Reading – The Book-Butterfly

George Eliot: Middlemarch

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early 19th century English rural community and notice the same players in society, espy similar outlooks that should be outdated by now but which still exist, and observe national political ferment trickling into daily lives to color preconceptions about other people, makes one marvel at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.

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.

A Highly Recommended April

If books are the calendars we keep for the days that elapse, it has to be recorded on this reading journal that I finished reading Project Hail Mary on the day Artemis II was launched. “Amaze, amaze, amaze!”

To expand my literary horizon and push myself to read beyond the familiar zone of my TBR stack or outside the often commercially driven influence of bookstagram, April was devoted to books recommended by friends (2 of whom are not on IG, and 2 of whom do not post their reading exploits on their IG feed).

04/01/2026 Project Hail Mary (recommended by Christian who had me at, “The alien’s language is music!”)

And that’s why, even though most of my friends know that this is not my usual genre, I found it quite entertaining! It was a “light” and welcome break from my usual fare. (You can tell the world’s in a pretty bad state when an apocalyptic bestseller can be labelled “light”.)

Andy Weir’s casual prose exudes a deep but playful enchantment for science, and chapter after chapter reveals an author having fun while taking the reader for a ride! And who wouldn’t enjoy those puns and Beatles references?

I have yet to watch the movie, but I hope they included Ryland Grace and Eva Stratt’s conversation circa page 429 when Stratt discloses that she was a history major. The dialogue that ensues suggests that, despite the exceeding heights of technology and engineering that man achieves, it is still history that puts science into perspective.

04/05/2026 The Bridge of San Luis Rey (recommended by Yuri) imparts a line that carries our whole argument against AI in literature.

Click Here to read full entry.

04/08/2026 Unwritten Women (recommended by Gabi)

“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

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.

Click here to read full entry.

04/16/2026 The Persian Boy (recommended by Gabi and Anna)

Mary Renault 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.

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04/21/2026 Breasts and Eggs (recommended by Vera)

This book leaves one, especially a woman, with so much to chew on. It is probably the most existentialist contemporary novel I have encountered so far. A revelatory work of which the main subject is still too personal for me to discuss on social media.

But it is also revelatory in a sense that it sees through the cracks of Japanese society, which, as Filipino tourists in Japan, we tend to envy and glorify, but it is truly through reading that we get a glimpse beyond the surface.

04/25/2026 As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow (recommended by Anna who was right when she said that the gut punch in this book is everything).

When Assad fled Syria in 2024, my initial reaction was, “What? Just like that?!”

I corrected myself immediately. No, not “just like that,” rather, finally. The long-drawn-out revolution had finally concluded.

And it’s interesting how characters in this book correct each other if what has been happening in Syria is referred to as a war. “It’s not a war, Salama. It’s a revolution.”

This was published two years before the Assad regime fell, but it informs an outsider’s view of how the collapse wasn’t “just like that” — and in simple language. Simple enough for an early teen, but straightforward enough for the reader to make the daily struggle, the fear, the trauma, and the humanity tangible. Although it isn’t without heartwarming moments, too.

I thought I knew what was coming, and there was a point when I underestimated this book after I encountered several clichéd lines. But somewhere in these pages, was a gut punch like no other book I’ve read recently has delivered (hint: it’s not exactly at the moment when someone dies) — and that’s coming from someone who has a steady literary diet of stories from places of conflict.

No, it’s definitely not War and Peace. But these books, they carry their own childlike wisdom, too, and add to our understanding of Syria, less from a geopolitical perspective but more from a human one.

04/28/2026 The Museum of Modern Love (recommended by Anna) is highly original and uniquely structured with a title that is clearly a play on Love and Art, cunningly asking, what’s the point of art if we don’t realize their interchangeability?

“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

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April was a special reading month, thanks to books and friends. How dreary life would be without you!

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.

“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!

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.

December in Books

“Sonia’s heart was a Hopper painting.” The title is blunt about Sonia and Sunny’s loneliness, but it’s this Hopper line that makes one grasp how lonely: A profound loneliness that has something to do with a vulnerable and fluctuating selfhood, an abstract loneliness that is tied to urban and modern life, an existential loneliness craving real connection that cannot be quenched by mere companionship. Lonesomeness was Edward Hopper’s leitmotif, and Kiran Desai weaves this theme into an unfolding raga… Read full entry here.

The Woman from Tantoura was my pick for #ReadPalestine week. Radwa Ashour’s best work, if you ask me. Started 2025 with Edward Said and ended it with something a bit less intellectually demanding, albeit informative and genuinely affecting. Why #ReadPalestine? Until we know enough to be able to call a spade a spade.

Brightly Shining by was my hope for a more festive read, and my first Dua Lipa recommendation. Surprisingly, all three books touch on immigrant life, and two have Filipino minor characters. But this one broke my heart.

It makes me extra grateful to have been able to squeeze in Tethered on the last day of 2025. Not because it helped me achieve my goal of reading at least one Filipino author a month, but primarily because this book is a gift. Grace is a multifaceted word, but even when I contemplate its various meanings, this book still embodies all of its definitions. Read full entry here.

That’s my December in books. The 2025 reading wrap-up will have to wait. It’s a wonder I was able to read at all with all the season’s bustle while caring for a loved one who was ill for most of the month, leaving me to (wo)man the fort. But we said goodbye to 2025 on a healthier and happier note. Gave and received bookish presents. Attended the last Ex Libris session of the year and felt revitalized. BFF paid us an impromptu visit: We attended a Rizal Day literary event and said goodbye to the old year / welcomed the new year reading quietly… and it was precious.

Wishing all my reading friends a happy new reading year!

Tracy Anne Ong: Tethered

Grace is a multifaceted word, but even when I contemplate its various meanings, this book still embodies all of its definitions.

The parcel containing Tethered arrived many months ago as I was on my way out to the airport, and I gladly welcomed an additional book in my carry-on luggage.

Dear Mira,

I hope this book transports you to where you need to be.

Tracy

An apt dedication for a book-butterfly. I turned to the sky and the clouds framed by the plane window, and smiled at the perceptive mind behind the message. A page turn revealed a Rabindranath Tagore quote about a violin string that could only be free to sing once bound to the violin. Even the epigraph felt personal, and I paused to ponder its deeper meaning.

Soon enough, the plane landed in the capital. The urban bustle was not conducive to the stillness and attention that this book required, seeing that the initial passages already felt like the beginnings of an intimate conversation with a friend. Thus, it was tucked away and saved for the reading environment it deserved.

Months passed, dozens of other books were read. But just as I was starting to see the light at the end of a mentally and physically exhausting three-week tunnel when a loved one fell ill, this book seemed to beckon. And sure enough, it transported me to a place where I needed to be — a place of faith and gratitude, and I cannot think of a better place to be. What a gift, this book.

Tethered is grace exemplified, the same way Tracy is grace personified. I’ve only exchanged a few messages with her through Blithe Books, but even electronic messages cannot dilute the light in her soul that shines through her words. Imagine an entire book of it!

This is described as an account of a remarkable journey of recovery from a brainstem stroke that attacked all bodily functions and left only the mind to operate; but more than that, it is a beautiful note of gratitude for life, and a celebration of the mind and the spirit. The author’s optimism is apparent, but as one reads on, one realizes that it is not optimism but faith.

For the believer, faith is the thing that both tethers and liberates. Only when the strings are bound to a violin can they be free, for the first time, to sing.

Kiran Desai: The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny

Lonesomeness was Edward Hopper’s leitmotif, and Kiran Desai weaves this theme into an unfolding raga: at times beautiful, at times disorienting, at times cruel and repulsive, at times disquieting, at times capriciously meandering.

I have no qualms with the length. Although considered massive in proportion to the contemporary reader’s short attention span, I imagine the typeface and the font size would make Tolstoy say, “Hold my vodka.” But the book often offers clues to Desai’s literary and artistic inspirations and subtly discloses why the author found its length necessary: “How many millions of observations and moments it had taken to compose this book!” Sonia thought about Anna Karenina.

It is not, however, “an unmitigated joy to read” as Khaled Hosseini claims in a blurb. Reading about Sonia’s toxic relationship with Ilan, the narcissistic artist, was nauseating to the point of causing an unpleasant physical reaction that made me want to give up one-third through the book. Although aghast, it was accompanied by the awe of how much the author fathoms an artist’s relationship with darkness. There is no question about this being a work of art, but I will admit that I hoped to love and enjoy this more than I did.

While Sonia and Sunny failed to endear me to them, I was drawn to Sonia’s mother, who kept company with books and understood that there are worse things than loneliness, and Sunny’s father, who desired to break free from the cycle of corruption in the family for the sake of his son, believing that to be honorable is to be free. While I was concerned that portrayals of men beyond the main characters would perpetuate stereotypes of Indian men, it was Desai’s keen eye for psychological and cultural detail, and her vast insight into the plight of the immigrant, that made me continue reading.

To paraphrase a memorable line from the novel: I knew when I saw this book that the story would not be simple. And simple it is not.

June in Books

Reading The Leopard is like viewing a portrait of a bygone monarch in a gallery. They mean nothing to you but notice how the brush strokes are skillfully done as it immortalizes a world that no longer exists; you acknowledge that it is important as a record… and then walk away and move on to the next portrait. But you retrace your steps, give it a tender, wistful gaze, and your eyes rest on Bendico, the Prince’s faithful Great Dane; the one detail that truly manages to tug at your emotions and whose fate emphasizes the vicissitudes of life and history.

Background for Love allowed me to lean back momentarily, put my feet up, and whisked me toward the sunlight despite the bittersweet awareness that darkness would soon descend on the sunlit Europe of this story. That darkness came for A Bookshop in Berlin, a true account of a bookseller’s incredible escape from Nazi-occupied Europe that eerily mirrors the current state of the world where prejudice and ignorance defy truth and multitudes are easily swayed by propaganda, but where hope also shines through in heroic acts of kindness.

Lawrence Ypil’s poetry served as punctuation marks between these novels. And Alba de Céspedes? The powerhouse that is Alba de Céspedes? She demands a separate post.

So that was June. It did not leave time or headspace for making concrete reading plans. While it started with that epitome of a retelling which is James, whenever there was a need to retreat in the solace of books, I’d instinctively pick up a volume from a stack of Pushkin Press Classics that hadn’t been assigned places on the shelf yet.

In the month wherein my heaviest schedule clamored to be felt and the risk of a WWIII threatened to make everything inconsequential, it somehow made sense to work harder, to live more, and to continue reading. Wait, is it really July already?

Portraits of May

Portraits: Of a young Rebecca Solnit finding, and fending for, herself; of the nature of dictatorships and revolutions by Ryszard Kapuściński; of Eastern Turkey under the veil of its dramatic landscapes by Zülfü Livaneli; of Paris and the poet through the vantage point of Henri Cole; of the unfortunate visage of Skylark by Dezső Kosztoláni. These are some of the extraordinary faces I met on this month of May.

It is not nearly celebrated enough, says Solnit: “The sheer pleasure of meeting new voices and ideas and possibilities, having the world become more coherent in some subtle or enormous way, extending or filling in your map of the universe…this beauty in finding pattern and meaning,” this thing called Reading.

Even so, here we are. The readers (ironically, the ones least concerned about faces), the ones who, by turning each page, celebrate best these encounters, these awakenings, these flights.

“At least I had books. Closed, a book is a rectangle, thin as a letter or thick and solid like a box or a brick. Open, it is two arcs of paper that, seen from the top or bottom when the book is wide open, look like the wide V of birds in flight.” — Rebecca Solnit, *Recollections of My Nonexistence*

“I’ve always believed that poetry exists in part to reveal the soul’s capacity for compassion, sacrifice, and endurance. For some of us, this satisfies a basic human need, like air or water, but a poem must also have music, imagery, and form. Because there is a kind of nakedness or authenticity in poetry that is associated with truth, on many days I haven’t got the guts for it, and I fail. But when I succeed, there is nothing in life — except love — that equally verifies my existence.” — Henri Cole, *Orphic Paris*

Flowers from a Book

Augustus to a young Julia, on Cleopatra:

“…that was Cleopatra, she was Queen of a great country. She was an enemy to Rome; but she was a brave woman, and she loved her country as much as any Roman might love his; she gave her life so that she might not have to look upon its defeat.”

This passage is an example of the compassion with which John Williams treats his characters.

My copy of Augustus being secondhand, it was a lovely surprise to find this pressed beauty tucked between the pages featuring Cleopatra.

Link to main entry on Augustus