What are you currently reading?
As always, I'm reading about fifteen books at the same time and making only a couple of pages of progress on each of them. E-books enable me to switch up what I'm reading depending on my mood. The main book I'm reading is still The World Between Two Covers by Ann Morgan. I recently finished the chapter on colonialism/imperialism, and it's so weird to encounter thoughts on this topic from a white person. I mean, it's good that you feel uncomfortable and awkward about your country's history, and that you're acknowledging the atrocities committed in the name of "civilization", but it's even better for you that that's all you have to feel about it, if that makes sense. You go on about exchanges of culture and how native cultures are strong enough to not be diluted by Anglophone literature and stuff like that, but you get to say it from your outsider's point of view. I think that's what bothers me most about this - that reading literature from outside her nation is a sort of noble quest, while in bookstores here the main display area is for all sorts of foreign literature while the local literature is somewhere in the back, most of the time near the textbooks. Idk man this book makes me feel like I'm learning a lot one moment and in the next I'm raging about privilege.
What did you recently finish reading?
This week I finished The Pedant's Return by Andrea Barham, which was full of trivia and fact-checking, and though it was interesting I don't think it's the kind of book you keep around for reference in this day and age.
Be Frank With Me by Julia Claiborne Johnson was lovely, with a nice small cast I got to know pretty thoroughly, and beautiful, unique Frank who ended up saving the day.
I'm about four years late to the party with Cinder by Marissa Meyer, which I got into during a sort of side project where I'll try to read as many fairytale retellings as I can get my hands on (or I can stomach).
Just today I finished Ramona and Her Father by Beverly Cleary, just in time for the author's 100th birthday! Love her and her work.
For Buwan ng Panitikang Pilipino I read The Stories So Far by Jessica Zafra. My favorite of the lot was 914, 915, 916 (The neighbors keep missing each other in an apartment building that messes with the space-time continuum.)
What do you think you'll read next?
I have quite a few Filipino books on shelf - two graphic novels, two more collections of short stories, and another YA novel - and I want to prioritize them for now.
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