I like books. Hi.

Patrick Limcaco Book Blog + Feelings

[patrickbooks]

Karl: You're leaving the ship? Stoker: Yup, we're off this very day. Karl: But what for? Don't you like it? Stoker: Well, it's circumstances, really, it's not always whether you like something or not that matters. Anyway you're right, I don't like it. You're probably not serious about saying you could become a stoker, but that's precisely how you get to be one.

Franz KK, The Stoker

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Hanya Yanagihara’s ‘A Little Life’ Would Like to Remind You of this Cruel World’s Often Overlooked Bright Spots

One of the many ways in which to write about a novel as acclaimed as Hanya Yanagihara’s big book of sorrows is by measuring your own opinion against everyone else’s, and through the community of nerds in GoodReads, ie, ‘Everyone loves A Little Life, but I don’t! I’m a crazy person!’

 Not everyone loves any single novel, especially polarizing ones such as this. Also, no one will think you’re strange, weird or savage just because you didn’t like A Little Life, an infuriating novel that’s filled with tender, beautiful moments among humans in New York. You didn’t like it because, maybe, for weeks or months, it drove you mad with its excessively detailed torrent of suffering. To be fair, it is pretty exhausting. And a book that tests your patience is often not the kind of book that makes it to your shove-in-people’s-face list, and that is that. You may continue five-starring your Miranda Julys and Ali Smiths or whoever it is that earns your five stars, but it takes so much more than a silly dislike for Jude (and Willem and JB and Malcolm) to be special.

 I’m sorry for falling into this trap of reacting to GoodReads reviews of things, but I can’t help it. A Little Life is one of last year’s big literary events (it was a Man Booker Prize nominee). What other readers thought of it somehow influences how I feel about it due to unwavering fickleness.

 This maddening novel is about four friends, Jude, Willem, JB, and Malcolm, who decided to make New York their home after graduating from their non-New York college. You never quite learn how to dissociate from these boys because you get to know them from when they’re eating each other’s leftovers to when they’re all successful middle-aged men. They all come with wildly different backgrounds and to make sure you know which character is which, the author thoughtfully provides plenty of backstories. You may not want to know how Willem got his good looks and how he came to America to become an award-winning actor of Oscar-bait films, or how JB is secretly in love with Willem, or discover different dimensions to Malcolm’s unremarkable career struggles, but you won’t really have a choice.

 Jude is the ‘center of their gravity’ and his sorrows and occasional triumphs anchor the three’s own capacity for sorrow and joy. He is their glue and his tendency to intentionally lose his viscosity due to unaddressed personal trauma, which ought to have been at least tamped down by the truly kind people in his life, puts everyone on edge. He is a severely broken man who, in his adult life, has found some of the kindest people anyone could ever meet, including rich couple Harold and Julia who adopt him at age 30. Acts of kindness toward him always come with a shadow of ill intent, and sex is a human activity to be avoided at all cost. It’s not that he's not attracted to women or was born gay, it's that the only sexual relations he's allowed to know in his formative years was that of transactional sex with men - rushed, ugly and rough. He was deprived of the chance to uncover a self even though what could have emerged was a wonderful, attractive man who would see all the world’s beauty rather than be weary of its many pleasures. Jude is rarely the life of their fabulous parties.

 The novel inspires certain ways of thinking about human suffering. While reading about Jude’s past life’s sicknesses involving an abusive priest (Brother Luke), a sadistic doctor (Dr. Traylor), and a violent partner (Caleb) – almost all of which are cartoonish in their extremeness – you couldn’t help but think, ‘No one is that evil’, or ‘No one’s life is that shitty’. Or, when he’s at the receiving end of everyone’s virtues, ‘No one is that kind’ or ‘No one can be that fully committed to devoting himself to saving one person’s life! No ooooone!’ It all depends on how you perceive kindness and cruelty, I guess!

The reader is told repeatedly that Jude St. Francis, an intelligent, piano-playing enigma whose late night rituals involve performing surgery on himself, is a man whose life is worth saving at least 50 times. But Jude is such a difficult protagonist to root for. Jude, you have suffered long and hard but you’re a grown ass man! Who now lives a good, good life! are thought bubbles you might find yourself having at certain points while reading the novel. You can't help but think that the author intended for Jude’s past life to be this dark and insane so that no one would dare question the lengths in which he is willing to plumb the depths of his life’s trauma by obsessively cutting his calves or his wrists as if he would someday find the answer revealed by his blood, an epiphany via stigmata. While his sorrows are great, deep and refuse to be forgotten, he has at his disposal several ways in which to purge them. But what do I know? I’ve never been molested by a member of the clergy or forced into a life of prostitution. Lucky me.    

 Reading fiction supposedly improves empathy because reading about other people’s inner lives provides heavy fiction consumers with an insight into the minds of people who go through seemingly outrageous struggles that would be otherworldly in real life. Jude and his peoples present a conundrum to those who read fiction and expect to be a more sympathetic human but end up disinterested or annoyed with Jude’s self-imposed desolation and everyone’s infinite reserves of kindness. Jude tests your patience and as a result, you end up wishing for him to drop dead already and let everyone live a full, happy life. But because the author wants you to feel the full wrath of his suffering, he keeps him alive longer than you probably would have wanted.

 Ultimately, A Little Life is not a novel about how life sucks and about how broken people like Jude are put in our lives for a reason. It is about the amazing, unbelievable capacity of people to root for you and snatch you away from the clutches of evil bitches like Caleb. It is about being trapped in your own Judeness and being burdened with the occasionally attractive option of self-harm. None of these may be true. It may well be about the impossibility of attaining happiness in a sorrow- and ugliness-filled world, but that whatever beauty manages to seep in, we are alive to experience them and make of them what we like even though they’re fleeting and that the default atmosphere of our existence is aloneness, dreariness, harshness, and the rest of our beauty-less days is just a slow march toward the graveyard. It’s probably because of this that this book does come off as despicable to those who like their depressing novels with a bit of consolation for which this novel has none. Hanya doesn’t give the uplift you think you deserve but through Jude’s bleak, bleak life, we are reminded that where there is unrelenting ugliness, there are things that make damaged lives worth living: friendship, love, and kindness.

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I Remember It Well: Damien Rice Live in Bangkok

It didn’t matter that the guy seated in front of me decided to wear the world’s largest fedora hat, perfectly blocking my view of the stage to this once-in-a-lifetime concert. Damien Rice Live in Bangkok was too sublime a moment to feel anything but gratitude and awe. This lovely Irish guy who recorded some of my favorite ugly-cry songs chose (or had a hand in the picking Asian cities to perform) Bangkok to perform live and no amount of fedora hat hugeness could ruin that. 

Someone very observant to the ways of religious rituals remarked that the BCC Hall in Central Plaza, Lad Phrao looked more like a prayer rally space than a concert venue. The observation is fitting because, in fact, we were there to worship at the altar of St. Damien for one night only. As if ordered by Catholic school nuns, everyone stayed firmly in their seats and respectfully waited for explosions. Of course, everyone obeyed. 

The Bangkok flock grasped the solemnity of the event and mostly restrained themselves from capturing entire songs on video such as ‘My Favourite Faded Fantasy’, ‘The Blower’s Daughter’ or ‘Cannonball’, which were the crowd’s favorites. Amazing – only about two guys were seen taking photos or videos, not that a video recording would have ruined anything. 

The set began with ‘Older Chests’, which he performed with just his guitar, and it seemed for a moment like it was going to be two hours of tears and feelings and sad sing-alongs. It wasn’t. He played ‘Cannonball’ next, and, because of a technical issue, the most popular song in his entire discography had to be performed without a mic or an amplifier (the ‘PA’ was malfunctioning). While I liked the small café vibe of it, it felt like a joke was about to be played on us all. I didn’t mind hearing it unplugged as it’s not my favorite, but someone else might have felt cheated. ‘Maybe he’s drunk, depressed, and not in the mood for concert chit-chat,’ were thoughts that raced through my head. As I had no idea how he is as a person apart from ‘Damien Rice, singer of sad songs’, I expected him to perform at least four more songs in the same way – low-key to the point of muteness. Luckily, I was mistaken. 

That minor glitch out of the way, he carried on. ‘9 Crimes’ was next and all my previous suspicions were proven wrong, ie, he’d only perform songs from ‘My Favourite Faded Fantasy’, which would not have been bad at all. What followed was a series of near-perfect performances of hits and unknowns like ‘Insane’, which only one guy from the entire crowd knew. It apparently is a song by his former band ‘Juniper’. He didn’t explain because why would he.

The show was a pure spectacle of what one talented man can do to a venue that doesn’t seem appropriate for ‘intimate’ musical performances. Also, Damien cracked jokes – not so much jokes as shit and masturbation-related metaphors for his creative process. Regarding the former, he explained that singing those very, very sad songs is his way of dealing with all the loneliness. It’s like when we eat food, he said. You take what you can get from one of the world’s greatest inventions, ie, food, and you shit what you don’t want. This explanation blew everyone’s mind, mine most certainly included. 

He also revealed that he is, in fact, not a broken soul, a depressive, and that he is, shock of all shocks, quite a happy man. Of course. The admission was almost cause for a mini-heart attack, but that he isn’t a depressive was made evident earlier on when he would engage with the enraptured crowd who were shouting songs from O to My Favourite Faded Fantasy for him to sing to which he would happily oblige and make a jokey remark or two. On certain songs, he pre-recorded his vocals as well as his solos, looped them and put us in a haze. I’ve never seen anything like it so I was amazed. 

He suspects, rightfully, that there might be depressives in his crowd. I was tempted to shout ‘MEEEEE!’ but that would not have been very truthful and I would hate to have been acknowledged by Damien on a false premise. He even poked fun at some of his angriest songs such as ‘Rootless Tree’ whose chorus is indeed one of the angriest (So ‘fuck youuu, fuck youuuu and all we’ve been through) I ever heard. What a comforting thing it was to have he himself acknowledge the ridiculousness of ‘Rootless Tree’, great though that song is (one of my favorites in ‘9’). 

Like the late great Whitney Houston, Damien Rice gives us heartache artily and with such beauty. Crying as a basic response to consuming Damien Rice songs seems like too much and also too right. He’s been driving us near mad with sadness all these years and now that we know that he isn’t sad in the way that we expect him to be, are we going to stop crying over ‘Amie’ or ‘Eskimo Friend’? Unlikely. Maybe, instead of tearing over whatever he’s singing about – his eskimo friend, a relationship’s bitter end, animals that are gone, dogs, his or someone else’s 9 crimes, it would instead be because of the beauty that pours forth from his melancholic songs that are not about him but are definitely about some of us. See you soon, Mr. Happy.

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Youth by JM Coetzee and Books That Upstage the Trips They’re In

I read JM Coetzee’s ‘Youth’ on a trip to the Cambodian border to refresh my Thai stamp for 15 days. The book was a nice inheritance from Nina who had permanently ingrained in my consciousness never to use the phrase ‘slight haggard’ or ‘haggard’ to describe one’s state of exhaustion, not because it’s criminal but because it’s irksome to hear people describe their haggardness as ‘slight’ when what is clearly meant is ‘slightly haggard’. I don’t know why I keep bringing that up, but I think it’s a useful reminder to never send an adjective to do an adverb’s job. I miss Nina.

‘Youth’ gets the see-sawing of joy and misery in the immigrant life. I was about to take care of my own ‘immigrant’ duties, while filled with uncertainty and images of thrashing and fighting for the privilege to be let in once more in this wonderful kingdom, so of course it held some fascination for me. Feelings of fright and paranoia are staples in my visa-related travels; I can never go on a visa trip without a vividly imagined character fighting, begging or arguing with immigration officers who, in real life, are completely oblivious to my stamps and wild scenarios. There has so far never been a single instance of thrashing, sadly.

The novel turned out to be one of those books that upstage the trip they’re supposed to complement.  For example, you go to Tagaytay with the family and you bring ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ with you because you suspect it’s excellent, and you end up never looking up from ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ because you’re right, it is super excellent. That’s a fine instance of a trip getting upstaged by an engrossing book.

Other times that a book upstaged a trip of mine:

1.     Kazuo Ishiguro’s ‘Never Let Me Go’ / El Nido, Palawan – The novel didn’t really upstage Palawan because Palawan is gorgeous, but I remember never looking up to chitchat with Caucasians who seemed enamored of fields upon fields of even more fields.  

2.     Harper Lee’s ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ / Tagaytay, Cavite – I was around 15 or 16 when I read this exquisite piece of literature (wow), and read it in one of those family trips in Tagaytay that 15-year olds sometimes can’t help but find themselves in. I remember nothing about that trip because it’s the kind of trip that, as a child, you don’t have much of a backbone to say no to, and becomes one of many you have to make with cousins, titos and titas who are the main characters, never to be upstaged.

3.     Poppy Z. Brite’s Exquisite Corpse / Bangkok – I include this engrossing and superbly grotesque novel about a serial murderer who does things to corpses that even Pat Bateman wouldn’t have the heart to commit, only because I’ve had several trips to Bangkok and this delightful treat managed to shine brighter than the Bangkok trip it was in. In other years, Bangkok shined the brightest.

Normally, when I read a synopsis that begins with ‘Youth’s narrator, a student in 1950s South Africa, has long been plotting an escape from his native country.’ I put the book back to where it belongs – at the bottom of the ‘will never read this’ pile (it’s a pile that I might get around to reading two or three years on). I didn’t think that the story of a skirt-chasing youth whose element is misery could resonate so deeply with me, non-skirt chasing non-youth. The narrator is a guy who, ‘If misery were to be abolished, he would not know what to do with himself’ is a character that deserves to be known and known well.

Like most self-absorbed youthful characters that treat everyone around them as bit players in the novel/movie of their lives (like Girls’ Hanna Horvath), John, the novel’s anti-hero, is understandably not universally loved. All that navel-gazing must have turned some critics and readers off, especially those who want forward momentum and action. But isn’t that what the youth do? The South African male student who is ‘at the center of all the madness, misery and melancholy’ does so relentlessly and expertly.

[patrickbooks]

Kafkaesque Book Things 2016

There will be no reading resolutions for Patrick Books for the new year. Writing about books will be as it was in years past – sporadic and strictly whimsical.

Last year, a measly 21 books were read. The New Years resolutions-less Patrick Books won’t be compelled to make apologies or promises to dramatically increase this number because Patrick Books knows it is a complete waste of time to make this type of pledge: ‘I pledge to read 50 books this year’. There will still be a burning desire to chance upon life-affirming books such as previous winners of Best Book in My Life (20__): George Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London (2014) or Julian Barnes’ A Sense of an Ending (2015).

Although it is tempting to kickstart a personal campaign to invigorate one’s reading appetite, Patrick Books decides to perform an act of mercy by not adding to the mania that sweeps the social mediasphere in January, that is, the marking of days. Marking of Days is when someone starts on a personal project and hashtag-reminds himself and everyone else what day it is in the project (eg., #Day17 of no cornflakes day, etc.). Even in instances where it is worthwhile to watch some of our friends push themselves into their project’s completion, we are often left hanging by mid-February about the progress they’ve made. This is not fair to us and to the very concept of commitment.

This also might have the odd effect on some us giving up on our own unannounced projects which obviously wouldn’t be a good thing. This is something that Patrick Books seeks to avoid. Nourishing to the mind and soul though a re-reading of David Foster Wallace’s insane bibliography may be, no one is likely to get hooked, and the lack of attention could only lead to a crushing sadness that having a book-loving life is meant to prevent. PB doesn’t seek to defeat the very purpose of its desirousness for reading and reading materials.

Patrick Books will be unbothered by these just as it will be unbothered by the word ‘Kafkaesque’ being used to describe something that is not at all Kafkaesque. Franz Kafka’s ‘Metamorphosis and Other Stories’, the last book read in 2015, will make you realize that many people are using the word ‘Kafkaesque’ in much the same way that Lady Gaga once attempted to encapsulate in a single word the fact of her ever increasing and unwavering artistry. Lady Gaga had at least clarified that ARTPOP could mean anything and so we are not left wondering what she could possibly mean. This is not the case with ‘Kafkaesque’.

The two terms are actually interchangeable and have almost the same meaning, ie, they both could mean anything. The word ‘Kafkaesque’ has been used in many reviews and various critical essays that want or need to make a point about a subject’s strangeness. Having read 45 stories in the collection, the realization that people might be adapting Kafkaesque to suit their own needs might have sprung up. Just like the aforementioned days-marking, Patrick Books will be totally fine with the often incorrect usage of Kafkaesque to describe something that is darkly comic, disturbing, etc., no matter what single, definitive Franz K story that person has read. If someone has read ‘The Metamorphosis’ and decides to describe things as in a manner that makes questionable use of ‘Kafkaesque’ (eg., ‘That vegetable is so Kafkaesque’ or ‘Lana Del Ray’s new single is so Kafkaesque’), let him. If someone wants to use the term  to describe something that is actually more Cuaronic (as in Alfonso), that person will also be left alone. Whether someone intends to use the terms to describe something as wretched or ratchet, some cares might be given but only for a very brief time. Life is too short to be picking on people’s choice of adjectives, although sometimes it is very much worth doing so.

There would also be no resolution to please start reading new authors because reading or rereading Ian McEwan or David Sedaris is becoming predictable and unexciting. In the first place, lack of excitement is difficult to achieve when re-reading ‘Barrel Fever’. Jaws will always drop whether McEwan writes as a bratty teenage girl, secret service agent or surgeon. Despite not being the kind that makes mental notes, Patrick Books will make a mental note to buy Barrel Fever even though buying a book already bought is not generally encouraged. Barrel Fever is so good to the soul and even on the 57th re-reading still feels fresh, deliriously funny, and superb. Also, no monitoring on the amount of seemingly empty adverbs and adjectives on things deemed superb.

Despite the insistence on favoring old authors, the year began with Ali Smith’s ‘The Accidental’ and it is quite a fun time. It is the sort of book that stirs your insides in a way that’s difficult to describe whether to someone who’s had frequent experiences with this sensation or to someone who has never had his insides stirred, ever. Usually, when you’re reading a writer for the first time and you like what you’ve read so far, you make proclamations such as ‘I want to read her again’ blithely unaware that you are spinning a lie that’s harmless but might hurt your chances of being a strict truth teller. Reading Ali Smith for the first time, and this particular novel, might make you want to read her again immediately so if there’s anything of hers you feel like reading, order it now. It whets your appetite for more of the strange little girls like Astrid, Amber and to some extent, Eve. In this book, there is a Beyonce mention that doesn’t feel forced and for some that might be enough.

The copy was bought from a secondhand store in Khao San and it is worn out and filled with some horrific/delightful marginalia. 145 baht seemed like a reasonable price to introduce one’s self to an author you’ve been meaning to read but haven’t had the disposable 400 baht for. Those of us who are aware of big deal books – Pulitzer, Nobel and Man Booker prize winners mostly – that one must simply convince one’s self to want to intend to read know that ‘How to be Both’ belongs to everyone’s Big Deal list. PB has a thing for award winners and How to Be Both is definitely lined up.

Buying books like the ravaged Smith novel might not seem like a good idea in the long run but there’s no reason to shut down the possibility of Dasa-cheap hunting. Last among non-resolutions is the resolution to not buy books, because where would Patrick Books be if it didn’t hoard books. Nowhere, that’s where. And what is money if the brain is empty? Nothing, that’s what.

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How I Prepared for Prince Lestat

Because I needed a quick book to finish in this increasingly reading-unfriendly times, I picked up Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan’s The Strain and looked forward to good times ahead. This is also in preparation for Anne Rice’s Prince Lestat which can now be caressed, purchased and taken home from the Kinokuniya branch of my picking. I didn’t buy one yet because I’m hoping for a hardcover version to materialize in one of their glorious shelves. Kinokuniya, otherwise a very reliable seller of all the books you could ever dream of, still does not have it in hardcover which means I have plenty of time to brace myself for Lestat’s impact.

With The Strain, there was the slightest possibility that I would like it. I did not like it.

The Strain is a vampire book that is coy about being a vampire book. The word “vampire” doesn’t even appear until page 266 or thereabout, at which point, you would have already had doubts about the nature of the monster that’s causing hysteria among the helpless Americans.

Events take place in the ever plagued modern day New York, and while there is nothing wrong with picking what is probably one of the most predictable places on earth to set up a vampire plague, the predictability of most of the characters is unforgivable. The guy who is tasked to save New York (and later, the world) is a devoted father who, while in the midst of an impending vampire takeover, is also facing child custody meetings, so you know he’s the kind of protagonist who deals with very real, average man issues. You just know he’s the one who doesn’t die. As for the rest of the characters, you can so easily predict who among them will get saved, killed or ‘turned’. The omniscient, lead vampire cleverly called “Master” and a Lestat-like turnee (to be ‘turned’ is to become a vampire) named Miguel Bolivar, the vampires you’re most likely to remember, are not really menacing, smart or scary.

There are some interesting elements: vampirism spread through a virus, a tired yet vivid New York setting, and at least one character that is semi-interesting. Abraham Setrakian takes the position of sage and when he shows up in the world-is-ending press conference and gets arrested, you care about what they would do to him because He Has the Answers.

The novel is written in a way that removes any doubts as to where the authors meant for it to end up in: TV or film. That is not a bad way to be writing your books; it’s just that, given its structure, you would know that the mean stepfather is not going to make it past Book the First. Pretty shocking if you think about the fact that GDT often has genuinely surprising tricks up his sleeve every once in a while, but whose horror stories are not what you would endorse to someone seeking an all-consuming type of dread.

In their joint 2009 New York Times essay ‘Why Vampires Never Die’ the co-authors, who are not necessarily lamenting the state of vampire fiction, explain why these creatures don’t die, as in, some enterprising fictionist is always coming up with ways to subvert the tried-and-tested vampire archetype and unleashing to the world her own vampire series. It doesn’t read as a critique although it emits a very faint whiff of one.

Setrakian, in the book, is more straightforward and certainly more obnoxious: ‘You’re thinking of a moody overactor in a black satin cape. Or else a dashing figure of power, with hidden fangs. Or some existential soul burdened with the curse of eternal life. Or – Bela Lugosi meets Abbott and Costello.’ Setrakian is old and he’s seen and experienced enough horrors in his lifetime that he has no trouble being the authors’ mouthpiece for what they really think about vampires becoming what they are in these vampire-fascinated times (or at least around 2009 when vampires were extra-fashionable thanks to Twilight, the authors’ main object of shade). While Setrakian’s observations are somehow valid, he just sounds like a cantankerous old man who, being an expert on vampires, should be more aware of vampires’ past and current permutations.

Anne Rice’s The Vampire Chronicles might be the yardstick through which I will measure any other vampire series and although this is admittedly not the best yardstick, it is the yardstick of my choosing. In terms of scares, my yardstick is Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot. They created characters and stories that stray just far enough to be distinguishable from every other vampire novel that came out in the last few decades: Rice through her intricate worlds of covens and supernatural organizations and King through sheer overwhelming scariness.

GDT and Hogan made vampires monstrous again. They kill and cause commotion in a pretty sophisticated way, but all you can remember about these vampires is that they kill. The Strain mostly does not follow the undead template of pale, decadent (in attire and speech), and filthy rich. Apart from the means through which they spread their kind, there is very little about their origin that I would want to know about. These vampires just might not live forever.

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Spooky Book

Little boys and girls in scary movies often provide the biggest clue about a supernatural being’s existence. If the adult characters only paid close attention to them, more lives would have been spared from mutilation, possession or (untimely) death. Scary movie children are generally capable of being mini-monsters themselves who could destroy the peace in their parents’ lives, but what they scream in the face of the clueless adults who look after them (Usually: ‘THERE’S A GHOST MURDERER IN THIS HOUSE!’) are too often ignored. A few minutes later, several people end up dead.

In The Exorcist, Regan (Linda Blair) showed signs of behavioral disorder that is more sinister than brain damage. Granted, the devil that took over Regan was subtle and clever; it didn’t give away much of itself until it was too late. In countless horror movies, it’s the kids who are the voice of reason and too frequently, their lack of authority proves to be everyone’s undoing (such as in Child’s Play 1-3).

Samuel (Noah Wiseman) is that kid in The Babadook. His behavior is portentous of disturbing things to come even though being a 6-year old already takes care of being his mother’s main source of horrors. The things that come out of his mouth are frightening reminders of what troubled children are capable of. This is a kid with boundless enthusiasm for magic and a flair for horror story-telling who somehow has in his storybook collection the worst/scariest children’s pop-up book probably of all time, ‘Mister Babadook’. He is not a Damien or a Regan; he is what would happen if Kevin Khatchadourian were more socially inept but vivacious, and grew up in a single parent household.

Little Sammy also has a habit of saying what’s on his mind, to the detriment of his mother Amelia’s (Essie Davis) social life. He is a boisterous little brat whose penchant for showmanship is enough to drive a single mother crazy. But that is not what makes him quite the little monster.

As if being a piece of work isn’t enough, Sammy begins to crave for bedtime readings of ‘Mister Babadook’ and starts referencing it in conversations with his mom and cousin Ruby who, later in the movie, he pushes off a tree house because she was being mean (extreme, but not completely unwarranted). Being the kind of book that ‘Mister Babadook’ is, Amelia banishes it into the dresser away from the 6-year old’s reach. The book does not stay in the dresser.

Amelia has not fully recovered from her husband’s death seven years on, and now this. She is not having the greatest time in her life: she is a single mother in a poorly maintained old house. Work is shit and the first man to insinuate himself on her gets freaked out by Samuel’s surprise outburst. The last thing she needs is a piece of literature that would contribute to her lack of sleep.

There are a few recourses in Amelia’s situation and she, pragmatically, chooses the pharmaceutical one. It is at this point when the cause for her unravelling becomes tricky and the relationship between mother and son takes a turn for the worse. Amelia’s instability begins to manifest more strongly and Sammy wisens up to his mother’s ploy to get him to stop his incessant yakking for all eternity. Handling Sammy is tough, but does being an annoying little boy warrant murder from the hands of your own mother? Is this the work of the nasty book or is mommy simply going crazy?

The babadook, being a truly ugly, frightening thing, is a source of endless scares and its appearance, or the threat of it, is such a thrill. The greatest joy in watching a ‘horror movie’ like The Babadook, however, is in realizing that people on the edge of insanity are just as frightening as images found in horrific pop-up books that are seemingly capable of popping up in your own bedroom. Just how scary is a mother who orders her famished son to eat shit for breakfast? Very, very.

You won’t soon get over the babadook’s growly voice and it might take about three months to unhear it, but Essie Davis catatonically watching TV will stay with you the longest. Her deranged and sometimes over-the-top mother is reminiscent of Ellen Burstyn in the Darren Aronofsky horror movie, Requiem for a Dream. Aside from your own mom, they are some of the mother figures you never quite forget.

It is to the 6-year old (at the time of filming) Noah Wiseman’s credit that Samuel comes off more than just the token disturbed kid. He is capable of eliciting more than annoyance even though he elicits that in spades. While mother and son play a game of cat and mouse, with the babadook playing a bit role, sympathies shift and it comes as a relief that Sam would probably only end up with a slightly damaged childhood and a lifetime of hyperactive imagination. You don’t wish him ill even after he has spent the duration of the film being infuriating.

The thrice-knocking babadook never really relinquishes its right to fright, but it becomes clear soon enough that most frightening of all is what a human being trapped in the prison of her own misery can do. The Babadook is spectacularly creepy not only because it leaves you looking after both sides of your bed to check that no one or nothing is there. It’s scary because you know it can happen to you. Or your mother.

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Adult Reading

‘You’ve got forever, but that’s no time at all. You’ve got forever; and somehow you can’t do much with it. You’ve got forever; and it’s a mile wide and an inch deep and full of alligators.’

-Jim Thompson, The Killer Inside Me

I refuse to measure my worth by the progress I’m making with my Goodreads Reading Goal 2015. I set 50 books this year, but it’s already July and I’m still in books 13, 14 and 15. Tragic.

Life is not to be blamed for this ~tragedy~ because life is just being life. What needs to be blamed are the choice of reading and some other things.

It took me a month to finish Margaret Atwood’s Dancing Girls, a collection of her early short stories, compiled for the purpose of showing us, her devoted Wattpad groupie, that she once had struggles too. A book you don’t enjoy reading is a book that could make you want to give up reading. Dancing Girls is one of those books. At least for me it is, in Reading Year 2015.

Then I started reading Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice which I made my morning commute reading. Change in employment reduced my travel time, so now I only have a very short trip which means a vastly reduced morning reading time. Sure, shorter commute means lesser fare and better sleep quality and, arguably, an overall improved quality of life, but it also means a measly 15-minute trip from home to office which is not conducive for Victorian (or something?) novel reading. It’s a #blessed kind of tragedy.

The blessedness, though, has plenty to do with acquisitions. Bangkok is not the most bookish city in Asia, but in its midst are Kinokuniya branches and some surprisingly well-stocked second-hand book stores that make me miss Book Sale. I don’t get the feeling that Thais are into books all that much (based on my limited rampages around the city, they’re into phones and incessant communicating which is just like Philipps) but the book stores found throughout the city give you everything you need and more. Second-hand bookstores I’ve been to don’t have book persons fighting for space, competing with fellow book hunters for great, rare finds. That’s maybe because all of them are in Kinokuniya.

Also, Book Depository, a recent discovery (thank you, Book Rhapsody!), delivers here. Along with this discovery came a new kind of book acquisition euphoria – that which comes from seeing ‘You’ve got parcel, collect it from the office’ slapped on my mailbox. For the very low price of USD/THB/PHP 0, you get to buy books you’ve been wanting to Acquire but couldn’t because it’s nowhere to be found. You pay for the book’s mostly reasonable retail price but there really, really is no postage fee. My first order was Margaret Salinger’s JD Salinger memoir Dreamcatcher, which I’ve been wishing would magically appear in all the stores I’ve ever been to. Now, I finally have it. All my life it’s all I ever wanted! (Not true) I might be reading it sometime in 2029.

When life is not permitting you to spend some quality reading time, you make certain reading decisions that would be conducive to its demands. When you are about this book life (ie, you like books), you are overjoyed by the acquisition of books and the idea that you  might one day have time to consume them. But as is often the case (and as it will forever be), you will be acquiring books more than you will be reading them. Yes, the book life is never easy and that is alright. If books were food, they’d be complex carbohydrates: easily available nourishment, but hard to digest. Not quite an excellent metaphor but I swear it sounded perfect in my head.

Part of the thrill of not having all the books you want and need is in the hunt. When you realize that no book is elusive enough as to be unobtainable, the thrill diminishes but only ever slightly. As you get older, more adulter, the hunt for a satisfying reading time becomes the new source of thrill. Try to enjoy it!

[patrickbooks]

Not That Kind of Girl by Lena Dunham

When Not That Kind of Girl came out, readers were quick to point out that Lena Dunham is silly to be separating herself from the entire womanrace as she is exactly like the kind of girl that her book’s title says she is not. But you know what? Not all girls can come up with breathtakingly funny sentences of her own foolishness the way this girl does.

“I still love you,” he says, “but I have to go my own way.” “So you want to break up?” I ask, trembling. “I guess so,” he says. I fall to the floor, like a woman in the twelfth century fainting at the sight of a hanging in her town square.

In ‘The Best Part’ her boyfriend in the 7th grade breaks up with her and she is devastated. Like any other girl you’ve ever known, Lena predictably talks about this experience in her book of essays about not being like a certain kind of girl. What she does differently is leave you gasping for breath for the way she reminisces her 12-year old self’s devastation. What separates her from every other girl, it can be supposed, is her astonishing ability to point a big, fat finger to herself and demonstrate how she’s aware of it all.

Despite that painstaking self-awareness, Lena Dunham still doesn’t know everything. She’s probably not aware that entries like ’18 Unlikely Things I’ve Said Flirtatiously’ read like joke rejects from Girls, funny though some of them may be. I appreciate each item on this list especially “This one time, I thought I was petting my hairless cat, and it was actually my mom’s vagina. Over the covers, of course!” but not all items in such a list would go well with people who want their girl with lots of substance.

NTKoG is like Girls in book form in the same way that Alfonso Cuaron’s film adaptation of Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations has a novel all on its own, or something. If you’ve seen all 30 episodes of HBO’s Girls, this collection is for you and not for you. If you are decidedly not Not That’s target audience (and still went on to read this), you now know that Jessa, Marnie, Shoshanna and Hannah (duh) are all Lena, if you only suspected it before.

David Sedaris’s blurb puts it so truthfully: “It’s not Lena Dunham’s candor that makes me gasp. Rather, it’s her writing–which is full of surprises where you least expect them. This is a fine, subversive book.” It is easy to imagine David Sedaris not being super impressed by some of Lena’s supposedly outrageous stories. Maybe David read Lena’s college drug phase story and said to himself, ‘This is nothing compared to that time I got kicked out of our house and got into recreational drugs myself. Nothing!’ but still liked some of her gorgeous sentences. I’m just guessing, but his blurb speaks volumes. You know who else wouldn’t be impressed? Augusten Burroughs.

I found myself wanting to shut this book up the way I want to shut someone up who wouldn’t stop talking about what she had for dinner or what her precious father said about whatever. Despite having had those moments, I hope Lena Dunham writing books becomes a regular thing like David Sedaris writing books is a regular thing. We get one every two to three years or so, and every time one comes out, there would be that one essay or sentence that would kill us (the way Holden Caulfield gets killed by Phoebe’s random acts of cuteness, not that I needed to explain that!), one that we would remember for the rest of our days, even though we may not always like the book from whence it came. David Sedaris’ Barrel Fever was like a life-saver for me and I hope that Lena Dunham comes up with something like it in the future. Saving lives is very important.

[patrickbooks]

1. How fast do you read? Not fast at all. I’m a slow reader like my idol Anne Rice. The short answer to this is one book per week or one every two weeks if it’s a difficult or long book. When I was still in Manila, I slow down during the fourth quarter because, as 20-year olds would say, ‘because adult life.’ Ever since I started listing all the books I’ve read, I began to feel the need to read faster so that by the end of the year I would be looking at a very long list. I don’t know what purpose this is supposed to serve but it doesn’t feel wrong, so I keep doing it. Lately, I read as if I’m in a race that has no obvious rewards. It sometimes feels as if a book has to be really, really good (or as some blurbs would say, ‘impossible to put down!’) for me to want to stop and write Some Feelings about the ridiculously good book. But sometimes I just want to get over the feelings and get on with the next book and hope that it’s also a really, really good book. 2. Do you have a "silent narrator" while reading? I’m not sure what that is, but I imagine it’s a voice that reads for you, in your head. So, the answer is no, even though I know that not knowing about something doesn’t automatically eliminate the presence of the unknown thing. Like a disease in stealth mode.   3. What is your opinion on speed reading? It’s ideal for people who have regular jobs and can’t find the time to sit down and enjoy a book. Going back to my slow-reading idol Anne Rice, I remember reading an interview where she confessed about her reading slowness. This wasn’t such a surprising fact because her books, they’re also kind of slow, and I imagine that slow prose writers (if there is even such a thing!) might also be slow readers themselves. When I was in grade school, a speed reading substitute teacher (of sorts) talked to us grade 5 students about the importance of reading fast (Reason 1: so we could read many, many Hardy Boys and Nancy Drews in our young and carefree lives). One of her methods involved using your fingers while reading. It looked silly which is why I didn’t think it was something I’d ever do. In fact, I’ve never seen anyone do that ever. I only ever read with my lips, mind, heart and loins. 4. Would you take a speed reading course? No. This would probably be beneficial if I were planning on taking further studies, but even if I wanted to study for which a hefty amount of reading would be required, I think I would just try to make time even though I know I’m not God who is the only person in the universe who could probably manipulate time and space.

Book Rhapsody has some questions for which I have answers.

[patrickbooks]

My Salinger Year by Joanna Rakoff

‘In Salinger, characters don’t sit around contemplating suicide. They pick up guns and shoot themselves in the head.’

Joanna Rakoff was so lucky. She had a Salinger year whereas most people didn’t even have a shot at a Salinger day. So many fans, aspiring writers and journalists tried to even have a Salinger hour or a Salinger minute but they weren’t able to because it was never easy to have a Salinger moment. 

As an assistant to the literary agent who manages the elusive author, Joanna was given a behavioural guideline – things never to say or do in the presence of JD Salinger. She was the perfect person for the job; she has not read any of his work which made her the least likely sort of literati to violate the agency’s’ vow of complete secrecy when it comes to JD Salinger. She was not likely to give plenty of fucks about working for an agency whose star client happens to be literature’s most famous recluse.

But Joanna wasn’t indifferent, exactly, to the mystique of JDS. She wasn’t also looking for a job in a literary agency but she was in her early 20s and her life was as yet unplanned. One sweet day, she found herself employed in the agency (the book doesn’t mention it but it’s Harold Ober Associates!) that happens to be the JD Salinger agency – very big deal, very similar to Andrea Sachs, who has zero interest in fashion (at least according to the Emily Blunt character), getting hired as an assistant in a magazine that treats fashion as religion. Okay, not really, because Joanna is extremely interested in literature, but she hasn’t read a single JD Salinger book which is like not being able to tell cerulean from blue if you work in fashion.

Joanna is no fool, however, so she didn’t puke all over herself after realizing that she is to work side-by-side (as an assistant) with JD Salinger’s literary confidante, her (unnamed) boss who is almost like a Miranda Priestly figure. She was even more excited for Judy Blume whose books she’s read. Like any non-fools, she never commited random acts of stupidity, never had the misfortune of accidentally giving away the Salinger home phone number. She has even had several pleasant conversations with him. What she did, though, was respond to some of the letters addressed to JD – letters that are as good as trash as they are never ever going to go to him anyway. Ever the model employee, she pored through most of the JD Salinger letters in hopes of catching the Mark David Chapman types while also wanting to grasp at the madness with which readers – a combination of insane, fanatically livid, and genuinely admiring personas – possess, to acquaint herself with the fanaticism that these devotees have for an author who wrote a novel as seminal and as life-changing as The Catcher in the Rye.

JD Salinger is of course an important figure in Joanna’s year of the Salinger, and it surely is the kind of year worth writing a memoir for. Unlike some Salinger-focused memoirs (Joyce Maynard’s, Margaret Salinger – whose Dreamcatcher I haven’t read as it is as elusive as a chanteuse), there is nothing about My Salinger Year that ever approaches something close to exploitation. If this were a movie, JD Salinger would be in a tiny supporting role who would only appear once. But, Don, her boyfriend, would feature quite prominently in this movie. She lays bare his shortcomings as a boyfriend and as a human and she does so not simply as someone so embittered about a failed relationship but as someone who had an epiphany as to the quality of life one can have when surrounded by the right kind of people and most importantly, rid of the wrong kind of love.

This is a memoir about a person in love with books and the literary life. Its purpose is not to spill some heretofore little known secrets about JD Salinger as a client because in the first place, the people are tired of hearing about that. The people already know.

What the people probably didn’t know was that there are men, women and little children who would write audacious letters to JD Salinger to tell him that he should be proud of his million-selling achievement, The Catcher in the Rye, and then speak to him as if they’re buddyroos, old pals, old chaps. Letters to JD Salinger are sometimes funny, sometimes funny kind of sad. 

‘Have you read Salinger? Very likely you have. Can you recall that moment you encountered Holden Caulfield for the first time? The sharp intake of breath as you realized that this was a novel, a voice, a character, a way of telling a story, a view of the world unlike any you’d previously encountered. Maybe you were a teenager, brimming with frustration and rage, certain that no one understood the complexities of your soul, and then there was Holden, a conduit for all that misplaced emotion.’ 

I read this book thinking, ‘I am somehow, in a way, kinda over JD Salinger. I think I’ve moved on from The Catcher in the Rye,’ but I came away from it filled with longing. The author very thoughtfully reminds you of exact moments when you first fell in love with Catcher and Franny and Zooey. In the Fall of her Salinger Year, she very nicely reminisces about the stories and the novels (she binge-read them while Don was away), and in the process leads you back to feelings associated not just towards the JD Salinger books but books in your life that made you feel what it’s like to be so madly in love with great works of literature or just books that made you feel like the most emotional person alive. Wow! Dear Joanna Rakoff, you should be very proud of yourself.

[patrickbooks]

Life with My Sister Madonna By Christopher Ciccone

Celebrity memoirs and autobiographies are two of my favorite genres because they represent a marriage of literature and non-literature entertainment. It is not always a perfect marriage seeing as some celebrity memoirs suffer from lack of ambition to be anything other than an arbitrary dabbling into book writing. Sometimes it could be a complete waste of time if tells you things you’ve already seen in VH1 Behind the Music, the Biography channel or E! Channel. There are some truly juicy emails to be had from My Life With My Sister Madonna, but as for the rest of the book there’s not much else that you wouldn’t get from Wikipedia.

One such juicy email is this:

‘…I gave up my fucking life to help make you the evil queen you are today… 15 years listening to your bitching, egotistical rantings, mediocre talent, and a lack of taste that would stun the ages… every ounce of talent you have, you have sucked dry from me and the people around you… I certainly have never worked for you for the money… now you accuse me of lying and cheating you… you’ve got some fucking nerve… as usual… you have lost all sense of reality… I guess I always thought that one day you’d see my worth and behave accordingly… but you never did… a little fucking respect was all I ever wanted from you and you couldn’t even manage that.’

Other than that, there is nothing in Christopher Ciccone’s memoir that could have held anyone’s interest except the parts where he talks about his life with his sister Madonna. Sometimes, he talks about his life as a gay man struggling with his sexuality, and as an occasional cocaine snorter who sometimes parties with his friends Gwyneth Paltrow, Demi Moore, Naomi Campbell, Trudi Styler and countless other celebrities (all of whom became friends of his via a Madonna connection). He could have been the greatest memoirist who ever lived – on top of being a talented art director, dresser, artist, interior designer and stage director – but the general public would still be flocking to this because of Madonna. That is sad but that is how the world works.

According to Christopher, M is not a very nice sister (although she can be if she feels like it). She has maltreated him and they are not the sort of maltreatment that a fragile little brother could handle. As her personal dresser during the Blonde Ambition and Girlie Show tours, he had the lovely task of picking up her sweaty underwear and had the distinguished position of being the object of a pop superstar’s super insults, if and when he’s being slow or when PS just feels like it. She underpaid him for services as decorator and tour director and, at one point, was even the cause of his financial ruin. Madonna’s abuse towards him is endless; some of it may come off truly appalling, some not so much (eg, she doesn’t pay for his hotel suite; she gives him a less prominent seat in the Madonna-Guy wedding reception, etc.). But even without this ‘tell-all’, you probably could have guessed that Madonna may not be a very nice woman, that she is imperfect, and that she may in fact be a total bitch.

Actually, she has admitted countless times of being a total bitch. Aside from not being a very nice woman, you probably have already known that Madonna is also an egomaniac, an attention whore, a sinner, lover of sex and profanity, boastful, proud, etc., etc. She is of course widely regarded as a queen of the performance industry and she is merely acting according to expectations (and because she feels like it and/or that’s who she is). These are not wild guesses and blind accusations; these are things she admits in her songs:

1. I’m a Sinner 2. I Don’t Give a 3. Unapologetic Bitch 4. I’m So Stupid

But still, she did not deserve this.

The hurt that comes with being the brother of one of the pop’s biggest ego must truly be galactic. It is the sort of ego that is hard to eclipse and Christopher should have known this. He wanted to shine without Madonna casting her big, fat shadow over him, but it’s just impossible. He wanted his worth and talent to be acknowledged without anyone using the M word. He accused his sister of sucking the life out of him, but the thing is, Madonna really did put him in the map – the map of a world where Madonna is a multimillionaire super megastar and he is… who he is. This memoir is a whole lot of ‘My sister is so, soooo mean!’ but without that mean sister, there would be no sold out shows to art direct and no memoir to make some money off of. What he wanted most of all was Madonna’s respect and love, but Madonna does not give any of these because bitch, she’s Madonna.

Christopher C is not a great writer, and to his everlasting credit, he never claims to be one (he claims to have the design taste that suits the taste of a pop super queen and there is no reason to doubt this). The most riveting parts in the book are those where Madonna is present. When she’s not, book turns lethargic. The constant name-dropping is the least of its problems, even. Some of the name drops, though, are truly worthless. I don’t know how the meet-and-greet with Liza Minnelli and Peggy Lee contributes to the my-sister-is-mean narrative, but they’re there, along with several others.

Reading about Christopher’s rants, Madonna’s worst crime, it seems, is her massive ambition to become the greatest pop star in the planet. And that’s what makes this memoir so limp and so… mean. Divadom is not achieved by an easygoing persona. It comes with horrific tales of ‘baskets of puppies in a lavender, strictly-no-freesias suite’ and plenty of other diva demand anecdotes, and a couple of bruised egos along the way.

If you read this because you wanted to know what life is like being Madonna’s sib, it is this: It’s the kind of life that sometimes involves drunken nights with Demi Moore and Kate Moss, backstage pass to Madonna movies, and front row seats to Madonna concerts and documentaries. Sometimes you even appear in them. Sure, Madonna will exploit some of your family’s history, and she will stage fake reunions to serve her fauxcumentary, but it is a great life all in all. This is a book that Christopher felt he needed to write so he could tell the world that he is his own person. As a person with a severely bruised ego, this book’s purpose is to salve that ego, but it doesn’t give you plenty of reason to think that this is necessary. The world can only take one scene-stealing, egomaniac Ciccone and that position has already been taken.

[patrickbooks]

Louis, Liam, Niall, Harry, Zayn, Patrick

Disclaimer: This was written weeks ago, which explains the belatedness of certain feelings conveyed herein.

While trying to cope with the incessant yelling of Thai teenage girls in Rajamangala Stadium, I congratulate myself for not attempting to contribute to the loudness. I could just as easily have screeched Louiiiiaass! but my classiness prevailed. Suppressed feelings sometimes find devious ways to be let out, and the means by which they are forced out are not always dignified. In the case of One Direction, one is better off letting one’s true colors show – the fanatic teenage queen colors – while in the concert rather than trying to find someone outside of that crowd to talk about how great they are.

If you’re an adult male like myself, it’s hard to look for a kindred soul with whom to share these feelings. Try finding someone who is not a 15-year old girl who would really, really know just what it is that you see. Try it! ‘Just what is it that you see in 1D?’ is not a question that I haven’t asked myself. Is it something I do to look cute? I don’t really know. They came into my life and they haven’t left, and that is all I know.

This is why when One Direction goes to your city, it would be very wise to yell your face off if you feel like it. When they go to your country, do the unthinkable and get moshpit ‘seats’ and use immense force when pushing your way nearer the stage where the chances of you getting spat on the face by Harry or showered by Liam’s sweat are great. Their spit will land on your happy face and you must love it, and in all probability, you will.

This adoration probably has an expiration date. It almost happened with Midnight Memories, a rocky album that I also initially didn’t care for. Then I gave it 17 more listens and then, I didn’t not care for it anymore. And then they gave away buzz single ‘Fireproof’ for free, a song so great it deserves to get played in ‘Girls’ in a Shoshanna moment, and the world is alright again.

I don’t remember a moment when I lost interest in a band because I haven’t really been super faithful to any one band. I liked bands in the 90s but my favorite bands of all time are probably TLC and Destiny’s Child, and my fondness for both is everlasting. For now, the band I like is them and liking them is still very exciting.

But still, I know (I knoooow) that one day this shall pass. Probably when Harry Styles decides he’s too cool to still be in the band, or when Zayn realizes he can take his beautiful falsetto where it could never be upstaged by Liam’s gorgeous mug, or when Louis decides he just wants to write songs and wear sando at home all day long for as long as he lives. Maybe I’ll wake up one day and realize that I have lost all desire to listen to songs about girls being stolen, etc.

[patrickbooks]

I’m Not in a Book Club

I like the idea of a book club. Having one means you’re persuasive enough to get a good number of people to join your club. Being in one means you have the luxury of having the problem of What to Read Next solved each time you have it. But if thinking about what to read next is your favorite problem, then don’t be in one and just lurk in a book club of your choice.

Some Serious Reading decisions are not always based on taste and preference. In some instances, decisions are made based on guilt and economics, although these two are often intertwined. Guilt plays a role when, for instance, you go through an uncontrollable book-buying spree for a certain period and then months pass and you still haven’t touched anything from the binge pile. Naturally, you have several of these untouched ‘binge piles’ because you are basically on a cycle where you buy more than you can realistically read. You don’t ever feel guilty for buying books at all but you feel a slight pang of guilt for neglecting some good stuff from most of your binges. To soothe the guilt, you pick one from any random binge pile that you really, really actually can’t wait to read already, because you finally decide that staring longingly and lovingly at your unread pile AND picking something from the pile is better than sticking to whatever you decide is the perfect book to read right now (which is what probably happens to some when it’s book awards season). And also, maybe, you finally believe the people who keep saying that life is short.  

Of course taste would always play a role in choice of reading, because for instance, a person not into sci-fi would probably never deign to pick up an Ursula Le Guinn or Lord of the Rings or whatever, but sometimes certain forces compel a person to do so. If you’re a person who belongs to a book club, you have probably found yourself in this very situation where you’re compelled to read something you wouldn’t otherwise, ever.

If you’re the kind of reader who allows this to happen in your life, ie, you have a book club and you don’t happen to have the loudest voice in the choice of reading, you could see this life circumstance in both its positive and negative light. Seeing the positive means you see this as an opportunity to think outside the box, get out of your shell, step out of your comfort zone, and most importantly, bust some really tired clichés about… thinking outside the box, choice of books-wise. Negative means you stray far, sometimes so far away, from what you would normally exclusively read which could result to you feeling resentful of your book club membership or your lack of conviction. Being a pessimist means never coming out of any situation a winner and the same is true even in book clubbing.

I’m not sure how a book is chosen in book clubs but I have feeling it’s the result of certain persuasive people’s taste which the members with the less assured tastes take as a either a challenge or a treat (‘Yay, I have to read something I wouldn’t really read if it were only up to me.’ etc.). It could also be a result of a consensus reached through harmonious means (ie, by voting). What is certain, I think, is that most book clubs would have members who are never 100% into the book the club chooses for discussion. It must feel like hell for haters of classic novels when it’s Thomas Hardy month or when it’s Edith Wharton season.

It could also be the result of a book being so popular and/or a book being a staple in most ‘literary circles’ or publications that your own book club just got to have that book for itself. If I were to become a chief chooser in a book club, though, I would pick a book that I saw in some sad yet happy corner of an unpopular bookstore (ie, Book Sale, Dasa, Sun Books, etc.) which could mean that the book is not readily available for everyone to obtain. But that is the book I would want to be discussed anyway because sometimes, it’s not your choice what you happen to want to talk endlessly about. There would be no such thing as democracy in my book club.

My choice of reading is mainly aimless and this is probably why it may not be the best idea for me to join a book club. Discipline is something of a requirement in a book club and that is exactly what I don’t have when it comes to choosing reading material. It’s not like I haven’t participated in a book clubby event that required me to go to a specific shelf of a non-discount bookstore to pick up the required book, but that is not really something I do. My faith in second-hand bookstores is so strong, and I mostly go to big stores to feel good about my cheap finds.

While I do have plans to read the bibliography of certain authors, often promising myself to backread the entire catalogue of Patricia Highsmith and others, I am also most likely to wait for her to miraculously turn up in a pile of used books in Dasa or Sun Books than actively seek her out. This sounds like a lazy person idealism but not really. While waiting for someone’s entire body of work to appear in your obscure store’s used pile at 80% off, there are all these other books you could immerse yourself in, and most of the time, the non-priority books are enough of a distraction. In the words of Cheryl Strayed, “Her majesty doesn't go for refills, the refills come to her."

General attitude problems aside, I think I’m not in a book club because in a situation where I’m presented with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to choose between Jennifer Lopez’s memoir and a Nobel Prize-winning novel about the South African apartheid, I would want to have the freedom to pick the J.Lo memoir if and when I feel like it, and then keep the apartheid book for when I’m 65 and not busy, or vice versa. Reading J.Lo’s memoir would be so silly at 65, if you think about it. 

[patrickbooks]

Leche by R Zamora Linmark

If you’ve read my important review of Jessica Hagedorn’s Dream Jungle, you would know that Philippines-set novels that make cheap, obvious (grinding poverty, golden-hearted prostitutes, balut, etc.) observations about Philippine things are not my favorite Philippines-set novels. Maybe this is because I don’t want my country described in a basic manner. Or maybe, I just don’t want my country’s filth thrown back at my face so relentlessly. What else could Fil-Ams write about other than the overbearing presence of balut in the Filipinos’ lives? There are so many things, actually, but maybe they are not the novelists for the kind of novel I might enjoy and not have issues with. So I forgive them. While it may be worth expressing disdain over a novel’s obsession with the Filipinos’ obsession with Kris Aquino, spending so much negative energy on a single novel is not a very productive way of talking about a book that shows glimpses of fun times. Plus, it really kills the fun, which is exactly what happened with me, with Leche. If I keep having these complaints, I would be left with no choice but to go through life always suspecting that the next Fil-Am written novel I’d be reading will have poverty that I can smell off the pages, complex hosteses, and murder mysteries set always and forever in Hawaii, which could result to displeasure, indifference or fatigue, which would all be detrimental to my capacity to enjoy the consumption of novels set in the Philippines, regardless of the era.

My heart is a forgiving heart so I didn’t feel the need to chastise Jessica H. so verily, but with R. Zamora Linmark’s Leche, I’m uncertain. I find it very necessary to find it in my heart to forgive him for stuffing Leche with predictable observations about how rotten, quirky, stinky Metro Manila, Philippines is. Besides, it’s his novel and he has every right to stuff it with whatever.

Vince is a Fil-Am who moved to Hawaii when he was 10. He returns to the Philippines after winning 1st place in a Mister Pogi competition for which the prize is a trip to his home country. He makes the trip because there wouldn’t be a novel if he didn’t but, actually, there might still have been a different novel, one that doesn’t bludgeon your face with quirks and things.

Vince’s move to Hawaii is acknowledged as a good thing. The reader knows this because when he gets to Manila (which the author wisely, although briefly, acknowledges is not the Philippines), like the most typical, most predictable Fil-Am you have ever talked to, Vince only has sour feelings for the dirty, grimy, crime-infested city. This is not in the least bit shocking because… these are non-shocking truths. If you thought you were getting a character who cherishes the quirkiness of PI, you would be slightly wrong. Balikbayan Fil-Ams who have nice things to say about Manila are maybe the kind of characters you might be wanting but this book does not give it.

Leche is filled with Filipino quirks the way Rebisco cream crackers are filled with buttery fillings; it’s delightful at first but tastes yucky after the third cracker. The novel highlights them through randomly inserted ‘Tourist Tips’ which are cutely interspersed with whatever shit Vince is going through in Ermita or wherever. If you need a Philippine guide book, buy Leche instead of Culture Shock or Lonely Planet. The things you will read about the Philippines and its peoples may not be the most accurate but the spirit is captured, sort of.

As I’ve said, my heart is forgiving. It is just a muscle after all and muscles get tired. I think I would have enjoyed Leche more if it didn’t have this:

‘He looks so much better live than on my Sony Trinitron,’

I just HATE this and I can’t know why.

I refuse to be amused by a novel that has a character who says a brand name in place of an actual noun. It reminds me of TV shows in which dutiful girlfriends or wives are eternally saying lovely things such as ‘Heto, pinagluto kita ng paborito mo,’ which I’m 90% sure no self-respecting grown woman says in real life.

My feelings about a book are sometimes governed by the reviews I read in GoodReads. I can’t resist looking at other people’s thoughts. Mainly, it is to see if something I didn’t like/despised was loved so intensely by some stranger, which happens to be always. Based from the GR reviews, the people seem rightly divided; Leche truly is both endearing and infuriating.

[patrickbooks]

The Crimson Petal and The White: The Revenge

Jessica Zafra’s negative review of Michel Faber’s The Crimson Petal & The White in Flip, a magazine that, sadly, lived for only one fruitful year, is the only explanation for The Crimson Petal & The White’s existence in my life. I don’t necessarily think that Sugar is the best prostitute in all of literature, but she’s a fun girl to read about. To be clear, I don’t recall the Sugar character as being fun, but prostitute with an attitude? Yes, please.

In the novel, Sugar welcomes the reader with arms (and something else) wide open. She cautions that the place she’s bringing the reader to is vast and intricate, a place where the reader has never been before. She tells the audacious onlooker that he should keep his wits about him because he’s about to enter the wacky world of William Rackham and Sugar’s very own brothel 'hood. Jessica was unmoved and pointed out that Sugar’s world is in fact a world already visited by the supposedly uninitiated visitors, through Charles Dickens. Since I have read only one Charles Dickens in my life, I was thrilled. Sugar didn’t strike me as a particularly braggy prosti; she just didn’t know better than to address people that way. She just may not have read Dickens herself.

Crimson Petal is 800+ pages of pure trashy fun. It was lots more enjoyable than the one Charles Dickens I read and so I found myself wanting more of Sugar’s vast and intricate world of whoring and more. If you’ve read the novel, you may be one of many who are unsatisfied with the ending which was cruelly abrupt.

Like a gift from the heavens above, this prequel appears out of the deepest, darkest corner of Sun Book Store in Phrom Phrong, my new home away from home, the substitute to Book Sale in my Bangkok life. You may not remember where or how the Crimson Petal ended, but you will be reminded by this thoughtful little treat.

But first of all, do you remember Sugar? Of course you do. She’s the whore with the literary aspirations. Here in particular, she’s a whore who’s dissatisfied with the current condition of modern English fiction. ‘Where are the authentic flesh-and-blood-women in modern English fiction? There aren’t any!’ She is so great.

Sugar is not a typical whore with a heart of gold because she’s more complicated than that. She narrated a whole book out of what it was like to be a whore in Victorian era England, or some old remarkable era somewhere in the British isles, far, far away in the European continent.

Despite its richness, I’m only about 60% sure of what I’m reminiscing about Crimson Petal & the White. It is rich in drama but reading the stories in The Apple, I’m sure there are some great moments of comedy in there too as there are in this sequel. For example, in ‘The Fly and Its Effect on Mr Bodley, the titular character suffers from something resembling erectile dysfunction because the image of a fly that landed on a prostitute’s ass, vividly emblazoned on his mind several trysts ago, had the unfortunate effect of taking away his libido. This may be an attempt by the author to inject a gay character in the series and on some level, it succeeds.

In another story, in Mr Rackham’s section, ‘Medicine’, an erection is massaged. Maybe it’s just me but ‘massaging an erection’ sounds very funny. Poor William Rackham, though, was doing it because Sugar is not in his life, and so self-help proved necessary.

In Rat Man, maidservant-turned-prostitute Clara is found standing in the street, peddling her goods, when Mr Heaton, whom she affectionately calls Rat Man, propositions an offer which is quite a deviation from her usual transactions. Rat Man avails of Clara’s services requiring only that she grows the nails on one finger for which he pays a shilling. In this world and in the real world, that is not how most transactions with prostitutes go. Also in this world and in the real world, as it is commonly known by all, prostitutes offer certain services not at all concerned about fingernails being grown. So of course, there is a catch. Rat Man, as it turns out, wants Clara to scratch a very specific itch. Where, how, and why the Rat Man wants her to grow her fingernails will almost make you fall off the edge of your seat, and then poof, the end. Michel Faber, if you didn’t already know, is the king of that.

If, like me, you remember Crimson Petal but only vaguely, by the end of The Apple, your memory will be refreshed by ‘A Might Horde of Women in Very Big Hats…’ which is where you get re-acquainted with William Rackham’s daughter Sophie who you will now remember ran off with Sugar towards the end of Crimson.

If you’re curious to know what happened after Crimson’s semi-hysterical last part, here’s your gift. I remember that a suicide, an intense confrontation, an abandonment, basically all the ingredients of great dramedy – drama and tragedy – are all present in that fat book. It’s got sex – lurid and maybe chaste-seeming ones – all fighting for attention, but Sugar is who you remember the most. I truly only have fond remembrances of it, and so if you see a copy in Book Sale or wherever, pick it up and don’t look back.

[patrickbooks]

Call Me By Your Name by Andre Aciman

'...are "being" and "having" thoroughly inaccurate verbs in the twisted skein of desire, where having someone's body to touch and being that someone we're longing to touch are one and the same, just opposite banks on a river that passes from us to them...' 

I have been trying for weeks now to praise this book up over here, but I have so far come up with only this:

‘I used to wonder about men cutting off their dicks. Such men are constantly in the news because aside from the obvious newsworthiness, they boggle the mind in a good, enlightening way. It sounds insane and criminal and people have every right to be appalled, but people also need to know that desire can be oppressive. A man cutting off his dick must have been through something unimaginable, an unexplainable mania of never-ending desire to cease all sexual feelings. Sympathy, in such cases, is needed, rather than disdain and displays of superiority at being among those who triumphed over their god-given urges. There are ways to deal with this oppression but sometimes, scissors and knives are more readily available than psychological help.’ 

I was going to point out that Elio, the novel’s narrator, is not like some weak men who cut off their dick, but quickly realized that a lot of men who are living each and every day of their lives enslaved by their penis don’t get it in their heads to do heinous things such as self-mutilate. That men who are exactly like Elio have much more complicated lives that make their own boy crushes even more oppressive than it could ever be for Elio, a boy who has good looks, impressive brains, and great timing. I was going to say how impressive Elio is in that he could desire, and do so elegantly. I was also going to point out that not a lot of people rhapsodize about their crush’s perfect shoulder blades, but then realized that there are billions of stories that contain pages upon pages of praise for various body parts with equally beautiful tellings. I was very close to looking at Elio as something of a desire guru because he was able to speak on MY behalf about how desire works, ie, you don't know if you want to be the object desire or you simply want the desire satiated, always. But then I realized the pointlessness of pointing out these things. I was also going to say something about longing being a better state than having, but realized that actually, having is simply the greatest feeling most of the time. Finally, I was going to point out that desiring, when done right, can be beautiful, but then thought of the Wu Tang Clan rapper who cut off his birdie because he couldn't take it anymore and the last thing I want to do is call something like that beautiful. So today, there would be no pointing out of things. 

This novel is so great.