Without dreams or imagination, science is impoverished. It is lifeless.
I love how this delightful read, without being impossibly cerebral, mixes simple life and math lessons while reminding the reader of the non-Western heritage of mathematics.
Interestingly, it reflects a time in the Islamic Golden Age when wise men believed religion and science could coexist.
Also, the illustrations are wonderful!
Arabian Nights with a better moral aim and math-themed? Count me in! (Sorry, I just had to. Haha!)
Ruta Sepetys cover designs are not the kind that would catch my attention in a bookstore. In fact, Ruta Sepetys was unknown to me until Fully Booked and Penguin Random House gifted our book club with six of her books.
Although the books will continue to be passed around Ex Libris members, I picked I Must Betray You for the reason that Romania does not often turn up in the books that come our way.
And what a surprise when reading this made me realize how much the Philippines and Romania have in common! At times I could easily interchange Ceaușescu with Marcos in my head and the story would still make sense:
Wealth didn’t accurately describe it. Excess, extravagance, greed, and gluttony, those words were more accurate. Countless estates across the country, hundreds of millions salted away in foreign bank accounts…
“I can’t bear it,” said Liliana. “We’ve been suffering for years, existing off scrawny chicken feet, with just one forty-watt light bulb per home. And they’ve been living like kings. Gourmet food, foreign goods, antiques, jewelry, fur coats, hundreds of pairs of shoes.”
As Sepetys writes for a younger audience, I can only wish I had more books like this growing up! I would have alternated them between the Nancy Drews and the Hardy Boys, and it would have deepened a younger person’s understanding of self and the world.
They steal our power by making us believe we don’t have any… But words and creative phrases — they have power, Cristian. Explore this power in your mind.
Binondo prides itself on being the oldest Chinatown in the world. Established in 1594, it is, as one would expect, steeped in history and stories.
Today’s walking tour (Jose Rizal’s Binondo) with THE Ambeth R. Ocampo and Ivan Man Dy, explores what is not commonly known to Filipinos: The Manila in Jose Rizal’s novels takes place outside of Intramuros and is instead set in Binondo and neighboring San Nicolas, Santa Cruz, and Quiapo.
From following Ibarra’s footsteps in the opening of Noli Me Tángere to the the site of the opium den where Kapitan Tiago ended up, we walked through Binondo’s tiny alleys (one aptly named Hormiga after the Spanish word for ant), past Antonio Luna’s birth house and the many storied nooks of Binondo.
For the book signing scheduled at the end of the tour, after a filling lunch at Ilang-Ilang Restaurant, I brought my copy of Cabinet of Curiosities — Mr. Ocampo’s latest book, which I read last month and which he signed today after confirming if my first name is really Miracle. It was an apt choice because this tour seemed to be a continuation of the book as we witnessed nonverbal proofs of Philippine culture and heritage. History, in the strictest sense, relies on written sources, but Mr. Ocampo highlights this need to trace the past in other ways when the document trail encounters a dead end. “History not only comes from archives and libraries; sometimes it comes from paintings, music and other forms of art,” and oftentimes, cabinets of curiosities. Binondo is a giant cabinet of manifold curiosities.
“History is not always what we want or how we imagine it,” is another line from Cabinet of Curiosities that rings true.Not only did I discover lesser-known aspects of Philippine history today, but I also learned about our National Hero’s more human side. What continues to leave a pinch in my heart, however, was Mr. Ocampo’s remark on what would happen if Rizal were alive today. Believing that he would continue to voice out what most of us would not like to hear, “He is someone that we would shoot all over again.”
I’m extremely grateful to Gabi for thinking of me when a slot for the tour became available. Being both early birds, we arrived at the Binondo Church an hour before everyone else and we took shade under four hundred years of history. Built in 1596, the original structure has gone through typhoons, the great earthquake of 1863, and the destruction of the Second World War. Its three-phase reconstruction was completed in 1984 and it remains the centerpiece of Binondo. And there we were, two history fangirls, whispering about politics, religion, and life, hushed by the weight of our national history and our personal histories, learning that these difficult topics should not necessarily be avoided, but be discussed with utmost respect and humility. Moreover, it was meaningful to share this experience with someone who understands that one of the best things about learning our history is that you meet pieces of your heritage, you meet pieces of yourself.
What a ride! How Kerangal builds suspense that makes the entire book feel like one long, deep, drawn breath that you would not want to interrupt!
The majesty of Russia’s landscape appears through the window of the trans-Siberian train, but it is surprisingly subtle in portraying a vulnerable Russia.
Yes, it is a serendipitous train ride shared by a man and a woman, but don’t expect the deep conversations of Celine and Jesse from Before Sunrise. Aliocha and Hélène practically pantomime their way throughout the journey; he being Russian and she being French.
Yes, it concerns an army conscript who wants out, but don’t expect Francis Mirković of Mathias Enard’s Zone. Aliocha won’t sing to you a threnody of the crimes of nations. He is only concerned about his escape.
I love the aforementioned titles and I feel relieved that Eastbound did not turn out like any of those. They are only alike for the reason that they are each in a league of their own.
On the surface, it stays true to its promise of being an adventure story, but I see it as an intelligent political novel. Not because the characters discuss politics, they don’t. But can there be a more political story than two people pursuing their individual freedoms?
On one of my trips to Indonesia, I dressed up as a bride in traditional wedding clothes for fun. Had I known about colonial Indonesia’s custom of “practice wives”, it probably would have cast a cloud on my idea of fun a decade ago.
A “practice wife” is a village girl who is married to a ceremonial kris (not a proper noun but the noun) proxying for a nobleman she has yet to meet. She will bear him a child she won’t be allowed to keep, she is to be divorced when he finds another practice wife, or when the nobleman officially marries a woman of his own social status. She is kept in the dark of what will befall her, and she will only understand her role as a practice wife as her life in the domain of the nobility unfolds.
For the entirety of the novel, Toer’s eponymous character is curiously referred to as “the girl”. It was only after I read the epilogue when I learned that the story is based on Toer’s grandmother, a practice wife whose name he never knew.
This novel is a profound peek into the complex Javanese caste system made more complicated by the presence of the Dutch colonial government at the turn of the 20th century.
I observed how the same people of the girl’s social station were complicit in perpetuating their own subjugation by accepting the status quo despite the girl’s mounting questions about inequality; how the nobleman provided the girl with everything she needed; and how he did not treat her cruelly, that is until he divorced her and she insisted on her rights as a mother.
As Toer is renowned for his strong views against colonial abuse and dictatorships, I could not help but see the nobleman, known as the “Bendoro”, and the villagers as allegories for dictatorships we tolerate and are complicit in — just because we think we benefit from them, or just because we are not the ones who are directly sacrificed at its altar.
In some editions, the full title is The Sun King: Louis XIV at Versailles. This is more apt because the book is not an exhaustive portrait of Louis XIV but a well-researched record of the workings of the French Court in Versailles, its intrigues and its scandals, and the intimate lives of its prominent figures.
It is rather detailed in a sense, and to a fault, that if not for Nancy Mitford’s entertaining wit, it would have bored me to read about the rivalries of the mistresses and the parts that read like royal gossip.
But I would still recommend reading this book on a weekend when one would prefer something that does not weigh on the emotions. Of course, a better recommendation would be to bring this book on a trip to Versailles. At a hundred and sixty nine pages, it is a none too heavy starting point for one interested in reading about the birth of the ostentation that led to the Revolution two kings and less than a century later; and yet another reminder of how quickly and drastically the tides of history turn.
…because I would immediately pick up a novel of/from Iran without any prodding.
It took me almost halfway through to get into the book’s rhythm, however: Apart from being surprised that it is not set in contemporary Iran but pre-revolutionary Iran (and horrified to think that things have only gotten worse for women in post-revolution Iran), one main character irked me, and I kept weighing it up against another Iranian work of magic realism that remains unsurpassed in my books. But as I read on and the threads of the story came together, I came to appreciate Women Without Men for its own merits. It is, after all, about women overcoming hardships and breaking free from the conventions that Iranian society imposes on them. It is therefore no surprise that it was banned shortly after its publication.
The lives of Iranian women and the experiences depicted here are not isolated cases, and they bring to mind a line from Universal Compassion, an essay by Natalia Ginzburg: “We have come to recognize that no event, public or private, can be considered or judged in isolation, for the more deeply we probe the more we find infinitely ramifying events that preceded it…” Thence the problems that the characters face are not merely personal. In an ideal world, these are issues that an entire civilization must address.
The book naturally ushered me to the screen adaptation. The director, who wrote the preface for this edition, worked closely with the author and the collaboration seems to have led to a beautiful fleshing out of ideas. Being a fan of Iranian cinema — because no one does cinema like the Iranians! — I am tempted to say that I like the film more than the book. But for an exceptional experience, allow me to suggest a book-movie-pairing instead; because what was ambiguous and abstract in the novel became poetry in the film; and if not for the book, there would be no film.
“The telephone isn’t made for saying important things that need time and space.”
Happiness, as Such (August 2024)
The merit of Natalia Ginzburg’s epistolary novels — whether they are wholly or partially comprised of an exchange of letters between characters — is their being time capsules of an age when corresponding through letters was the principal means of remote communication. It was in letters that banalities could be reported as much as consequential information, and people were allowed space to be frank. Letters tracked the growth, or stagnation, of their writers. Self-expression flowed freely where individual and shared stories unfolded. Ginzburg seems to have maximized on the medium and preserved it, foreknowing a time, our time, when letter writing would be at the point of near extinction.
“Happiness… It is like water; one only realizes it when it has run away.”
Voices in the Evening (January 2024)
Of sad loves and sad lives. For me to truly appreciate Ginzburg’s work and write something of worth about it is, perhaps, to regard it as a whole after I’ve read everything she’s ever written.
For now, this book only evokes a specific memory:
He and I had just listened to the whiskey-soaked voice of Tom Waits. We said we did not want to end up like the people sung by the raspy voice.
The fate of the fiddler is fatal… always giving yourself to others… always trying to make others whole…
…and if he was asked where it (music) came from, he answered that it probably came from grief, grieving over something, or just grief, and in the music grief could lighten and become soaring and the soaring could become happiness and joy, so therefore music was needed, therefore he had to play…
It was the violin on the cover that decided my first Jon Fosse. I wouldn’t have known where to start, and I have been eager to start ever since he received the Nobel for prose which “gives voice to the unsayable”.
And so it was the violin, or rather the fiddle. And because of the fiddle, I sit here a day after reading the last line. A day, because for an entire day I could not write anything about it. I could only feel and think of it and nurse this prolonged pinch in my heart. And maybe that’s how it’s supposed to be, and I should drop my attempt to say something clever about it.
Because I sit here and feel drenched by the weight of simplicity. Because in his words there is a childlike simplicity that humbles what we think we know about expressing life and about storytelling. Because Jon Fosse is a poet, and his poetry and prose bleed into each other, leaving no borders between them.
It’s almost absurd to expect happy novels from Afghanistan. I knew I had sorrow coming when I selected this as my third book of 2024. I could have shelved it for later, but how could I resist this blue from Archipelago Books, translated from the Farsi to boot? How often can one find literature translated from the Farsi?
So it was on me when it started to break my heart and made me recoil from the brutality.
Unlike most books about Afghanistan, the characters are not caught in the crossfire of any of the wars that have ravaged Afghanistan for decades.It is set in a picturesque mountain village in the early 2000s when life was simple and young girls were allowed to dream about education and love, and villagers were content with raising livestock and planting their own wheat, beans, and melons. That is until the Talibs discovered the beauty of their nine-year-olds and found their land ideal for the cultivation of poppy to be sold to the “infidels”. Tali Girls is based on true events.
The first person narration shifts from one character to another, effectively and intimately thrusting the reader into a world plucked from its innocence.
I would be reluctant to recommend this for the anguish that it contains, but I am more inclined to listen to one of this novel’s wisest characters:
“‘Remember,’ he says, sitting in his library, ‘the more your eyes open to the world, the more you are likely to suffer. But better that you learn and understand… Read, Kowsar, read to understand the world around you.”
The Book-Butterfly 