makinilya atbp.

makinilya (pronounced as ma • ki • nil • ya) is the tagalog word for typewriter. this account occasionally tries to give spoiler-free reviews about stuff. 0/10 account would not recommend.

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“If at first appearance a person seems dull, then look harder, look into him.”

— Thomas Harris, Hannibal Rising (Hannibal Lecter #4)

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“The desire for more positive experience is itself a negative experience. And, paradoxically, the acceptance of one’s negative experience is itself a positive experience.”

— Mark Manson, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life

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“Imagination is what makes us human. It allows us to figure out which version of ourselves fits best.”

— Peter Maldonado, American Vandal S2

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BBC’s Bodyguard Season 1

Original release: 28 August 2018

I’m just going to say right off that I love this show since the moment I laid my eyes on the 17-minute preview that they’ve uploaded on YouTube. That doesn’t stop me, however, from having mixed emotions about certain stuff about the show. As I have implied in my review of Terry Hayes’ I Am Pilgrim, terrorism portrayed on any film, book, or TV series, especially when it concerns POC and/or followers of Islam, is such a grey area for me since I have this belief that it pushes the idea of Islam being bad and therefore would just create more fear. This show stemmed away from the traditional blame on POC and gives an alternative that maybe—just maybe—some ‘suicide bombers’ are actually planted by white men to incite panic. I had so much expectation of this show until, well, the last episode blew me off in the wrong way and I was kind of disappointed that they had to end the first season that way.

I enjoy the show mostly because it highlights how amazing of an actor Richard Madden, who’s playing the lead role of Sergeant David Budd, is. Keeley Hawes also delivered a wonderful perfomance as home secretary Julia Montague. What I like about it the most, I think, is that it has so many twists and turns packed in just six episodes yet they are all so well-timed. The scenes, line deliveries, music, and cliffhangers also don’t seem forced and are actually well-executed.

I have some issues with it, but I can’t deny that it is really good show. If you want a series that’s thrilling, full of twists, and one that makes you want more, I definitely recommend watching this.

📇: 🍊🍊🍊🍊🍊🍊🍊🍊🧡 out of 10 tangerines.

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When Katie Met Cassidy by Camille Perri

Date published: 19 June 2018

Being part of the community and having read some positive articles and reviews online about this novel, I decided to go ahead and give it a shot. I kind of wish that I shouldn’t have. First of all, this novel had a promising start and an even more promising first chapter. However, it was all that it was: a promising first chapter.

The novel starts off with Katie, your typical pretty girl, coming back to work after her boyfriend dumped her for her best friend. She met a hotshot lawyer named Cassidy whom she originally thought was a guy and the story goes on as they embark on a journey that I’m pretty sure falls under the straight-person-wanting-to-hook-up-with-the-same-sex-after-a-break-up category in a lot of fanfiction.

Before I delve right in, I would like to state that I personally dislike anything that centers on romance since I grew out of my ‘popular young-adult fiction’ phase and I would like to clear that my dislike for this one went far beyond the romance (after all, romance is fine as long as it’s well-written). So I thought I’d just list three of the things that I disliked the most about this novel in the best way I can without giving too much:

• The characters were defined more by their physical appearance rather than their personality, which would make sense if the author’s target demographics were late teens to early adults, but in this case the novel’s characters were around 28-33 year olds.

• The author made it hard for me to emphatize with Katie after she expressed that she wanted to ‘vomit’ when she entered a gay bar and after she saw the briefs in Cassidy’s drawer.

• It reads more like a badly written fanfiction with a clichéd plot taken from all kinds of heterosexual young-adult fiction that could easily summarized as Cassidy being the stereotypical the ‘hard-but-soft-inside bad boy’ and Katie was the ‘life-of-the-party and slightly conservative pretty girl who’s ready to go on an adventure’.

Nevertheless, I have to give it to the author that When Katie Met Cassidy is an easy read. She even made sure that Cassidy and Katie’s sexualities in the end are up to the audience’s interpretation. I know the author is a huge supporter of the LGBT+ community herself and I know that she really worked hard for this, however, the novel doesn’t have anything to offer on the table except for sticking to the author’s motto that she wants more LGBT+ novels to have happy endings.

In conclusion, I think we all have our own preferences and this one doesn’t suit mine. I’m happy that a female-slash novel got published by a major publishing company, but I wish the overall storytelling could have been better. Though I definitely recommend giving it a shot if you want a light and easy read female-slash novel with a happy ending.

📇 rating: 🍊🍊🍊🍊🍊 out of 10 tangerines

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“Love is an impediment. A means to an end. Sometimes it is the chains that bind us. Love is mutable and unpredictable, and it makes fools of us and drives us to idiocy. As Ovid says, “love is a thing full of anxious fear”.

— Simon Turney, Caligula (The Damned Emperors #1)

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I Am Pilgrim (Pilgrim, #1) by Terry Hayes

Date published: 18 July 2013

“If you want to be free, all you have to do is let go.”

Overall, I would say that it’s pretty good because it fascinated me right off the bat. Quick summary: the novel delved into the life of Pilgrim, a retired agent from a secret organization who operated under the United States government, and how a case brought him back on the field within just months of retirement. Now, I personally liked how the author used simple, uncomplicated words to describe everything in the novel and how he made sure that the readers would be able to follow what he was talking about, especially when it came down to technical words concerning pilgrim and the other characters’ line of work. However, halfway through the first few chapters, I noticed the simple jabs that the protagonist kept making about Islam and how the plot went from an interesting murder case to a generic ”person wants revenge so time to create something that can lead to the extinction of the human race” trope which is prevalent in crime and thriller genres of books (e.g. Dan Brown's Inferno which was released on the same year as this one). Moreover, the protagonist would occasionally contradict his no-nonsense attitude by saying that he didn’t care about his image but kept on emphasizing that he was one of—if not—the best agents after a few paragraphs.

Although the novel gave a lot of valid points regarding the United States’ shortcomings, I greatly disliked that it portrayed almost the entirety of Islam and the Muslim community in a bad light, even making the main antagonist as a muj (though I understand that it was relevant to the novel's time setting which is a year after the 9/11 attacks, when Muslims were all labeled terrorists in the West). It also ended with a bible quote from the new testament which also disappointed me as it came off as if the novel painted Christianity as good and Islam as bad. All in all, there were several good points, well-written scenes, quotable quotes, and interesting facts in I Am Pilgrim, but the constant mockery of the Arab world, portraying it as a place of seemingly barbaric people who are just out for American blood, made it hard for me to finish the novel. But if you’re looking for a thrilling spy novel, I definitely recommend giving it a shot.

📇 rating:  🍊🍊🍊🍊🍊🍊🍊 out of 10 tangerines