A son of Manila, my late father owned an imposing hardcover brown volume which he treasured and encouraged his teenaged children to read. We used the busyness of youth as an excuse not to when really, we were intimidated by its thickness. The book has mysteriously vanished, to our belated sorrow. So it was with… Read More Manila, My Manila: Glories of the Past Resurrected
Author Laurel Flores Fantauzzo describes this book as the product of a haunting. The 2009 murders of film journalists Alexis Tioseco and Nika Bohinc moved her so deeply that she spent the next six years (eight with revisions) writing about the couple. What was originally meant as an academic thesis became a finalist in the… Read More The First Impulse: Immortalizing Lives and Loves
F.H. Batacan’s newest book comes 26 years after she wrote the award-winning novel Smaller and Smaller Circles, which was hailed as a crime classic and turned into a 2017 film starring Nonie Buencamino and Sid Lucero. Set in the same Manila as her previous book, the short story collection manages to be both very similar… Read More Accidents Happen: Angry Stories that Thirst for Justice
FIVE BUSINESS LESSONS is a selection of twenty-one interviews by financial analyst Henry Ong, who has been writing for publications such as the Inquirer and Esquire Philippines for the past decade. These interviews are culled from Ong’s Esquire Philippines column Financial Adviser , but also feature two brand new ones found at the very start… Read More Five Business Lessons: Interviews with Folks Who Struck Gold
“In a way, we were all massacred. Only, some of us were fortunate to have lived through it.” Crimson as arterial blood, the cover of the nonfiction book Rampage : MacArthur, Yamashita, and the Battle of Manila by James M. Scott gives an idea of the extremely graphic violence depicted inside. It’s an unputdownable weighty… Read More Rampage: When Manila’s Streets Ran Red with Blood
“We overestimate our capacity to remember even as we underestimate our capacity to forget… if erasure is the default mode of engagement with the past, then we must become active agents of the labor of remembrance.” Gideon Lasco’s most recent book is a clear-eyed collection of essays that were written during the pandemic, a compilation… Read More Face Shield Nation: COVID in the Philippines Seen Through Honest Yet Hopeful Eyes
Baguio is awash with tourists and Manileños all bundled up in Uniqlo Heattech this Christmas and New Year season. There may be another reason for the cold atmosphere: the chill of the supernatural. The Baguio depicted in OHA by Krie R. Lopez is one peopled by ghosts. The book starts with a teenager’s death from… Read More OHA Gives A Voice to Baguio’s Ghosts
Christmas means many things to different people. For some, it’s as every bit as postcard perfect as Hallmark romcoms: merry and bright, days full of lunches and dinners with our nearest and dearest. For others, it’s a little bit more lonely, with the absence of a family member due to this darn flu everyone seems… Read More Ex Libris Philippines’ December Reads
Yvette Tan’s latest collection of horror short stories under Anvil Publishing should come with a warning on the cover: don’t read at night. And make sure you’re not snacking on anything, especially sisig. Blissfully ignorant, I started reading the first story while waiting for an event to start, only to hastily shut it after reading… Read More Seek Ye Whore: Are You Adult Enough to Handle This Horror Collection?
“Delightful” is perhaps a weird adjective to use when describing a collection of horror stories, but Kenneth Yu’s book is truly a joy to read, in a genre-expanding work redefining the possibilities of this reader’s Halloween treat. Mouths to Speak, Voices to Sing is a collection of fourteen short stories and a one-act play, and… Read More Mouths to Speak, Voices to Sing: ‘Horror’ that Delights
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