On the Calculation of Volume I, Solvej Balle
The perfect day to read this would be on a rainy autumnal day. November 18, to be exact. I read it on a sweltering first of May. But I love how it drew me in calmly and made the temperature bearable. To weave reflective prose with only a tinge of disquieting tension is Solvej Balle’s gift. It is a book for when we read not for the plot but for the language.
Something tells me that this is more than just a story about a specific day that recurs 366 times in the novel but rather a meditation on time and the distance it creates between our relationships with others and with our present and former selves.
If after tonight I’ll wake up to another first of May, I’d still read this… or perhaps, volume two.
There’s No Turning Back, Alba de Céspedes
“Love, like art. It’s there or it’s not.”
Alba is cruel. She tells the truth. This book left the dock before I was able to fully say goodbye. I would have wanted to be with some characters a little bit longer to find out how their lives would continue to unfold. But Alba, after drawing you intimately into both the communal and the separate lives of each girl, shakes off attempts at clinginess and writes with a knife: That is how life is, she seems to say. It moves. It keeps going. And there is no turning back.
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, Ocean Vuong
“It was beauty, I learned, that we risked ourselves for.”
There are times when you don’t know why you put off purchasing a particular book despite it being recommended by a friend, despite seeing a lot of people post about it, despite seeing it in almost every bookstore. You’ll only know the answer when, years later, you receive a copy as pasalubong from the Book Street in Ho Chi Minh. Books always hold an added value when falling into your hands this way.
But oh, how this book breaks your heart in different ways! Maybe because of how love is shown in its many degrees along with the pain that comes with each kind of love.
“I’m broken in two… In two, it was the only thought I could keep, sitting in my seat, how losing a person could make more of us, the living, makes us two… Into — yes, that’s more like it. Now I’m broken into.”
Something tells me, however, that this is not peak Ocean Vuong yet, that the magnum opus is yet to come: Could it be The Emperor of Gladness? We’ll soon find out.
Concepcion, Albert Samaha
“History ripples into perpetuity. Decisions, actions, mistakes, and triumphs of one day shape the days that follow, setting irreversible paths into the future…”
In Concepcion, Philippine history ceases to be a structured chronology but a fluid tale that merges with the timeline of world history, personal history, and geopolitics. Read full entry here.
Erik Satie Three Piece Suite, Ian Penman
Gymnopedies… Gnossienes… “If you only know these few exquisite morsels, you only know a tiny fraction of Satie…” This book showed me how little I knew of Satie and how I underestimated the role that this composer played in the trajectory of art and music history.
“Dip a toe into the Satie rock pool and you soon discover a cove, a coastline, an entire horizon.” Ian Penman dips his toes, and luckily, takes willing readers along for the ride! Written in an ingenious form in three parts, I am tempted to assert that there couldn’t be a more fitting way of writing about one such as Satie.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain
Because how can we make the most of a retelling if we don’t know, or have forgotten, what was originally told in the first place? Yes, you guessed right. This reader is prepping for Percival Everett’s James!
How I managed to find time to read in May was a miracle. What a hurricane, the past few weeks! It threw all sorts of things at me, but it threw some of the best things my way, too: My very own grand piano, the younger brother’s short but sweet homecoming, friends who travelled far just to visit — reading friends to boot! And while books may have appeared to have taken a backseat, they’ve only enriched these moments and this entire experience called living.
“That’s why I began to write… Because the paper remembers. And there may be healing in sentences.” Dear Solvej Balle, that’s why we read.
The Book-Butterfly 