Art marks

As I promised in my previous post, here's an idea for how to recycle the artwork and photographs of smaller desk calendars.


The easiest is to turn them into bookmarks. The handiest width for bookmarks is about two inches so that usually means having to crop the artwork first. In cropping, try to follow the photographer's Rule of Thirds (click the link for a tutorial). Of course, this is not a hard and fast rule; in cropping my 2008 desk calendar (these photos are from the middle of last year), I was limited by the height of the images. This is how I decided to crop two of the paintings; many of the sheets gave me two bookmarks rather than one.


After cutting all of the sheets, I punch a single hole near the top and add a ribbon (or yarn). As much as I can, I try to match the colors in the images, but since I only work with what I have on hand (and many of these ribbons are scraps from the packaging of gifts given to us), it's not always possible. My all-purpose ribbon for those instances is a narrow, gold gauze ribbon.


If you have no need for so many bookmarks, then just give them away to family, friends and colleagues who you know to be avid readers. Even consider giving them to your local library, with instructions to give one each to the next several people who take out books. You'll be making some people happy and you would have done a small part in helping reduce environmental waste.

Dracula meets Sweet Valley High

I just got suckered into reading Stephenie Meyer's "Twilight." Blame two of my college girlfriends. One has a grade school-age daughter whose friends were all so into it, my friend decided to read it just to find out what it was about. And got hooked. The other one has a more convoluted story involving her older sister, the sister's colleague from a large Philippine corporation, and the colleague's daughter. Anyway, she got hooked too. And so did all the moms who read the book their young daughters were reading. In my case, my friends told me about the book series on Sunday and the first said she'll lend me her daughter's copy if she and her girlfriends were done with it. And the very next day, she came by the office to drop it off!

My regular reading fare is science fiction, fantasy, history and historical fiction, with a smattering of contemporary fiction, the classics and all other genres. I also happen to like young adult fiction. About the only thing not included in my reading list is romance. "Twilight" is young adult, fantasy and romance. Two out of three. So I read it. And in the middle of reading another novel too—something I rarely do, but this is a borrowed book and I wanted to be able to return it quickly in case any of the young girls still haven't read it.

I really hate to say this, but I thoroughly enjoyed the book! I wasn't kidding about the title of this post. "Twilight" really is Bram Stoker's "Dracula" meets Sweet Valley High. (I was actually a little too old for the latter when it came out, but my younger sister had a few and I read a couple.) In Tagalog, we have a word for what I felt while reading it: kilig. I have no idea how to translate it to English. But you know the nice little shivers which run up your spine during romantic scenes in movies and books? That's it.

It was fun feeling like a high school kid again. But I think I'll quit while I'm ahead. There are three other books in the series and my friend said she'll lend them to me one by one. Thanks, Ces, but I think I'll pass on the offer. I might end up feeling like I did after I read Dan Brown's other books—I should have stopped after "The Da Vinci Code." Well, except maybe for the last book. I would like to know if Edward gives Bella what she's asking for and how.

Looking for an image of the book's front cover (which I found in Stephenie Meyer's website), I discovered that it's being made into a movie. None of the cast is familiar to me, and I've never heard of the director or producers either. But I think I'll brave the hordes of giggly pre-teens who are sure to watch it. It's coming out this November. I doubt very much if my husband will watch it with me, so Ces, Beng: it's a date?

Thank you, Ralph.

I've never met Ralph, except online. He came to Manila a month ago, but I didn't get to meet him then. Yet when he sent my husband a box of books and videos, one book was especially for me:

My first reaction was, "Now why would I want to read about life in an Iowa farm during the depression?" I mean, everything about it seems so far removed from my life and experiences—Iowa, a farm, the depression in the 1930s… And it was even more confusing because stuck on the book was this note:

Okay, now my thought became "What has all of this to do with blogging?"

Then I read the blurb at the back of the book:

I tell of a time, a place, and a way of life long gone but still indelible in my memory. For many years I have had the urge to describe that treasure trove, lest it vanish forever. So, partly in response to the basic human instinct to share feelings and experiences, and partly for the sheer joy and excitement of it all, I report on my early life. It was quite a romp…

So begins Mildred Kalish's story of growing up on her grandparents' Iowa farm during the depths of the Great Depression. This, however, is not a tale of suffering but the story of a childhood that "built character, fed the intellect, and stirred the imagination."

Filled with stories of a family that gave its members a remarkable legacy of kinship, kindness, and remembered pleasures, and brimming with recipes and how-tos for everything from catching and skinning a rabbit to preparing homemade skin and hair beautifiers, apple cream pie, and the world's best head cheese, Little Heathens portrays a world of hard work tempered by simple rewards—and shows how the right stuff can make even the bleakest of times seem like "quite a romp."

Now, I understand. And for someone I have never met, Ralph seems to understand me better than many people I interact with on a daily basis.

Thank you, Ralph.

June 2008: Happy elsewhere

Almost pathetic. I've been so stressed out at work, I hardly went anywhere during the month of June. One movie and one art exhibit—that's it. And I just realized that it's almost halfway through July and I haven't had a blog post yet. I sure hope things change soon.

Duetto
An art exhibit by Migs Villanueva & Anna de Leon

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
http://disney.go.com/disneypictures/narnia
Directed by Andrew Adamson

Still, busy-ness and all, I did spend some time with friends and family. We had dinner with my best friend from high school and her husband, had lunch with two good friends from university, and another lunch with my husband's brother and sister (and her family).

I always spend some time at night reading, and I've been at "Nazi Gold" for almost two months. My husband hates the type—says it's way too small, and I have to agree. If it used a regular type size, it would easily be double its thickness. But it's a very interesting read. But somewhere in the middle, I took a break to read the graphic novel "Fables: Legends in Exile" because I just borrowed it. Fun!

And finally, my husband and I watched the documentary "Helvetica" at home. Yes, it's about the font. How nerdy can one get, huh?

When bookworms wed

…they put their books together, separate all the duplicates, and give them away as souvenirs during their wedding, which they hold in a library.

That's what two friends did when they got married last week. And the wedding really was in a library, though a specialized and, therefore, very pretty library. They let their guests choose which titles to bring home, so for half an hour, their bookworm friends were too busy browsing to talk or eat. And since they had more books than guests, everyone got to bring home more than one (I saw several with five books each!).

I got two books: Salman Rushdie's "The Satanic Verses," which I didn't read when it was the talk of the town so many years back, and Margaret Atwood's "Oryx and Crake," which my husband assures me I am going to like. I haven't read anything by Atwood yet, so I hope he's right. He just handed me another Atwood book last night, in fact—yet another to add to my tottering towers.

Each book had a special bookmark—a more personalized souvenir of the occasion—with their names and the date of the wedding. The monogram that you see in the picture is a combination of their initials, P and S.


Here's to a beautiful life of loving and reading together, you two! Congratulations!

Old SF&F

It never fails. When my husband and I go out, we end up in a bookstore. Last Saturday was no exception. This time, we visited a different branch of our favorite used books store because we happened to be in the area. It had so much more science fiction and fantasy than our regular branch, so that's all I bought.

Three of these titles are more than fifteen years old, none of which I've read yet, but they're by authors that I know and love. Mark Budz is as yet unknown to me—his book is the newest, published in 2003. That's another reason why I like buying used books—I can try out new authors without burning a hole through my purse.

Nemesis by Isaac Asimov
science fiction

Clade by Mark Budz
science fiction

Earth by David Brin
science fiction

Her Majesty's Wizard by Christopher Stasheff
fantasy

It's about me

Because today's my day, and because our wedding anniversary is only a month and a half away I'm sharing another essay written by my husband several years ago. He says that he wrote this as a commentary on elitism in literature. He also says that he's poking fun at himself. Except that, after it was first published, everybody who read it saw it as being about me.



I still can't figure out what this kind of writing's called. Fictional non-fiction is the best I can come up with. Whatever it's called, I hope you enjoy it.

My wife, the book-eater

She is in a ravenous mood again. She often is. The stack of books on the small table on her side of the bed has just become smaller. She is starting on a new one. Around her lie the remains of what used to be a book. Wisps of paper, shards of cover stock, bits of binding glue, all covered in a clear viscous fluid. Another hapless victim.

Starting another book? I ask, my eyebrows furrowed as deeply as I can make them furrow. I wish I had thicker eyebrows. “Envious?” she asks, bright-eyed. “No,” I snap, turn off my nightlight, and will myself to sleep. A half-hour later, I succeed. In the morning I rise before she does, and as I walk to the door I need to tiptoe among the remains of Science Fiction Masterpieces on the floor. I heave a sigh.

Friends ask me if my wife is a voracious reader. They don’t know the half of it. My wife treats books unconscionably. To her they are not to be savored but devoured, with large chomps, with gurgling and gasping, while making noises one does not make in polite company. She takes the whole mass in her mouth, and, unmindful of manners, picks the poor book clean with tongue and teeth, then spits out the gooey remains. One spots a fragment of a page, a scrap of the spine—of The Chronicles of Narnia or Starship Troopers or Ender’s Game—on the floor in the living room, in the kitchen, in the study, in the bathroom, in the bedroom, transforming any given room in the house into a crime scene.

Vicious is the word.

Early on a Saturday afternoon, as I descend the stairs to the living room, pondering the ambiguity of Macbeth’s ending (are peace and order restored to the kingdom after the regicide is himself overthrown, or does the cycle of assassination, usurpation, and internecine struggle for the throne continue well into the future?), I will spot her sprawled languidly on the living room sofa, masticating contentedly on Arthur C. Clarke or Ursula LeGuin or Anne McCaffrey or J. K. Rowling. With a heroic effort to hide my disapprobation, I move quietly to the stereo and put on Bach’s Mass in B Minor, hoping she will take the hint, see the light, pronounce her kyrie’s, and mend her ways. Long ago I made the discovery: hints are lost on her.

We both carry books in our bags whenever we go out. I will have Henry James or T. S. Eliot or Heidegger with me. She will be packing Neil Gaiman or Madeleine L’Engle or Ray Bradbury. We will come home hours later, her bag invariably lighter than mine. Not that she is in any danger of depleting her stock. She has more books than I do and has gone through a larger proportion of hers than I have of mine. That is only to be expected. When you go through your books as intemperately as she does, and when I read as slowly and deliberately as I do, one expects her to be the faster one.

Whatever did I see in this woman nearly a decade ago when I asked her to be my wife? Yes, I do realize that one does not look for a clone of oneself as a marriage partner, that one is inevitably drawn to one’s opposite, one’s complement. Mutt and Jeff, Laurel and Hardy, Beatrice and Benedick, Heloise and Abelard. But must my spouse be so far to the other end of the personality spectrum? Must she be so different from me that the gulf between us exists as a taunt? And why must I be the only one between the two of us to be bothered by it?

The crux of the matter is this: she does not understand that books are founts of learning. They are temples, reliquaries, bearers of the wisdom of the ages. They are to be regarded reverently, treated with great care, read quietly but attentively. Your surroundings must be quiet, you should be sitting up in a good chair that supports your spine, and you must be alert. If any of these conditions are missing, then the whole enterprise is doomed to fail. You will invariably sleepwalk through the book and do it a great dishonor. Having graduated a literature major and being on my way to an advanced degree from a most reputable university, I should know.

My wife, however, will not be ruled. She does not show books the proper respect. She chooses for her delectation, not the classics (no matter how often I tell her that she can dip into my library any time she wishes) but science fiction, fantasy, children’s stories. What’s worse, she opens the books with little regard for the spine, for the paper, for their longevity. And she takes them to bed, and so cannot possibly summon the requisite attention. And she refuses to listen to my pleas.

I need not argue what happens to a person who prefers Asimov to Aristotle, Herbert to Homer, Tolkien to Tolstoy. The mind simply turns to mush, having very little nourishment to live on. The mind is filled with flights of fancy instead of thought. True, her selections are probably lighter, more entertaining. But then, one does not go to Tolstoy hoping for a good time. One goes for the beautiful misery, the exquisite suffering, the difficult wisdom gained from the slow slog through dense literature that is the highest reward of the learned mind. But being learned is not my wife’s ambition. She has no such lofty aspirations.

And so it goes on. Once in while we will be at different sections of a bookstore, I in literature or classics or philosophy, she in science fiction, fantasy, bestsellers. I will browse discreetly, quietly, not wanting to call attention to myself. I will peruse a new translation of Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus, Harold Bloom’s commentary on Shakespeare’s plays, or the new paperback edition of Dostoyevsky’s Karamazov. But when I hear snorting, lipsmacking, and exclamations of “Ooooh!” or “Goody!” from the other side of the room I roll my eyes and hope that no one casts accusing glances at me. I look furtively to my left and right to see if there is a side exit. Moments later I duck out of the store, hie myself to a nearby coffee shop, and cool my heels (and my head). Not too long after, as the cup in front of me slowly empties and as I wonder whether I prefer the Fitzgerald translation of The Iliad to the Mandelbaum, which of the Four Quartets I like best, or whether Mozart’s Requiem is essentially classical or romantic, she approaches, a look of satiety on her face. She sits beside me. I sigh, then put a napkin to the corner of her mouth and wipe off the saliva and bits of pulp. She looks me in the eye. Then she gives me an impossibly soft, unbearably sweet look and plants a wet one on my cheek, as if to say—I don’t care if you’re a fuddy duddy, you big lunk.

I suppose there are many reasons far less compelling to stay married.

Illustration by Alan M. Clark

His final odyssey

I just want to say good-bye to one of my favorite science fiction writers: Arthur C. Clarke. I hope you enjoy your newest adventure!

The world will be a much poorer place without new stories from him.

New old books

After visiting a friend in the hospital, my husband and I decided to go to our favorite used books shop to go treasure hunting again for a couple of hours. Our last similar trip had been way back in November, so it was high time we did it again. Here are the newest, old additions to my piles and piles of yet-to-be-read books:

Tales of the Giraffe by Alexander McCall Smith
detective fiction - the second book in The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series set in Botswana

To Weave a Web of Magic by Claire Delacroix, Lyn Kurland, Patricia McKillip and Sharon Shinn
fantasy - four novellas of fantasy romance

Legacies: A Chinese Mosaic by Bette Bao Lord
non-fiction - stories of diverse experiences of men and women in China during the past fifty years as told by a woman born in China, raised in America, wife of a former American ambassador to China and resident of Beijing in the late 1980s

The Princes of Ireland by Edward Rutherford
historical fiction - an epic saga of individuals and families set against the backdrop of Irish history from its tribal, pagan past to the time of Henry VIII and Ireland's invasion of England

You can see the titles of my previous hunt here. And no, I have not yet read a single book from that expedition.

Dazzling Dozois

Gardner Dozois has been my favorite SF&F editor for the past two decades. I especially look forward to his "The Year's Best Science Fiction" every year. Unfortunately, I only discovered this series in the mid-eighties when bookstores other than that one big chain started operations, so I'm missing the earlier books.

I can never remember what month the book for the year comes out. So last Sunday when we passed by the bookstore where I usually buy it, I left my name and number with instructions to call me when the book arrives. When we got home, I did a web search and it turns out that the 25th annual collection (2007 stories) will be published in July. Hee, I'm early. That's okay though—I want to make sure I get a copy. The market for SF here is still rather limited so the bookstores never buy a lot.

Here are the 32 stories in "The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Fifth Annual Collection" edited by Gardner Dozois. I can't wait for July.

• David Moles: "Finisterra"
• Ken MacLeod: "Lighting Out"
• John Barnes: "The Ocean is a Snowflake, Four Billion Miles Away"
• Gwyneth Jones: "Saving Tiamaat"
• James Van Pelt: "Of Late I Dreamt of Venus"
• Ian McDonald: "Verthandi's Ring"
• Una McCormack: "Sea Change"
• Chris Roberson: "The Sky is Large and the Earth is Small"
• Greg Egan: "Glory"
• Robert Silverberg: "Against the Current"
• Neal Asher: "Alien Archeology"
• Ted Chiang: "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate"
• Justin Stanchfield: "Beyond the Wall"
• Bruce Sterling: "Kiosk"
• Stephen Baxter: "Last Contact"
• Alastair Reynolds: "The Sledge-Maker's Daughter"
• Ian McDonald: "Sanjeev and Robotwallah"
• Michael Swanwick: "The Skysailor's Tale"
• Vandana Singh: "Of Love and Other Monsters"
• Greg Egan: "Steve Fever"
• Kage Baker: "Hellfire at Twilight"
• Brian Stableford: "The Immortals of Atlantis"
• Pat Cadigan: "Nothing Personal"
• Elizabeth Bear: "Tideline"
• Keith Brooke: "The Accord"
• Nancy Kress: "Laws of Survival"
• Tom Purdom: "The Mists of Time"
• Kristine Kathryn Rusch: "Craters"
• Ted Kosmatka: "The Prophet of Flores"
• Benjamin Rosenbaum & David Ackert: "Stray"
• Robert Reed: "Roxie"
• Gregory Benford: "Dark Heaven"

By Moon Alone

The web comic book of a friend of a friend begins tomorrow, January 21.

I don't know Hai, the artist. Neither do I know what the story's about, nor the frequency and duration of the serialization. But I visited the site and the teaser graphic—the book cover—caught me (SF&F's my favorite genre) so now, I've the site bookmarked so I can check it everyday. I sure hope I won't get disappointed!

http://www.bymoonalone.com/

Angels & wolves

The nice thing about going to a medical center that's located in a mall is, you can treat yourself any number of ways after being a good girl and going to the doctor for your check-up. So after this morning's visit, I ended up in a bookstore (yet again!) to get my treat.

I found a copy of the fourth book of Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel series, "Kushiel's Scion." I have the first three and I loved them, and it seems that there's a fifth book out too. What if angels came to earth and had children with humans? Their descendants would be beautiful and would inherit the traits which made the angel perfect for it's role. Kushiel was the angel of justice and his descendants like to hurt and be hurt. They can be very compassionate, but they can also be cruel. Love, spirituality, intrigue, quests, eroticism—wonderful reading.

I also got Carrie Vaughn's "Kitty Takes a Holiday," also part of a series, but thankfully, each book seems to be independent of the others. Thankfully, because it'll be my first, yet it's the third of the series. Kitty's a werewolf, but very much a female—she has a crush on her lawyer and the werewolf hunter. Definitely light reading, I hope it's as funny and entertaining as it sounds!

Fresh book catch

Our office gave us an extra half day off work, so we decided to spend the afternoon trawling for books at the bargain floor of the NBS Superstore. Added to my piles of yet-to-read books:

The Fatal Shore by Robert Hughes
non-fiction, history - about the colonization of Australia

Nathaniel's Nutmeg by Giles Milton
non-fiction, history - the story of nutmeg, the spice trade, captain Nathaniel Courthope and the island of Run

Black Maria by Diana Wynne Jones
children's fantasy fiction

The Kin by Peter Dickinson
children's historical fiction

All Tomorrow's Parties by William Gibson
science fiction

Super-State by Brian Aldiss
science fiction

Night Watch by Stephen Kendrick
mystery/detective fiction - Sherlock Holmes meets Father Brown

Another half year's reading added. I think I'm up to five years now.