Read Or Die July 2007 Meeting: Love Gathers All

Still have to post about the National Conference On Children’s Literature, the launch of Teens Read Too, the LIKHAAN lecture series, etc. And the book fair is in a MONTH. Kill us now.

In the meantime, here’s a truncated report of our July 28 event at A Different Bookstore (Serendra), entitled (ex post facto) “Love Gathers All.” Much thanks again to our sponsors: the National Book Development Board, Anvil Publishing, Mr. Lew Edwards, Cyberstream, and A Different Bookstore. Thanks as well to Kenneth Yu of Philippine Genre Stories, Ex Libris UP, NWA and Komiks.ph for lending their support!

The event pretty much went according to schedule. RoD sorted a ton of business matters–this basically involved a lot of pointing and ducking under tables when it came to assigning errands–from 2PM to 4PM. Join. Us. We can has needs your help. It has been agreed that the Bagong Libro secretariat will be dressing up as the Six Wives of Henry VIII at the Book Fair. The only exception will be Rotch, who will appear as Mary, Queen of Scots, complete with a slave boy carrying her train. Since she will be in charge of everything cosplay-related, um, if you hear particularly pointed heels clacking towards you, followed by a jeweled fan narrowly missing swiping off your head (haha!), please take it as a reminder to proceed to the pre-judging area. Nothing personal, just business. Also, if you see a white-wigged, ominously ruffled, gimlet-eyed woman bearing down in your direction, that will be M as Catherine of Aragon (i.e., Logistics Head). Volunteers, take note!

Rael should be Anne Boleyn, I think. I’ll be Jane Seymour lol. Maybe we should all just come toting beheaded heads with labels.

The National Book Development Board Book Club arrived at around 4PM with Atty. Andrea Flores (the Executive Director, Erin Cabanawan (Executive Assistant), moderator Tara FT Sering, and author Romina Gonzalez. We discussed Gonzalez’s enchanting anthology “Welostit & Other Stories” (UP Press). I think more than a few members of the book club had read it already–M pronounced the collection particularly fine and we would encourage young adult readers, especially, to read it–so the discussion went smoothly. Though I was missing for a great deal of it since Ms. Joyce (of Anvil) and I were out and about looking for dislocated poets (and coffee).

(Pic c/o Arpee. L-R: Romina Gonzalez, Tara FT Sering, Andrea Pasion-Flores)

Ms. Gwen Galvez (the marketing manager of Anvil) also came with bags of chips and nuts which added to the rather domestic atmosphere of the intermission, i.e., meal time! The Bookworm Cafe served a very delicious repast–the crepes and fruit shakes? Eat and die, that’s our new motto! A Different Bookstore Serendra really is a nice place for literary gatherings of this sort. Dean Alfar’s LitCritters conduct their bimonthly meetings in the store. While this was our first time hosting a meeting in ADB, it turned out to be our most memorable. We should thank the store management–Mr. Chito Bauzon (marketing manager) and Ms. Catherine Lopez-Uy (bookstore owner)–and the staff, of course, for making sure that we had everything we needed and for providing such a conducive atmosphere. I think they’re open to other groups hosting their meetings in the store so just contact them at 8560330 if interested.

Back to the meeting: Sarge Lacuesta and Mookie Katigbak had also arrived by then, followed closely by Marra PL Lanot and Pete Lacaba. Teo Antonio had arrived early with the Anvil staff, wearing his ubiquitous beret. You could sense people imploding from some shared sense of expectancy though we settled our stomachs–and nerves–with even better coffee. I’ve always been a huge fan of Mr. Lacaba so having him there was both gratifying and unsettling at the same time. And though Teo Antonio had conducted a balagtasan in RodCon with Mike Coroza, I didn’t see any of it since I was too busy losing my mind over the logistics of the convention, so I was personally looking forward to listening to his poetry (which I admire tremendously), at last.

The poetry reading began at around 6PM. In her opening remarks, Ms. Gwen Galvez noted that it was the perfect time and place for such a gathering–a thunderstorm outside, nowhere to go, good poetry in the offing, and coffee in the sideboard.

Mr. Lacuesta and Ms. Katigbak both read from “Love Gathers All,” a beautiful collection of poetry by Filipino and Singaporean poets published by Anvil and Ethos Press. Ms. Katigbak read Ramon Sunico’s moving “Wet Sonnet” (the weather proved more cooperative than expected by providing the apposite sound effects with a loud thunderclap in the middle of the reading) and Mr. Lacuesta evoked memories of his father and shared afternoons with “Sundays At The Harbor.”

Ms. Lanot read from “Witch’s Dance at Iba Pang Tula,” her renowned collection of Spanish, Filipino and English poems (Anvil Publishing). She read “Tadyang,” a soft, brutal commentary on the language of love, and “Ako’y Ibigin Mo, Lalaking Matapang,” a feminist narrative of the perverse and perverted sexual nature of colonialism. The audience prevailed upon her to read one of her Spanish poems, which she did with charming hesitation, a short poem called “Como Quieras.” She also read a poem which she crafted as a response to Pablo Neruda though the title escapes me now (Karen took more judicious notes, I think, and should be coming along to edit this entry because I’m not sure if my illegible notes are up to par. I fail).

Pete Lacaba followed with poems from “Edad Medya (Anvil Publishing),” a pungent and humorous collection of poetry about the attritions and (dubious) joys of encroaching middle age. Mr. Lacaba began with a provocative question which set the tenor of his reading: “Are there minors in the audience?” which elicited predictable howls of denial (and bad puns about virgin ears). Mr. Lacaba read briskly and with a celebrated screenwriter’s ear for good pacing. His poems retain something of a cinematic precision–a man wryly recounting the various ills (the itis) of his aging body, a satirical catalog of the ways of whores, the scene of a lovers’ denouement. It would be interesting to compare his poetic language with that of Marra Lanot (his ‘roommate), I think. Lanot’s poetry, despite being very pure in form, retains the baroque and sinuous curvatures of the romantic mode, which might or might not be an inevitable function of being a trilingual poet. Her predecessors are Pablo Neruda, Francisco Arcellana and Nick Joaquin (of whom she has written a scholarly study). Lacaba’s poems are underlined with the sharply critical sensibilities which informed Orapronobis and Sister Stella, layered with symbols and paradoxes and metaphysical soliloquies.

Teo Antonio stood up to thunderous applause. He read from “Mga Tula Ng Pag-Ibig,” (Anvil Publishing) an anthology of love poems which he dedicated to his wife. The book itself is out of print, which is unfortunate, because I think it contains some of Antonio’s best poems. What I find most striking about Antonio’s poetry is how so much of his language is musically and lyrically wedded to the poetic traditions of Philippine folk literature. I wonder if this is a deliberate aesthetic choice or simply an organic result of decades worth of immersing himself in native poetic forms. Like the poets he most admire–Francisco Balagtas and Jose Corazon de Jesus–Antonio is clearly meant to be heard, not really read, though some of his most dexterous compositions are nuanced, ironic, verbal puns which render well to the arduous meanderings of reading and re-reading.

A dialog with the audience followed in which issues of influence and continuity arose. While there were writers in the audience, the majority of us were readers, and readers who did not read much Filipino poetry at that. It was an enlightening session in more ways than one in the sense that I think there was a lot of honesty between readers and poets. One of our members, Emil, noted the disjunction between the poetry taught at school by educators and poetry as it has evolved in the hands of its practitioners. He asked whether rap, for example, was poetry and if so what sort of poetry was it since it violated most of the decorous requirements of canon (see Kae’s thoughts on the literary canon). If one had–forcibly or otherwise–assimilated the meters of William Shakespeare’s sonnets, one might therefore be constitutionally incapable of absorbing the ill-starred, dissonant forms of rap or street poetry. Mr. Lacaba replied that there could be ambiguous notions of morality and of the uses of poetry which were at play here, and that it wasn’t simply an issue of aesthetic preferences. What was considered sacred in poetry, and what was profane? Who should make the distinction?

Teo Antonio mentioned the delinquent youth communities of Tondo as profiled in the ground-breaking documentary “Tribu.” These young people composed scathing, transgressive and obscene poems about sex, politics, power, and personality, but there is no chance in hell that their poems would ever be mentioned in school curricula, or that these poems would be considered primarily as literary creations and not just sociological curiosities which have to be deconstructed according to the very politics which spawned them. I thought of the 19th century ladino poets of Tondo–among whom could be counted Andres Bonifacio and Emilio Jacinto along with Jose Corazon de Jesus–who for the most part declaimed their poetry in the twin contexts of drama and rebellion. Theater was inseparable from protest and the actor-poet was the harbinger of revolution. I wondered whether Emil’s perceived disjunction could be located at this very intersection between history and literature, where the sacral quality of the new nation was elevated at the cost of its profane origins, where myth was valued at the expense of play, where poetry was written and not acted upon.

It was at this point, as if on cue, that Angelo Suarez arrived, smiling and a little shy, bearing his poem, the very brazen and Shakesperean “Ako Ang World.” Suarez has been making waves (sometimes literally) in the literary scene for his idiosyncratic poetry readings and his even more daring approach to poetry, which has been given serious praise (and criticism) by his peers and established writers like Jun Cruz Reyes and Teo Antonio. Friends who have read his poetry told me that they loved Suarez’s poems because of his bravura ‘word plays,’ which loop in and around themselves in endlessly fascinating arcs. Suarez’s implied affinity with what he calls the ‘process-based’ Oulipo poets like Raymond Queaneau and Alain Robbe-Grillet is reflected in in his poetry, in which the frenetically entangled linguistic wiring short-circuits itself in a burst of objectified declaration: Ako ang world. At the same time, Suarez is obviously rooted in the works of iconoclastic Filipino poets like Alejandro Abadilla from whose poem “Ako ang daigdig” Suarez’s title epigraph is taken. The resolution of the divisive impulses current in Filipino poetry, Suarez implies, lies in closing the gap between the poem and the poet, for whom sacredness and profanity are subjective attitudes to the world at large, at rest, at war. The poem is the world, and the world is the poet, and the poem is the poet, and the poet is the world.

Needless to say, everything that followed was necessarily anti-climactic. We had some more coffee, people bought books for signing, and we noted that we should definitely do this again. One of Read Or Die’s avowed goals is to bring readers and writers together but this is the first time that we had done something like this for ourselves (second, actually, since Dean Alfar, Vin Simbulan and Andrew Drilon had spoken for us more than a year ago on speculative fiction). Ms. Gwen was also pleased and promised to help us organize another panel–this time focusing on contemporary Filipino essayists–for our next meeting. Watch out for that one. Thank you again, Anvil and NBDB!! Both institutions have been very supportive of endeavors promoting and advocating Filipino literature.

Read Or Die Meeting 7/07

(Seated on the second row — Teo Antonio, Angelo Suarez, Marra Lanot, Pete Lacaba. Sarge Lacuesta and Mookie Katigbak had to leave early).

More pictures at Mia’s Multiply and at Arpee’s blog.

July 31, 2007 | Filed Under Latest, Read or Die, Events | 2 Comments

Thoughts on the Literary Canon

During the Read or Die meeting last Saturday, poet Angelo Suarez mentioned this issue in response to one of the comments that came up during the discussion. His response got me thinking, once again, about the issue of the literary canon.

Most of what we understand about literature emerges from how it’s been taught to use since we were children. We grow up with familiar names like William Shakespeare, Robert Frost, Jane Austen and Edgar Allan Poe; we grow up reading their works, these so-called “Classics”, being told by our professors and our elders that they are universal masterpieces that transcend the boundaries of time. Sometimes, however, it takes us years before we can actually agree with that sentiment. In my case, for example, I was acutely allergic to the classics until my last two years in high school, when I was old enough to appreciate them. Admittedly, I still get bored by more than a few of the works in that department.

Classics — or, to put it in more academic terms, the literary canon — is a body of literary works that are considered, at least by the academic world, as the “greatest that Literature has to offer”. Anyone studying literature or at least remotely interested in literature frequently encounters this canon. From the way it is taught in schools, students are often asked to read the works, and — whether they like it or not — acknowledge their greatness. Nowadays, readers and scholars alike fall under two general categories: pro-canon and anti-canon. While there are many different arguments in the anti-canon department, the one that hits closest to home for us Filipinos would be something along the lines of If the literary canon is supposed to cover the greatest that Literature has to offer, then why does it only seem to contain dead white men?

This is a valid point, at least at face value. What a lot of people tend to forget is that socio-cultural issues and politics set aside, the canon was established for one reason: to provide readers around the world with a list of some of the great books that they should probably read before they die. Yes, it was established by Europe and America. Yes, it is filled with dead white men (and the occasional dead white female). But it’s also hard to deny the fact that a lot of the works within the canon really ARE wonderful works of literature. Of course, the reasons behind their “greatness” are also varied. Some of them are there because of their so-called “universality”. Others are there because of their literary technique, which may not be appreciated by the general masses but is certainly valuable to literary scholars. Still others are great because of the way they reflect particular realities, principles or sentiments of the time period they belonged to. Regardless, they are, in their own rights, great works, and some of them most certainly deserve the title ‘masterpiece’.

It might also be good to understand why the canon was created in the first place. Before the 1950’s, there was no organized movement to establish a canon… literary works of great value and artifice were simply passed down from age to age in the school rooms. It was only in the 1950’s, during a crisis of the Humanities in the USA and Europe, that the literary scholars of those regions decided to piece together a canon. Were it not for that movement, there wouldn’t BE a canon to serve as a guideline. Furthermore, literature study as we know it today might not have existed.

The literary canon is, indeed, something that should be problematized by the literary scholars our country. However, I believe that the popular approach that literary scholars and manifestos seem to take with it is wrong. We should not disregard the canon because of its political nature: it can’t help but BE political because of its origins. Instead, perhaps we should study both the great works of the literary canon as the scholarly world knows it alongside our own “canon-worthy” masterpieces. And we should not forget that at the end of the day, the canon is just an idea. It’s up to us, as readers, to determine what we think of as great or not. We were, in some ways, the real creators of the canon because readers were the ones who decided what to continue reading and what to pass on to their families, their friends, and whoever else happened to love reading as much as they did.

Let’s face it, readers… there are only so many books that we can read before we die, and the canon certainly has a few of them. Those works didn’t outlast centuries upon centuries for no reason, and the canon undoubtedly makes a good starting point should one ever be lost over what he or she should read.

July 31, 2007 | Filed Under Latest, Miscellany, Reading | 4 Comments

Teo Antonio’s Poem of Love

Well, if you guys misssed out on the event last Saturday, Arpee took a video of one of our dear poets, Teo Antonio. Last weekend’s Read or Die meet was really fun.

Other poets such as Pete Lacaba, Angelo Suarez, Marra Lanot, Sarge Lacuesta, and Mookie Katigbak also read different love poems for the club. Anvil also sponsored a merienda for all attendees.

To read more about it, you can read the rest from Arpee’s blog.

July 31, 2007 | Filed Under Events | 1 Comment

Literary Cosplay Wishlist

The Stepping Out: Literary Cosplay Competition at the Manila Book Fair is turning into a highly-anticipated event (CAN’T WAIT) and Charles Tan has written about the Top 10 Characters He Wants to See Cosplayed. I don’t read much Fantasy, so most of those characters are unfamiliar, but I think it’s a brilliant idea to list down the literary characters you want to see in the flesh. At best, those people willing to enter but lacking any costume ideas would be inspired. Here is my list thus far, and I’m sure it’ll get longer:

1. Johnny Rico from Starship Troopers by Robert E. Heinlein - Because the big guns would be cool. Not the movie adaptation, please.

2. Fantomas by Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre - A less well-known criminal than Arsene Lupin but you really can’t beat the costume. You can even use an unmodified Tuxedo Kamen if you already have one! Just nix the single red rose, replace it with a bloodied dagger and everything is set.

3. Cardinal de Richelieu from The Three Musketeers. Tin and Yukitsu have already professed their burning desire to see the main characters of the Alexandre Dumas novels but this one would make me SO HAPPY.

4. Marquise de Merteuil from Les liaisons dangreuses - Only if she looks like the Glenn Close version.

5. Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand - Okay, I admit it, I’m pimping all the French characters because I want to people with frilly shirts walking around World Trade Center. My favorite underachiever needs love and people should oblige me.

6. Stephen King’s Carrie - WHY NOT. Fake blood and messy props aren’t allowed but a red-dyed prom dress and crazy Sissy Spacek eyes are all that you’ll ever need, really.

7. Scheherazade from Arabian Nights - Personally, it’s the Hallmark Channel’s incarnation which I find most appealing, but there are almost as many depictions of the storyteller as the tales she told.

8. Ray Bradbury’s The Illustrated Man - I want someone to try. Please, please try. So the skin art wouldn’t move as per the description from the stories, and some people may object to partial nudity, but wouldn’t it be cool just to meet someone that looks like this in person? Just so you know, my plea does not merely extend to the yakuza crime lords out there.

9. Captain Ahab from Herman Melville’s Moby Dick - Since I’m dispensing cosplay suggestions anyway, this one goes to the POTC fans. Of course, Ahab does not have the same, er, jauntiness as dear Captain Jack Sparrow. His temperament is closer to Barbossa, I guess. Or Captain Teague. XDD

10. The Wife of Bath - Gotta represent Mr. Chaucer somehow. Lol. The dear woman has a special place in my heart and her part in Canterbury Tales is the only one I tried to read in the original Middle English.

Also, SHERLOCK HOLMES!!!!

… I think we need to make a forum thread for this.

July 27, 2007 | Filed Under Miscellany, Events | 1 Comment

Harry Potter Book Reviews and Discussions

I’ve finished reading the book and for now all I can say is, in the best tradition of the Lolcats School Of Literary Criticism:

She–she didn’t pull any punches, did she.

Anyway, for more coherent (i.e., macro-less) reviews:

There is, of course, the notorious preemptive review by Michiko Kakutani of the New York Times (in which she compares Harry to Henry V). The Chicago Tribune also launched a series of blog posts about “Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows” in their blog covering the release.

Ron Charles writes about Pottermania and the ‘death of reading’ in this article in the Washington Post. I think it’s an interesting viewpoint. While a lot of fans and reading advocates marvel at the fact that Harry Potter makes young people read through the sheer magic and pull of its storyline, and that it has become a unique phenomenon in the sense of uniting readers all over the world together, awaiting every new installment with a fervor that no author has generated since Charles Dickens with his considerably less media-oriented reading public, Ron Charles points out that such a unity “has almost nothing to do with the unique pleasures of reading a novel: that increasingly rare opportunity to step out of sync with the world, to experience something intimate and private, the sense that you and an author are conspiring for a few hours to experience a place by yourselves — without a movie version or a set of action figures. Through no fault of Rowling’s, Potter mania nonetheless trains children and adults to expect the roar of the coliseum, a mass-media experience that no other novel can possibly provide.” He emphasizes the importance of a ‘real engagement’ with books that can never be conditioned by marketing hysteria and that the practically monomaniacal obsession with Harry Potter by its readers may have paradoxically created “the literary equivalent of a loss of biodiversity.”

Over at the Los Angeles Times, critic Charles Taylor begs to disagree. He believes that Harry Potter is a true literary success and that no amount of media hype can explain or sustain its phenomenal readership. According to Taylor, the success of Harry Potter lies in the “… spontaneous enthusiasm of young readers, which was buoyed and expanded by the enthusiasm of a steadily increasing number of older readers.” He blasts academic critics like Howard Bloom–who has repeatedly condemned the Potter books for their lack of literary value– for their insularity and arrogance. While Bloom states that Harry Potter does not “enrich mind or spirit or personality,” that it is only a form of populist escape for an easily titillated but otherwise lazy reading public, Taylor counters that it is the very escapism, the popular entertainment value, of Harry Potter which is the essence of its richness. Harry Potter celebrates the wonder and adventure of literature, not just “the cult of the beautiful sentences that has turned so much literary fiction into a show-and-tell exercise of polished, bloodless craft.”

Karen Long at the Cleveland Plain Dealer steers a safe course with a pretty short list of recommended ‘post-Potter’ books.

For fan reactions: Mike Smith reviews the book chapter by chapter in his livejournal. There are several interesting discussions linked to over at Metaquotes.

In official news: JK Rowling is apparently contemplating publishing a Harry Potter encyclopedia. She also divulges ‘cut scenes’ from the infamous epilogue in a recent interview with the Today Show. She tells readers what Harry, Ron and Hermione have been up to in the nineteen years between the ‘ending’ and the epilogue and hints at a romance between Neville Longbottom and Luna Lovegood. (Luna is a naturalist!)

July 27, 2007 | Filed Under Latest | 2 Comments

Read Or Die July 2007 Meeting With NBDB and Anvil Publishing

Okay, here’s the formal announcement:

Read Or Die will be holding its July 2007 club meeting at A Different Bookstore (Serendra) on July 28 (Saturday) with the National Book Development Board Book Club and Anvil Publishing . Read Or Die will be discussing its club reading list for July as well as details regarding Ang Bagong Libro and other events and functions the club will hosting at the 28th Manila International Book Fair . If you would like to volunteer for Ang Bagong Libro, please attend the meeting. You can drop by any time between 2PM and 4PM (if you’re not a member, that is. If you’re a member, please come on time!)

At 4PM, the National Book Development Board Book Club will come in to host a book discussion on Romina Gonzalez’s “Welostit and Other Stories,” the club’s Book Of The Month for July. The NBDB Book Club is envisioned to be a high-profile reading group held at coffee shops and restaurants in the metro, and attended by a powerhouse guest list. The club meets once a month and focuses exclusively on Filipino-authored books. All meetings are moderated by Tara FT Sering.

To cap off the afternoon’s events, at 5 PM, Anvil Publishing will be hosting a poetry reading featuring selected poets from their notable roster of writers: Teo Antonio, Marra Lanot, Pete Lacaba, Sarge Lacuesta, Mookie Katigbak, Angelo Suarez, Danton Remoto and Virgilio Almario. (I think Vim Nadera might be coming as well along with Ruel de Vera).

Romina Gonzalez will also be coming for the book discussion of “Welostit.” Tara FT Sering will moderate.

As you can see, the July 2007 meeting is a sponsored and co-hosted meeting with other book groups and publishing houses. We’re trying to develop a new template for book meetings which will encourage interactivity between writers, readers, critics, publishers and bookstores. This is the first time we’re doing this so we’ve been fumbling and stumbling as usual — the object(s) of our clumsiness would know what we’re talking about — but hopefully we can improve on it in future meetings to come.

We’d like to give special thanks to Atty. Andrea Pasion-Flores of NBDB, Ms. Rebecca Arcega of Philsites, Mr. Lew Edwards of A Better Chance Foundation, Ms. Joyce Bernales and Ms. Gwen Galvez of Anvil, and Ms. Catherine Lopez-Uy of A Different Bookstore for their support.

Please come! The RoD meeting is something of a business meeting, so the focus will be on the book fair, volunteers, events for Ang Bagong Libro, and it might get boring if you have no intention of getting involved. But you are definitely welcome to attend the NBDB book discussion and poetry reading.

July 26, 2007 | Filed Under Latest, Read or Die, Events | Leave a Comment

Replacing one vice with another.

A novel (pun intended) idea, but won’t the font be too small for people to read? But hey, any stylish gimmick to spread the love of reading is right up my alley.

TANKBOOKS has launched a series of books that were designed to mimic cigarette packs, in time for the July 1 smoking ban in all closed public spaces in the UK. The mini-tomes are packaged in authentic cigarette flip-tops, with the name of the novel emblazoned where the cigarette brand name should be, complete with foil insert and cellophane wrap. The titles up for grabs are Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness”; Ernest Hemingway’s “The Undefeated” and “The Snows of Kilimanjaro”; Franz Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis” and “In the Penal Colony”; Rudyard Kipling’s “The Man who would be King”, “The Phantom Rickshaw” and “Black Jack”; Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” and Leo Tolstoy’s “The Death of Ivan Ilych” and “Father Sergius”.

July 26, 2007 | Filed Under Books, Miscellany | Leave a Comment

Stepping Out: Literary Cosplay At The Manila Book Fair

STEPPING OUT: A LITERARY COSPLAY COMPETITION

When: September 2, 2007 (Sunday)
Where: Manila International Book Fair (World Trade Center)
Organized by: Read or Die

Guidelines for Qualification

- All characters portrayed must originate from literary works. Characters that have originally come from anime, animated cartoons, video games, table-top games, television shows, and movies — even those that have book adaptations or novelizations, are officially disqualified.

- Costumes must be tasteful and cover appropriate areas of the body. Absolutely no live weapons will be allowed as props. Fire works and messy props (i.e. confetti, fake blood, smoke bombs) are also not allowed.

- The competition organizers reserve the right to disqualify any entry that they consider to be unsuitable, inappropriate, or irrelevant for any reason.

- Failure to comply with any rule, as well as disregarding written and verbal instructions from the Cosplay Team and the competition organizers, will result in the disqualification of the participant from the competition.

Guidelines for Registration

- Contestants must register on or before 14:00 (2 PM) at the READ OR DIE booth. Participants will be asked to provide all information required in the registration forms, as well as sign the release and indemnification agreements at the back of these forms.

- Participants are also asked to bring four (4) full-color full-body photos, print-outs, or photocopies illustrating the character they will be cosplaying. If none can be found, please bring photocopies of the text where the character’s description has been provided in the book or other printed material.

Competition Proper

- Cosplayers will be pre-judged immediately after they have completed the registration process. They well be escorted by the Cosplay Team to the Judging Area, and then escorted out once the process is finished. The competitors are then free to explore the main exhibition space, but are requested to remain in costume for as long as possible.

- At approximately 18:00 (6 PM), the top ten Cosplayers will be asked back by the Cosplay Team for the final judging round, which will commence promptly at 19:00 (7 PM). Competitors who have qualified for the final round but have already left the venue or have shed their costumes at this time will be excluded from the final round.

Criteria for Pre-judging and Judging

- Accuracy: 30% (How closely the costume follows the original design of the character portrayed.)

- Craftsmanship: 30% (How well the costume has been made, the level of difficulty involved in creating the costume, and the creativity employed in materials and construction techniques.)

- Characterization: 30% (How well the contestant portrays the personality of the character they are cosplaying.)

- Over-all Impact: 10%

Competition Awards

- Winners will receive specialty goodie bags containing books and other prizes from the Manila Book Fair, Read or Die, and our Sponsors.

Others

- All cosplayers will be responsible for their own safety as well as the safety of their belongings. Neither the staff nor the organizers are responsible for any injuries and/or inconveniences resulting from their participation in the competition.

- At any point, the competition organizers reserve the right to cancel the contest and put on hold the distribution of prizes. However, this will only occur under extreme circumstances.

- Information given is subject to change by the competition organizers without prior notice.

Notes

- The head of the cosplay committee is Rotch Dumlao so please contact her at magneticrose@gmail.com if you have any questions. I’m redesigning the website of Ang Bagong Libro (again) because our activities are kind of packed.

-Yes, Harry Potter is allowed.

-… I really want to see a group cosplay of Noli Me Tangere. Or The Three Musketeers. *EXPLODES* (Hm, I think we’d be the first official book fair in the world to have a cosplay competition.)

July 25, 2007 | Filed Under Latest, Events | 6 Comments

Reviews

And to cap off this evening’s series of entries — we have three new book reviews posted to Libro.ph:

“The Five Hundred People You Meet In Hell” and “Twisted Travels” by Jessica Zafra, reviewed by Dean Alfar.

“A La Carte: Food and Fiction” edited by Cecilia Manguerra Brainard and Marilyn Ysip Orosa, reviewed by Siege Malvar.

Thanks very much to Dean and to Siege for lending their time and reviewing prowess(es). We hope to put up more reviews of Filipino-authored books. Lord knows we need them. The reviews, I mean– not scholarly or critical analyses per se (those will go to a different project), but honest evaluations by readers.

July 24, 2007 | Filed Under Latest, Books | Leave a Comment

The Man Asia Literary Prize

By the way, the longlist for the inagural Man Asia Literary Prize has been announced. The finalists:

Tulsi Badrinath, The Living God
Sanjay Bahadur, The Sound Of Water
Kankana Basu, Cappuccino Dusk
Sanjiv Bhatla, Injustice
Shahbano Bilgrami, Without Dreams
Saikat Chakraborty, The Amnesiac
Jose Dalisay Jr., Soledad’s Sister
Reeti Gadekar, Families at Home
Xiaolu Guo, 20 Fragments of a Ravenous Youth
Ameena Hussein, The Moon in the Water
Nu Nu Yi Inwa, Smile As They Bow
Jiang Rong, Wolf Totem
Hitomi Kanehara, Autofiction
N S Madhavan, Litanies of Dutch Battery
Laxmi Narayan Mishra, The Little God
Mo Yan, Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out
Nalini Rajan, The Pangolin’s Tale
Chiew-Siah Tei, Little Hut of Leaping Fishes
Shreekumar Varma, Maria’s Room
Anuradha Vijayakrishnan, Seeing The Girl
Sujatha Vijayaraghavan, Pichaikuppan
Xu Xi, Habit of a Foreign Sky
Egoyan Zheng, Fleeting Light

Butch Dalisay made a passing mention during his speech at National Children’s Book Day about having finished his second novel — “Soledad’s Sister,” which is cited in the Man Asia Literary Prize list. I hope it gets into the shortlist and wins the competition. (On a tangent: Several Filipino writers I talked to who joined the Man Asian Literary Prize told me that they’re in the process of finishing their novels in case they get long- or short-listed, since from the date of announcement of the finalists, they will only have a very limited amount of time to submit the completed manuscripts for another round of judging. Well, Prof. Dalisay would have nothing to worry about on this score.)

July 24, 2007 | Filed Under Latest | 1 Comment

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