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
“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
Cat Dellosa is the author of The Summer of Letting Go, For the Win, and many other books. Her contemporary works are famous for their ability to draw tears of both laughter and deep emotion from her readers. Ex Libris Philippines interviewed her about her biggest literary influences. You started out as a games journalist… Read More Catherine Dellosa: Gamester and Wordsmith
“A god lives in this house.” ASCENSION is a novel with such a strong sense of time, people, and place, it feels almost real. A word of caution: Drinking your pumpkin spice latte while reading Eliza Victoria’s latest novel might not be the best idea. You might end up spilling it out of sheer fright,… Read More Ascension: When A God Haunts A House
To read the English translation of filmmaker and Ateneo college professor Alvin Yapan’s book Worship the Body (Sambahin Ang Katawan) is to be awash in a sea of images. Of clothing revealing nakedness (between man and wife, and man and fellow man). Of sea and sky, lands urban and rural. While acclaim and praise follow… Read More Worship The Body: What Price Love?
If author Ronaldo S. Vivo Jr.’s aim is to leave readers devastated, if the intention is to give us no respite from cruelty or from descriptions of material and moral filth, if the purpose is to shove this country’s reality in our faces when we would prefer to look away, then The Power Above Us… Read More The Power Above Us All: Today’s Trauma in Translation
Douglas Candano’s collection of eight stories are all set in one universe that feels so much like ours, but defy Newtonian physics in its population that includes amalgamations of aswang and the Chinese jiangshi, as well as museums that house experiences rather than relics, and historical events with a few monsters thrown in the mix.… Read More Infinite Lives, Infinite Deaths: Chillingly Cold Prose Delivers 8 Doses of Fil-Chi Horror
My second book by Catherine Dellosa had me sobbing uncontrollably in the last couple of chapters, making my Sunday morning coffee a bit more salty than usual. It also has one of the most striking opening paragraphs I’ve ever come across: “Fate is fixed, love is a thunderstorm, and Cheetos are mankind’s greatest invention since… Read More The Summer of Letting Go: Catherine Dellosa Guides Us How to Deal with Loss and Love
“There was no measure for love of country except in sacrifice.” The beginning is all. The first scene in a play or a movie sets tone and mood, introduces characters and themes. For man, they say the infant is the father to the grownup. And for this widely-acknowledged literary masterpiece, Po-on is the first yet… Read More Po-on : The First/Last in F. Sionil Jose’s Saga
Author/podcaster/editor Lio Mangubat doesn’t make a habit of throwing things away, not old VHS tapes from his childhood, and certainly not the contents of his personal library. There is rhyme and reason behind his hoarding. Some of the author of Silk, Silver, Spices, Slaves‘ prized possessions include a 1988 issue of National Geographic with a… Read More Connecting the Philippines with the World: Lio Mangubat’s Love for History Shines Through in ‘Silk, Silver, Spices, Slaves’
Ex Libris Philippines 