Literature – The Book-Butterfly

May Days, May Days!

Rain has come to portend the end of summer in my part of the world, and the skies are mirroring our dispiriting political climate.

Cheering myself up by looking back at some of this month’s colorful days and satisfying literary adventures — it was, after all, a month when Mei Mei the Bunny hopped into Harana Music Studio’s library! So here they are, in the words of John Ruskin, “To scatter perfumes in the path of June.”

The Artist, Lucy Steeds 05/10/2026

When I read with my toes digging into white sand, piña colada within reach until the sunset turned into “a riot of color,” as Lucy Steeds would write, I was happy to momentarily leave behind war-torn milieus, ambiguous plots, dystopias, or sentences that needed multiple re-readings to be deciphered.

Part mystery, part lure to Provence, mainly art lesson on light and color, part romance, part statement on the discrimination of women in art and women’s contribution to the art world, part anti-war declaration, and a reflection on our Odysseys and our Ithacas, The Artist was the perfect beach read for me a week ago.

If you’re wondering what qualifies as a “beach read,” it’s pretty much the same thing as a “beach body”; it’s the one that you carry with you to the beach… this one simply had the bonus of being informative and entertaining while being, at least by the end of the book, gentle on the mind and heart.

For the Sun After Long Nights | Defiance

The two books I read in succession for the first week of May.

Defiance is the first book I’ve read that was written and published after the fall of the Assad regime. Striking not only for its incredibly human and candid account, but also for the fact that it is written by someone whose father led Bassel al-Assad’s security team, and whose American boyfriend’s public execution at the hands of the Islamic State the world witnessed.

For the Sun After Long Nights is the first book I’ve read about Iran that veers away from the 1979 Iranian Revolution and focuses on the Woman, Life, Freedom movement (ignited by the death of Mahsa Amini, who was detained and beaten for not wearing her hijab according to the imposed religious dress code, and who died in state custody in 2022). In this collaboration between two Iranian journalists, chapters alternate between the points of view of Fatemeh Jamalpour, who joined and covered the protests in Iran, and Nilo Tabrizy, who reported from overseas on the violence and injustices committed by the Iranian government.

The books are remarkable works of journalism written by young women, but this is not the only similarity they share. Read full entry here.

She Who Remains, Rene Karabash 05/13/2026

In the lands of the Kanun, the Kanun is law. The Kanun is above all else. The Kanun is not fictional; the Kanun is ancient, and it is real.

And perhaps this book was written not as a historical record of a disappearing traditional customary law, but as a poetic missive to tell us that the whole concept of the Kanun is not limited to the Balkans, that the Kanun still exists in more subtle ways in modern societies, that women still have to “man up” to survive and afford certain rights, that women are still often collateral damage to men’s laws.

The Correspondent, Virginia Evans 05/15/2026

Can one simply read this epistolary novel and not be compelled to write to a friend afterwards?

On the other hand, it does not escape me that the message it carries is not exactly about letter-writing, but about communication. We often pride ourselves on our voice and how we brandish our opinions whenever we can, as Sybil does, but the story asks us to examine the injustice we do by shirking from communication at crucial moments. This book essentially asks us to ponder the legacy of communication that we leave behind in this life.

“I believe one ought to be precious with communication. Remember: Words, especially those written, are immortal .”

Middlemarch, George Eliot 05/28/2026

A more mature reader will often return to the classics with a reformed insight that the classics are not necessarily meant to be venerated but to be re-examined. Such a reader would trudge through old-fashioned language and time-consuming lengths to defy modern man’s preference for instant gratification and to seek resonance in the historical, intellectual, and emotional bulk. More often than not, the willing seeker finds — and finds more than they set out to find.

To read Middlemarch in a 21st century small town in the Philippines, and be transported to an early 19th century English rural community and notice the same players in society, espy similar outlooks that should be outdated by now but which still exist, and observe national political ferment trickling into daily lives to color preconceptions about other people, makes one marvel at the timelessness of George Eliot’s, or Mary Ann Evans’s, masterpiece. Read full entry here.

Canticles for Dark Lovers, Wilfrido D. Nolledo 05/31/2026

Art, I once told someone, is like someone ripping their heart off their chest and saying, “Behold, my heart.”

It is terrifying. The artist suffers in the process. It is terrifying because the artist knows that some will look away and find the act too violent. It is terrifying because the artist never knows beforehand if someone will ever get it. But no matter how terrifying it is, an artist rips their heart out anyway because they cannot help it. Nolledo could not help it. Behold, his heart.

George Eliot: Middlemarch

The cracked spine of an old paperback that I’ve given away testifies to the struggle I had with this classic over two decades ago. Virginia Woolf thankfully absolves the young reader by deeming the novel “magnificent… which with all its imperfections is one of the few English novels written for grown-up people.”

Indeed, a younger reader would, perhaps, only register who marries whom and mistake that for the plot and find it wanting. Middlemarch is, to this older reader, a rich study in, and of, character: “Character is not cut in marble—it is not something solid and unalterable. It is something living and changing, and may become diseased as our bodies do.”

It is also a look into the inherent goodness in people: “I must observe that goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy…”

And while it is consistent about how character and goodness can be bettered, it serves as an admonition of how it can be lost.

Middlemarch, above all, exhibits that it is character and goodness that is at stake in daily living, and it is what should be constantly guarded and cultivated. Most of the characters in the novel fail miserably as humans, but as Lydgate says in earnest, “What I want, Rosy, is to do worthy the writing,” or in Ladislaw’s religion, “To love what is good and beautiful when I see it.”

Literature has been accused of being the most solitary of arts, and a thick tome like this can be rather demanding in 21st century fast-paced living. Grateful to my friend, Vera, for buddy-reading this with me and making 837 pages fun, enriching, less solitary, and totally worth it. As Dorothea puts it, “What do we live for if not to make life less difficult to each other?” True in reading, true in life.

Defiance | For the Sun After Long Nights

The two books I read in succession for the first week of May.

For the Sun After Long Nights is the first book I’ve read about Iran that veers away from the 1979 Revolution and focuses on the Woman, Life, Freedom movement (ignited by the death of Mahsa Amini, who was detained and beaten for not wearing her hijab according to the imposed religious dress code, and who died in state custody in 2022). In this collaboration between two Iranian journalists, chapters alternate between the points of view of Fatemeh Jamalpour, who joined and covered the protests in Iran, and Nilo Tabrizy, who reported from overseas on the violence and injustices committed by the Iranian government.

The books are remarkable works of journalism written by young women, but this is not the only similarity they share:

Both shed light on the ethnic minorities of their respective countries, and reveal how these communities on the fringes of society are prone to abuse from the government because they do not get media exposure. Both books also emphasize how economic sanctions seldom achieve their goals and only affect those who do not have foreign bank accounts;

Both countries have had uprisings that were hijacked by Islamists, teaching their people tough lessons on revolutions that not everyone participating share the same idea of a nation’s future, but on the other hand, through a movement like Woman, Life, Freedom — the largest and most widespread uprising in Iran since the 1979 Revolution — learn that it is possible for everyone to come together for the same cause to shake up a regime and give it reason to be fearful of its demise.

The women in both books undergo rude awakenings to how oppression, especially towards women, trickles down from governments to communities and family units.

Most of all, the accounts are written because their writers believe in the power of documentation despite brutal consequences, and cling to the hope that documenting a government’s injustices is the first step towards ending it.

This made me ponder on our own country. This is what our journalists did during the Martial Law era when they defied censorship. But what did we do with those records? How easily we dismissed them during the last presidential election! Have we learned our lesson yet?

Heather Rose: The Museum of Modern Love

“Art did not stop, that’s what Marina had said. Art did not get to five o’clock and say, ‘That’s it, the day is done, go think about TV or making dinner.’ It wasn’t like that. It was there all the time: when you were chopping vegetables, talking with a friend, reading a newspaper, listening to music, having a party. It was always there offering suggestions, wanting you to go write or draw, sing or play. Wanting you to imagine big things, to connect with an audience, to use energy, to find energy. It wasn’t ready when you were, it didn’t come when you wanted it or leave when you were done. It took its time.” — Heather Rose, The Museum of Modern Love

For most of us who are not au courant with the Modern Art scene, Marina Abramović probably entered our consciousness with the same video clip.

That video in which we were given a background of her twelve-year relationship with fellow artist, Ulay, and how they exhibited the most dramatic break-up in 1988 by standing 5,955 kilometers apart, each from one end of the Great Wall of China, and walking to each other — for ninety days, exposed to wind, rain, and sun, even through disintegrating parts of the Wall in Mongolia’s Gobi desert — for one last embrace…

…Only for Ulay to show up unannounced at her 2010 MoMA retrospective where The Artist is Present entailed Abramović gazing into the eyes of each stranger who sat in front of her while sharing a moment of silent connection. We held our collective breath when she opened her eyes and found herself face to face with the former lover she had not seen for twenty-two years, we wept quietly as she did, and all we could do was collect ourselves when Ulay stood and walked away when his turn was over, replaced by the next stranger, leaving us with a host of questions whilst being deeply affected by the emotionally-charged encounter.

Given the title, I expected this book to focus on that renowned relationship. Heather Rose is original and evades predictability, however. It is, instead, a uniquely structured novel built around imagined characters who attend as audience or participate and sit still with Abramović throughout the 75-day run of The Artist is Present in New York.

The book begins with a wise and omniscient narrator who retreats when bringing the characters to the forefront, but immediately becomes captivating whenever it speaks beautifully about art. With another clever creative decision, Heather Rose leaves us guessing about the enigmatic narrator’s identity until the end.

One of the main characters, Arky Levin, is a pianist and film composer, married to Lydia Fiorentino, an architect. (Ironically, this reading pianist found herself identifying with the self-sufficient woman in the architect while having little sympathy for the indecisive pianist who seems to be more committed to his work than their relationship.) We are also introduced to recently widowed Jane, an art teacher; Healayas Breen, art critic and journalist; and Brittika, a graduate student writing a thesis on Abramović — all realistic and flawed people who, while struggling with individual grief or internal conflict, find themselves drawn to Abramović’s art and roused by the deep introspection induced by the artistic experience.

It is ultimately a novel about art and connection for which the author found a fresh and imaginative way of expressing. The title is clearly a play on Love and Art, cunningly asking, what’s the point of art if we don’t realize their interchangeability?

Mary Renault: The Persian Boy

From approaching this as someone who has held the belief that Alexander was not so great, to weeping and mourning Alexander’s death by the end of the novel, speaks volumes of Mary Renault’s prowess.

One can tell that this reading choice was not borne out of admiration for a legendary military commander, who, despite his formidable feats, part of this reader still sees as a nepo-baby that merely inherited his father’s experienced army, who had the Greek historians on his side to deify him, and who seized a Persia that had already conquered the world.

Skipping the first and going straight to the second volume of Renault’s Alexander Trilogy seemed imperative because, once again, Persia is besieged by the West. And when the future is uncertain, we search for clues in the past.

The Persian Boy is narrated through the eyes of Bagoas, a real character who can be found in Persian history and in the writings of Plutarch. Plucked from his home and his childhood, he is sold and is made a eunuch against his will, and ends up as a courtier for Darius III, the king who lost the Achaemenid Empire. The empire was not the only thing that was surrendered to the Macedons after the Battle of Gaugamela. Bagoas, too.

Earning Alexander’s trust, Bagoas becomes his companion, a witness to the conquests and to the life that humanizes the godhead. We are introduced to an Alexander who is well-read, and who gently tells Bagoas, “It’s a great loss to you, not to read.” He was the student of Aristotle, after all.

Most interestingly, we learn of a king who sought out the writings of Herodotus and Xenophon to learn more about Cyrus the Great (“Kyros” in the novel), first of the Achamenids, who raised an empire with clemency and respect, a dominion that was by far the greatest the world had ever seen, and whom Alexander greatly admired and wished to emulate.

Of Cyrus, Alexander says, “He did not make subject peoples; he made a greater empire. He chose men for what each man was in himself, not from hearsay and old wives’ tales… Well, I don’t suppose he found it hard to persuade the conquered. To persuade the victors, that’s the thing.” To which Bagoas wondered, “He wants to follow Cyrus even in this.”

Returning to Persepolis after the Indian campaign, Bagoas muses, “I should have known these places, the royal heartland of my country. It was Alexander who knew them.”

Then came the lines uttered by Alexander that made my heart beat fast: “Macedon was my father’s country. This is mine… They told me so often I’m Persianised.”

It isn’t necessarily Bagoas to whom the title refers as The Persian Boy!

How ingenious, Mary Renault! What a brilliant writer! She does not so much bother with dates as open one’s perception of the classical world beyond textbook language and to a nuanced observation of the collision between a highly civilized East and an ambitious West. She does not so much bombard the reader with history as open one’s heart to the depth and texture of feeling, of longing, of belonging. Her musical prose is the novel’s epic cinematic soundtrack. Renault wins one over, heart and mind, the same way only the greatest conquerors knew that winning hearts and minds is the ultimate siegecraft.

Thornton Wilder: The Bridge of San Luis Rey

04/05/2026 | Concerned about the rise of books adulterated by AI, our book club’s aim for our April session was to present a book that could not have been written by AI.

First published 99 years ago, and awarded the Pulitzer the following year, it makes one certain that The Bridge of San Luis Rey could not have been written by AI. Let people say what they want to say about classics, but the rise of AI has only increased the value of literary works written prior to its advent.

My pick was rather redundant, for it was already chosen by another Ex Libris member for our February session when we were asked to present a book that talked of love in any form. That same recommendation led me to read it, and reading it made me realize how it was the most clever pick for the theme of Love. Despite such a slim volume, it unexpectedly contains and expresses the Four Loves (Storge, the love we have for family; Philia, the love between friends based on shared values and interests; Eros, romantic love; Agape, the altruistic and self-sacrificing kind of love) with an understated brilliance.

How the story is framed is impressive. The chapters end with the bridge collapsing, but it is a different character’s backstory that’s introduced in each one. How Wilder ties these different characters together conveys how everything is connected, and how our actions create ripple effects that are broader than we think.

And yet, the story or the publishing date is not the reason why I chose this. It is because this book contains a line that, for me, hits the bullseye as to why AI should have no place in literature. In a long sentence from the early part of the novel, Thornton Wilder writes, “…the whole purport of literature, which is the notation of the heart.”

And here lies our whole argument against AI in literature: Why entrust it to something that does not have a heart?

Unwritten Women

Unwritten Women is something I intended to read for Women’s Month, but shipping took a while. That’s how this celebration of the Filipina Woman has also become my celebration of National Literature Month.

But there is never a wrong time to read this compilation of essays about eight fascinating Filipina women, written mainly by Filipina women.

The essay on Gregoria de Jesus gently exhorts the reader for esteeming the Lakambini ng Katipunan as merely a “muse” of the Katipunan (“a disservice, a diminution of its meaning… Lakambini is a female lakan, a lord paramount over other lords, a chief among chiefs”) and tells us the story of why she is deserving of the full meaning of the word.

The second chapter, featuring Teodora Alonso, Aurora Quezon, and Aurora Aquino, narrates how these three women were so much more than their appellation as mother of a national hero, wife of the first president of the Commonwealth of the Philippines, and mother to a murdered son.

Another section highlights Rosa Sevilla Alvero, who was a vanguard of women’s education in the country, and who, as early as 1916, led a movement for Filipino women to exercise the right to vote; Maria Y. Orosa, chemist, who literally fed our starving and war-torn nation, and whose contribution to food technology we continue to benefit from; Carmen Rosales, singer and actress turned guerrilla fighter who fought against the Japanese when circumstances demanded it.

The final piece shines a spotlight on Letty Jimenez-Magsanoc whose courage as a journalist helped overthrow a dictatorship.

At last, a book that looks beyond the men of Philippine history and, “Beyond the official portraits and the hagiographic accounts,” as Zea Asia writes. At last, a book that celebrates the women on whose shoulders this nation stands.

“It is in the everyday experiences of ordinary women that we find true history—the texture of our nation as lived, felt, and dreamed.” – Zea Asis

exlibrisphilippines.com has an official review that beautifully expresses everything I wish to say about this book. Head over to our site to read it and to know more about the book.

As for parents and students of Harana Music Studio, a copy of Unwritten Women is available on the small shelf of Philippine essays that I curated for you to read while waiting. Happy National Literature Month!

Reading and Marching On

A reader’s response to uncertainty, war, misogyny, grief, or happiness, is to read, to carry on with purpose, and to hold those dearest to them closer. March did not lack in any of these, and so this reader read, worked, and spent more time with those dearest to her.

Restoration, Ave Barrera 03/04/2026

Misogyny has roots in the foundations of society, it escapes through the cracks of our country’s great houses, and cultivated inside rooms where women are not supposed to enter.

Misogyny is perpetuated in careless conversation and by those who laugh in response to what some presidents, law makers, and important men consider funny or normal. It is also perpetuated by women who allow it.

“We all know what happens in stories to women who open doors that men have forbidden them from opening,” Jasmina says, in Restoration.

If the forbidden room in this novel feels like a metaphor for the Epstein Files… it is. Because such rooms have always existed.

And if there’s one thing I know about Ave Barrera, it’s that she doesn’t hand the story on a silver platter. Harnessing her knowledge of art and architecture, she asks you to confront rooms, hunt for symbols, open locked doors, and lead you to the dark labyrinths of the male gaze.

The Afghans, Asne Seierstad 03/08/2026

Here’s a journalist at the peak of her prowess, one who doesn’t draw attention to herself but brings her subjects at the forefront while encapsulating one of the world’s most complex histories in 428 pages; from the monarchy in the 1920s, to its courtship with the Soviets, to the abolishing of its monarchy, to the numerous transitions of power in the 70s, to the Soviet withdrawal, to the civil war, to the rise of the Taliban, the arrival of Bin Laden, to defining the difference between al-Qaeda, the mujahideen, and the Taliban, through Afghanistan’s unfortunate role as chessboard under different US presidents, to the Taliban takeover in 2021.

In a rare insider view across Afghanistan’s social strata, Seierstad takes us right to the heart of a Taliban commander’s home, where women in the family are active participants in jihad, making explosives and suicide vests, and serving the fighters. She also acquaints us with Ariana, a law student whose studies were severed after the Taliban takeover, but who devotes her time home-schooling children in her community. In a place where girls and women are not supposed to desire anything, especially education, this book introduces us to Jamila, a hero for women’s education who persevered through disability, war, and terror, and who is as remarkable as Malala in continuing the fight for girls’ rights to education.

After carefully studying the Quran, Jamila realized that she could use it as a tool for women’s emancipation, so that no one could dismiss it as a Western idea. Nowhere in the Quran does it forbid women from participating in society or getting an education: “When it said ‘Read!’, it was to all. When it said ‘Write!’, it was to all. To men and women. This was a revelation.” How beautiful that their holy book opens with the word “Iqra!” (Read!)

That is a command I can rally behind.

House of Day, House of Night, Olga Tokarczuk 03/12/2026

Olga’s Empusium would have been a more fitting novel to read this Women’s Month, given that it is a work that rightly identifies misogyny as an illness. But reading House of Day, House of Night, written way earlier than her initial works that were translated into English, is like discovering the fount from which all of the other books that we’ve already enjoyed flow.

The mushrooms in Empusium? There’s more here! Fragments of Flights and Yente’s out-of-body experience in Books of Jacob? Present! Here we’ll find the signature literary mischief accompanied by that unique eeriness that lingers in the borderlands of dreams and reality, of history and fiction, borderlands geographical and metaphysical.

Not my favorite Tokarczuk, but a vital piece in her oeuvre.

Regarding the Pain of Others, Susan Sontag 03/16/2026

“Is there an antidote to the perennial seductiveness of war? And is this a question a woman is more likely to pose than a man? (Probably yes.)”

Fourth consecutive year of reading my favorite essayist during Women’s Month, and once again, she turns my perspective on its head while tackling the most relevant topics. At times when the first impulse is to disagree with her, I end up conceding that the view I hold of the world and of politics is such a naive one.

Regarding the Pain of Others is known for being a contemplation on contemporary man’s response to, and relationship with, images of war and violence, and how being a witness to the sufferings of others has become a “quintessential modern experience.”

And unless we learn from this constant barrage of other people’s sufferings through various media, we are really just voyeurs.

The Nights are Quiet in Tehran, Shida Bazyar 03/20/2026 (Nowruz)

The irony of reading this at a time when the nights are NOT quiet in Tehran does not escape me.

For someone who has an ample Iranian section in her library, I can attest that this one does not fall among those novels about the Revolution that bend toward the sentimental and the cliché.

This book does not offer a rewarding story, but it lends deeper insight and understanding. Do not let the lack of a satisfying ending distract you from its clever device of having a different family member narrate one chapter, each set ten years apart. It is a brilliant tool that subtly reveals how the years and the distance alter the way the Iranian diaspora reflects on the Revolution and how every generation carries hope differently, how differently they choose their battles, and how differently they hold on to memory. If there is one thing the characters agree with, it is this: The real Revolution is not over.

Free Iran (from anyone trying to delegitimize the Iranian people’s struggle, from within or from without)!

In Diamond Square, Mercè Rodoreda 03/24/2026

“And between gulps of coffee he told me it was better to read about history in books than write it with bullets.”

February Between and Beyond Book Covers

This was February:

Getting “wuthered” by Jacob Elordi, a shared experience with Ex Libris friends and some of the country’s celebrity book people in a special screening of Wuthering Heights;

reading, drinking, eating, and book-buying my way through Makati;

Vigan, whose “heart attack food” often comes up in Memoirs of an Art Forger. The book’s premise, intriguing; the opening passages, captivating; the sociocriticism, on point; the bits on art and architecture, fascinating; yet some elements did not seem to work for me. But kudos on being the only work of fiction I’ve read that mentions the Basi Revolt of 1807, an uprising led by Ilocano peasants against the Spanish monopoly on basi (sugarcane wine) in Ilocos Norte. Visiting Vigan also acquainted me with Leona Florentino, “Mother of Philippine Women’s Literature”. Now there’s a story; and what a family tree!

Also, Hamnet, at last. A book I stayed away from because I knew it would be painful. But my ego wouldn’t let me watch the movie without having read it. But now that I’ve read it, I’m asking how I’ll survive the movie. We, readers, are a crazy lot, no?

And then, Baguio, a mountain in the north where they put strawberries in everything, and where I read Krasznahorkai’s A Mountain to the North. This one came with a note saying: “Dear Mira, I realize in retrospect that I loved this book the way I love park benches. It is an ode to tranquility, to beauty, and to meaning. With the rush of the years, I am more and more convinced that one only needs these three. To me they are the intertwining gusts from the same cool breeze that commands a pause to take in.” Who needs my review after such an utterly beautiful musing?

Afterwards, home: Home is… where the bookmail is sent, and where The Piano Cemetery was waiting. If not for the Saramago blurb, I would have ignored this. I’ve found that it’s something I would read on a trip to Lisbon, a book keenly aware of the city’s soundscape.

But when asked about what I read this month that talked of love in any form, I answered with Amina Cain’s A Horse at Night. It’s about the love for reading, writing, and hence, the love for freedom. It affirms that reading is where we are most unrestrained. It is where we are most free.

January in Books

“No books!” I exclaimed.“How do you contrive to live here without them? …take my books away, and I should be desperate!”

(This line is found toward the end of Wuthering Heights, and for once, I agreed with something that a character from the novel had said.)

A little late in posting, but this was January — a beautiful reading month ripe for the picking — in books:

Frankenstein, of which I wrote at length in a separate post, was a wonderful way to ignite yet another year of reading, followed by the literary experience that is Wuthering Heights, which convinced me that any screen adaptation will forever be unnecessary. Sufficient unto the novel is the intensity, the complexity, and the viscerality thereof.

A Strange Room, given to me as a Christmas present, strangely seems to converse with Emily Brontë. “Nothing fuels revenge as grief does,” Damon Galgut says, as if writing of Heathcliff. To which Brontë replies, “Proud people breed sad sorrows for themselves.”

“Without love nothing has value, nothing can be made to matter very much.” Maybe Brontë, maybe Galgut. Guess?

From Galgut’s South Africa to North Africa. People ask how I pick my travel destinations. It usually starts with a section of this library that’s mostly arranged by political geography. And it seems like a Tunisian section is born: A Calamity of Noble Houses, an intriguing peek into the historical and social mosaic of Tunis; The Sisters, a 656-page glimpse of the diaspora. The books decide for me.

Atom Araullo’s A View from the Ground to drive me home. The one that hits closest to home, the one that dusts the sugarcoating off of being Filipino. A book that not only deserves to be put on the altar of Filipino essays, but to be taken, deeply, to heart.

Speaking of home, a January highlight was an invitation to Balay Tawhay in my hometown. In that house by the sea, delightful conversations and original artworks by Arturo Luz, BenCab, Abdulmari Imao, Borlongan, et al, serve as appetizers for lovingly prepared feasts.

And they have books. Lots of books! Because really, how does one contrive to live without them?