, confront that marauding bear, the United States.  Wipe from memory the soldiers singing White Christmas.  How those people love Ol’ Blue Eyes.  The Packard is the only car the rich will drive.  And the chauffeurs wear white gloves even in the heat.

Ladies’ Home Journal and Life and Redbook are the most popular magazines.  American hot dog can be had on a stick or on a bun.  You choose.

The young ladies wear bobby socks and pleated balloon skirts.  Some women are dark but they are still beautiful.  Flashing eyebrows, thin like scars, wrists thin as stalks of bamboo.

And their laughter trills among the plants, winds around your brain, Yamashita.  You receive MacArthur’s letter saying Desist, there shall be no rape or pillage.  Or, MacArthur writes, I will make you pay.  Make no mistake, I am coming.

Yamashita, did your mind go blank like a sheet of new paper?

Stay tuned, dear blog readers.  Stay tuned.

“The Seeker of Buried Treasure”

This story’s been out for several months now, but self loves it so much, it was one of her “experiments” and she thinks she pulled it off.  Originally, she called it “For the Seeker of Buried Treasure,” but decided it was stronger without the word “For.”

There IS graphic violence in this story —  how could there not be?  It’s about the destruction of Manila, at the end of World War II.

Here’s an excerpt:

The Seeker of Buried Treasure

Tell me where I can find it, the treasure that the Tiger of Malaya stole, the gold Buddha, the bullion.

You remember.

The necklaces of diamonds and jades, ripped from the necks of women.  One had a scar so deep it looked as though a new red mouth had opened there, at the base of her throat.

Tell me why Yamashita was happy when he received the orders to go to Luzon.  Go!  Go!  He was ordered.  Go lead the Imperial Army, salvage its honor, do not retreat, confront that marauding bear, the United States.  Wipe from memory the soldiers singing Yankee Doodle, the Filipinos singing White Christmas.  How those people love Ol’ Blue Eyes.  The Packard is the only car the rich will drive.  And the chauffeurs wear white gloves even in the heat.

Ladies’ Home Journal and Life and Redbook are the most popular magazines.  American hot dog can be had on a stick or on a bun.  You choose.

The young ladies wear bobby socks and pleated balloon skirts.  Some women are dark but they are still beautiful.  Flashing eyebrows, thin like scars, wrists thin as stalks of bamboo.

Self should mention that the woman who took this piece on behalf of Our Own Voice was Aileen Ibardaloza-Cassinetto, who is an editor of the magazine.  So great!  Self was proud to be published by them.  (She just really wishes they had reviewed her collections, Ginseng and Other Tales From Manila, Mayor of the Roses, and The Lost Language.  Or Going Home to a Landscape:  Writings by Filipinas, which Calyx Press published. Never mind!  It’s an excellent site to discover Filipino and Filipino American writers)

Stay tuned, dear blog readers.  Stay tuned.

#amreading: The Known World, by Edward P. Jones

I’m currently reading a mesmerizing first novel by Edward P. Jones, The Known World.

I’m nearing the mid-section of the book, and am at a passage where a “patroller” named Skiffington, one of those semi-official enforcers who tracked down errant slaves and returned them to their masters, is returning from a mission. Tired, he sits down to rest under a peach tree. To refresh his mind, he takes out his Bible. Flipping through the pages he comes across a story in Genesis: the story of Lot and how two angels disguised as strangers came to visit him.

Jones writes:

“The men in the town came to the house, wanting Lot to send out the strangers so that they could use them as they would use women. Lot sought to protect the strangers and offered the men his virgin daughters instead. It was one of the more disturbing passages in the Bible for Skiffington and he was tempted to pass on, to find his way to Psalms and Revelation or to Matthew, but he knew that Lot and the daughters and the angels posing as strangers were all part of God’s plan. The next morning, the angels laid waste to the town. Skiffington looked up and followed a male cardinal as it flew from left to right and settled in one of the peach trees, a red spot on shimmering green. The female, dull brown, followed, alighting on a branch just above the male’s head. Skiffington’s daughter had always felt such pity for Lot’s wife and what happened to her

(in case you forget, dear blog reader, she was turned into a pillar of salt);

but Skiffington had no strong opinion either way about what happened to her.”