Filipina Stories

Filipina Stories WikiPilipinas.org is launching a special portal on Filipino women in partnership with Filipina Images and the UP Center for Women’s Studies in time for the celebration of Women’s Month in March 2008. An associated microsite on women’s studies will also be hosted in Filipiniana.net. Both the portal and the microsite aim to profile and celebrate the achievements of Filipinas through time and adversity.

To kick things off, WikiPilipinas and Filipina Images are sponsoring an essay writing contest called Filipina Stories with the theme “Uplifting the Image of the Filipina.”

The winning essay will receive P5,000. Runners-up will get P3,000 and P2,000 respectively. Deadline of submission of entries is on February 29, 2008.

For the complete contest rules, please visit the Filipina Stories contest page.

*Filipina Images is a collaborative blog by Lorna Lardizabal-Dietz, Noemi Lardizabal-Dado and Dine Racoma. Dedicated to reshaping and changing world views about Filipino women, it advocates the real representation of Filipinas across the globe. For so long, whenever one searches the word “Filipina” in Google or Yahoo, pages of search results pointing to dating and porn sites pop up. Filipina Images has changed all that but they need people to keep on blogging. Join the campaign.

February 2, 2008 | Filed Under Latest | 1 Comment

The “Why Nots” of Reading

(Have been lax in re-posting our Manila Bulletin columns here. Sry. Here’s the latest one by Mia).

The “why nots” of reading
By Mia Sereno

When one reads one will always encounter questions, whether they come in the form of exams and academic requirements, personal issues raised by the current text, or half-meant jokes of friends. The most maddening type of question is one that perversely combines a moral obligation to answer with the sly insinuation that there’s no such thing as a right answer, a shining example of which is the simple two-word query: “Why read?”

I’ve been hearing this for years but haven’t given it much thought, since I assumed that nobody expected me to take it seriously; in everyday life we throw around all sorts of “why”s to annoy people and test their patience, but rarely because we’re interested in the answers. (I have, however, heard of someone who, upon being asked about time travel, took out pencil and paper, sat down with the hapless questioner, and worked out the basic equations of special relativity. Whether it helped or scarred someone for life I cannot say.)

Recently, though, I’ve been trying to examine my reading in light of the fact that it’s a sort of obsession that has to be defended from my other obsession, namely, gaming. After trying to explain to a gamer friend that hey Reading Is Important and Books Are Cool (Just As Cool As Max-Level WoW Characters! Or, You Know, Gold Dragunovs!) I had “Why read (when I could be raiding/PVPing/shooting stuff instead)?” thrown in my face for what felt like the thousandth time.

“Because,” I said, “It’s fun. Why not?”

“Oh, okay.”

And that was that.

We say that books are instruments of intellectual growth, propagators of ideas, catalysts of visible change. That’s true. Reading books can be incredibly absorbing and enjoyable, just as fun (and addictive) as your hobby of choice. That’s also true. I don’t think that particular aspect of reading will change, no matter how many alternative forms of entertainment we can come up with in the future.

I was playing in my favorite gaming shop some time ago when a friend picked up the copy of the Iliad I’d stashed beside the keyboard.

“Why are you reading this? Schoolwork?”

“No reason, I just wanted to.”

“Yeah,” he said. “It’s cool.”

***

Reading on the edge

The first thing that entered my mind when our club president mentioned “reading dangerously” was not how some people meet in secret to read banned books, nor the plot of Fahrenheit 451, nor Salman Rushdie or Ken Saro-Wiwa or Jose Rizal (!), but how very easy it would be to get oneself killed or injured while reading. All it would take is a reader, her nose buried in a book, walking down a street then making a misstep: falling into an open manhole, for instance, or crossing a street at the wrong moment, or maybe colliding with a telephone pole…

Thankfully self-preservational instinct is a built-in feature, and so far I and others like me have managed to stay out of harm’s way by looking up from the book every so often, especially at the sound of honking cars.

It’s interesting to watch people who read while walking or commuting. One starts to wonder what it is about the book that’s so riveting the reader can’t put it down. Apart from students studying for exams, I’ve seen people devouring romance novels while crammed sardine-like into jeeps; schoolboys fighting over a comic book as they emerge from their classroom; distracted young men stumbling to a coffee shop counter while reading essays penned by a long-dead philosopher, bumping into any number of tables, chairs, and customers along the way.

What holds their attention? The list of books being read by such people with such dedication would probably yield many fascinating titles, and not a few surprises.

***

Living with books

How do you arrange your books, and how do you find places to put them? I think it’s a common problem for readers: you buy and buy and read and read until you run out of shelves — and then any space not occupied by a household appliance, piece of furniture, or person is commandeered by crazy book piles. In my case, I have three bookshelves, and most of the shelves have double rows of books. Trying to get one of the “hidden” books often results in the whole front row crashing down on the unfortunate person. My room often resembles a disaster area, except instead of rubble I have books and the occasional stray page.

Once I tried to organize my books. It took me the better part of a day, but the sense of satisfaction lasted for weeks. The ordered arrangement didn’t.

When looking for a book I’ve misplaced, I navigate shelves of physics textbooks mixed with high fantasy and apologetics, devotionals rubbing shoulders with science fiction anthologies, books about cats and drug addiction and Japanese history all lumped together. Then I try to make sense of the tragedies, cookbooks, and computer magazines. I dive into piles of hardcovers and paperbacks. Then I move on to the books stacked on the floor, inside my cabinets, and in the space under my desk and computer table.

Sometimes I feel that I should take better care of my books; should make sure, at least, that I know where things are instead of having vague combinations of Title-Author-Location floating around in my head. The problem is that I don’t let books stay on their shelves too long. I believe in re-reading good books, in taking them around with you and sneaking a few pages in between classes or while standing in line, in slipping them into backpacks and handbags so you can share them with friends you happen to meet, in going to sleep with your head pillowed on Arfken and then waking up because the Belgariad is giving you backache. We have our own ways of loving books. Mine involves literally living with them. Granted, it’s not a very healthy lifestyle…

***

Notes on reading science

I’m not the first to note that many writers are afraid of writing science. It’s funny, because some of those writers actually write science fiction. While I don’t believe that writers have to be good at science to write science fiction, I think that some knowledge of science — just the basics, mind, enough that you don’t actively fear it — would be helpful. It’s jarring to read a story that mentions or features something scientific when at the same time the writer’s dislike of the subject is all too obvious. Or, well, a story that tries to be scientific but fails badly. As a reader, I want to read fiction with science that’s not only solid, but graceful; something that incorporates science into its structure in a natural way, with as much regard for the story and the imagery as for the correctness of the numbers and terms.

It’s frustrating to read stories written by people who don’t treat the subject with the respect it deserves. Or treat it like it’s magic. I’ve read some critiques of modern science that castigate it for becoming the “mythology of our times” or call it a “religion,” and though I don’t agree with those critiques, I do admit that many people think of science as having a certain mystique. This sometimes happens in science fiction: scientists are portrayed as godlike intellectuals with superhuman brains and subhuman common sense (not to mention awful social skills), while science itself is shown more as an inexplicable magical force than a discipline that has its own share of flaws and weaknesses.

The fact remains, though, that it’s useless to go around telling people “science isn’t scary, try to learn more about it!” without doing anything to prove that science isn’t scary. The task is made doubly harder by the fact that some scientists (a minority, yes, but a rather visible minority) revel in being arcane and incomprehensible. They relish the awestruck fear their discipline induces. I remember one professor’s introductory lecture to a general education science course for non-science majors as one long speech on the difficulties of physics, jumping from Newton to Einstein to Bohr to Maxwell without pause or delay. As my classmates’ eyes glazed over he moved on to the difficulties of modern physics: string theory, quantum gravity, dark matter. He ended the lecture by writing Schrodinger’s wave equation on the board with a flourish and grinned at the resulting groans of despair.

What scientists should do is try to reach out to more people — except most scientists have spent so long writing papers for academic journals that they talk either in monosyllables or in sentences like “an analytic approach to the problem of finding the energy spectra for a particle in a finite potential well involves the solution of a pair of parametric equations and an approximation of the cosine function,” so it’s useless to listen to them anyway. Right?

…Not really. A lot of scientists are very articulate and comprehensible (not to mention charming conversationalists!); some of them write books for the general public, and do it with much verve and style. No, I’m not talking about Stephen Hawking — in my opinion A Brief History of Time is a bad introduction to the subject and only serves to reinforce a lot of misconceptions — but about people who have learned to talk about science in terms of everyday concepts that are familiar to just about anyone. This kind of “everyday” science is something that writers and readers of science fiction would do well to know.

However, it takes a little motivation to actually submit oneself to reading basic introductions to science — who wants to look at equations when you can be discussing concepts? — and it’s really much better to read something to whet the appetite first. So in the spirit of broadening knowledge, whetting appetites, and all that jazz, I would like to recommend the following books:

Six Easy Pieces by Richard Feynman. The author was a brilliant, brilliant physicist with a wonderful sense of humor. His writing is a joy to read. If you can’t find this, try one of his other books (Surely You’re Joking…, etc) — reading about his life will dispel the myth of the scientist as a cold-hearted human with perfect logic circuits for a brain. (If you hate equations with a passion, skip Easy Pieces and look for the other books. You may change your mind about equations after reading Surely You’re Joking, Mr Feynman! — his enthusiasm is infectious)

Einstein’s Dreams by Alan Lightman. Another brilliant physicist, this time writing… physics fiction. Oh, it’s beautiful. This book is similar in structure to Calvino’s Invisible Cities, except you have Einstein and his friend Besso instead of Marco Polo and Kublai Khan and different modes of time instead of cities. The prose is exquisite, and some of the pieces are not so much vignettes as they are vivid paintings in the form of words. Lightman also wrote Good Benito, a book about a physicist who learns, loves, lives… Plus! Exciting research!

Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein’s Outrageous Legacy by Kip Thorne. A renowned physicist (and co-author of one of the best general relativity textbooks in existence) tells the story of “a revolution in our view of space and time, and its remarkable consequences.” He writes from a first-person point-of-view, so you really feel like you’re in the thick of the action. I’ve used this both as a reference for a general relativity study group and as a rainy day read, and it just got better with every reading.

Paradigms Regained: A Further Exploration of the Mysteries of Modern Science by John Casti. I found this while looking for a textbook in my lab’s library, and I’ve held on to it ever since. (Of course if people start looking for it I’ll return it, but since nobody else is reading it…) It presents several interesting topics in a quasi-legal format: there’s a case (from the previous book, Paradigms Lost), a general overview of the background, an appeal, and a decision. The suspense regarding the decision lures you in; the content keeps you hooked.

Science Solitaire: Essays on Science, Nature, and Becoming Human by Maria Isabel Garcia.

I was so happy when this won the National Book Award last year, since it’s one of the most engaging books I had the pleasure of reading in 2007. The essays are wonderful, showcasing interesting ideas and perspectives that encourage the reader to look at nature with fresh eyes. Even better, it’s very easy to find (as compared to the other books, which might be unavailable in local bookstores) as it’s published by Ateneo Press and carried by a lot of major bookstores here.

***

Virtual bookshelves and soapboxes

Some time after we posted about online bookshelves on our blog, a Shelfari staff member left us a comment encouraging us to visit Shelfari and check out their new “bookshelf.” It certainly looks better than the old layout – the shelf-like feel is a nice touch – and the improved functionality makes tagging and organizing books easier. The “I’m reading,” “I plan to read,” and “Own” categories are particularly helpful additions, though the process for adding and categorizing books needs a little streamlining. URL is http://www.shelfari.com/ and our Shelfari page is at http://www.shelfari.com/readordiephilippines/.

Speaking of our blog – it’s at http://read-or-die.org/blog/, and it’s where we post event announcements, reading lists, book reviews, and the occasional opinion on just about any book-related topic we can think of. The opinion posts give us ways to let out steam (or hot air, as the case may be) and, happily enough, have also turned out to be venues for interesting, lively discussions. Blogging is after all not something done in a vacuum; the best part of having a blog is participating in a dialogue taking place among all sorts of people with all sorts of views. We exchange face-to-face interaction for electronic words that, while they may not carry as much visible feeling as actual conversations, can be linked, commented on, and ultimately spawn posts on other blogs.

I don’t hold with the view that the blogosphere is the new power in the world of media, but – derogatory soapbox analogies notwithstanding – my views on reading and literature are all the richer for the ideas I’ve seen presented, attacked, and defended on blogs.

***

Books About Town

Poet and critic Ronald Baytan will launch his first collection of poems, The Queen Sings the Blues, on February 2, 2008, Saturday, from 5:00 to 7:00pm, at Powerbooks, Greenbelt 4, Makati.

Published by Anvil, The Queen Sings the Blues brings together 47 poems written between 1992 and 2002. In this book, the queen croons the bluest of “songs of the vulnerable heart.” From the first impulses of love, the poems move to the different phases and faces of an othered existence—a decade’s musings on the catwalks of desire: from bathhouses to bars, from trains to rooms, from the closet to the stage. Dr. J. Neil C. Garcia, co-editor of the Ladlad series, writes: “The reader can only be blessed in the presence of such candor, the majesty and benevolence of this poet’s bravely loving and carnal
imagination.”

Ronald Baytan teaches literature at De La Salle University-Manila. He finished his Ph.D. in English Studies at the University of the Philippines-Diliman. He is a co-editor of Bongga Ka ‘day: Pinoy Gay
Quotes to Live By (Milflores, 2002), and he is currently working on The Queen Lives Alone: Personal Essays.

Co-sponsoring the launch are Anvil Publishing, Inc., The Bienvenido N. Santos Creative Writing Center and the Department of Literature of De La Salle University-Manila, and Powerbooks. For more information, kindly contact Ms. Donna Nitura-Mina (524.4611 loc 541), Mr. Nelson Eleda (637.5141), or Ms. Joyce Bersales (747.1622).

February 2, 2008 | Filed Under Latest, Read or Die | 7 Comments

Butch Dalisay for Write Or Die

You are all invited to attend a talk on “Creative Non-Fiction” by Professor Butch Dalisay on February 2, 2008 (Saturday) from 2PM to 4PM in Powerbooks Trinoma. The talk is part of the Write or Die Writers Write series promoting the UP Gawad Likhaan.

Professor Dalisay is an award-winning writer whose latest novel “Soledad’s Sister” was shortlisted for the inaugural Man Asian Literary Prize. He also writes a regular column in the Philippine Star.

The talk is free and you don’t need to register. Just drop by and bring your friends. See you there~

January 31, 2008 | Filed Under Latest | Leave a Comment

Write Or Die: Butch Dalisay (Notice)

We’ve already sent an emailed update about this but please note again that Butch Dalisay’s talk will not push through today. It has been moved to February 2 (Saturday) and will take place in Powerbooks Trinoma from 2PM to 4PM.

Poetry schedule will be posted later. Thank you.

January 25, 2008 | Filed Under Latest | 1 Comment

Some kind of updates

We’ve been so busy–and on my part sick (again)–that it’s just been one press release after another. Sorry, one of my resolutions for this year is to blog more frequently. I used to write regularly before but have fallen behind on a lot of things c/o a rather insane schedule.

Dr. Isagani Cruz’s talk went really well last Sunday. I’ll upload the recording as well as some pictures. It was the most quotable WoD session ever. Instead of literary criticism, he went and talked about how to win literary contests. Hehe. “The majority of judges for literary awards are usually over 50 and think that the Beatles are still performing and that Elvis is still missing.” LOL.

January 24, 2008 | Filed Under Latest | 1 Comment

Write Or Die Features Isagani Cruz

The UP Institute of Creative Writing in cooperation with Powerbooks and Read Or Die present the second series of Write Or Die: Writers Write lecture-workshops. The discussions will be held every weekend from November 2007 to February 2008 in different Powerbooks branches and will be moderated by some of the best writers in the country. The purpose of the workshops is to promote the Gawad Likhaan: The University of the Philippines Centennial Literary Prize.

The workshops will have four areas: Fiction (November 2007-December 2007), Non-Fiction (January 2008), and Poetry (February 2008).

Isagani Cruz will be speaking on literary criticism on January 20 (Sunday), 2008 (Saturday) in Powerbooks Greenbelt from 2PM to 4PM. The talk is free and open to the public.

Isagani Cruz is an award-winning writer, educator, playwright and critic. He is also a co-founder and chairman of the Manila Critics Circle which gives out the annual National Book Awards.

For more information please contact us at readordie.ph@gmail.com.

January 16, 2008 | Filed Under Latest, Events | 2 Comments

Write Or Die: Writing Non-Fiction feat. Maria Isabel Garcia of “Science Solitaire”

Just in case you’re new to this weblog:

Where Read Or Die promotes reading and a greater awareness of literature–especially Filipino literature–in the Philippines, Write Or Die initiates and supports on projects designed to foster good writing skills in English and in the Philippine languages among both young people and adults. Write Or Die is an advocacy. We believe that writing is an essential aspect of literacy and that writing can transform lives, build communities, and enable individuals to express and find themselves.

The Write Or Die website can be found at http://write-or-die.org.

As for the name – well, we had obviously run out of original ideas. Think Or Die, anyone?

Write Or Die’s launching event is a series of workshops organized with the UP Institute of Creative Writing and Powerbooks to promote the UP Gawad Likhaan (the UP Centennial Literary Awards). The competition is part of the official celebrations of UP’s centennial. There are six awards, each one worth P200,000, for original, book-length works in 3 genres in either English or Filipino: the novel or short story, poetry, and creative nonfiction or sanaysay. Only one prize per genre in either language will be awarded.

There are six awards, each one worth P200,000, for original, book-length works in 3 genres in either English or Filipino: the novel or short story, poetry, and creative nonfiction or sanaysay. Only one prize per genre in either language will be awarded.

The complete rules are available at the UP-ICW office in UP Diliman. They are also available on the UP-ICW website at http://www.upd.edu.ph/~icw and on http://www.panitikan.com.ph, the literary portal hosted by the UP-ICW. Again, more on the prize later.

The workshops—called Writers Write—kicked off with a series on novel writing on November 2007 in Powerbooks and will continue every Saturday until February 2008. Writers Write features some of the best writers in the country. The Fiction series was conducted by award-winning novelists Dean Alfar, Jun Cruz Reyes and Charlson Ong.

We would like to encourage people who are not professional or academe-based writers to attend the workshops and submit their works for consideration to the Gawad Likhaan. Teachers are welcome bring their class members to talks. No reservations are needed.

Writers Write has four areas: Fiction (November 2007-December 2007), Non-Fiction (January 2008), and Poetry (February 2008).

Maria Isabel Garcia, winner of the 2007 National Book Awards for Essay for her groundbreaking book “Science Solitaire” (Ateneo Press) and noted science columnist for the Philippine Star, will kickstart the Non-Fiction series on January 12, 2008 (Saturday) in Powerbooks Greenbelt from 2PM to 4PM.

Please come! Ms. Garcia is one of the most fluent writers I’ve had the pleasure of reading. She’ll be talking about science writing, an interesting and—in the Philippines—a fairly novel genre of creative non-fiction. Science teachers are especially invited to attend and to invite their students along. There’s more to writing about science than dry equations and abstruse observations about the world around you.

Much thanks to Dr. Vim Nadera, Dr. Gemino Abad, Professor Joey Baquiran and Ms. Amy Colanta of the UP Institute of Creative Writing for supporting this endeavor. We’d also like to acknowledge our sponsors Powerbooks and WikiPilipinas for their generous help. Watch out for Writers Write updates in this space!

January 10, 2008 | Filed Under Latest, Events | 1 Comment

The Readers #2: Reading 2.0

Er, Happy Holidays? Sorry for the really long radio silence throughout the Christmas season. Members were either out of town, in hibernation, drunk everyday, or–in my case–horribly sick (again).

I don’t think I’m up to the task of writing an entire entry just now so am posting the latest installment of our Manila Bulletin column instead. The Youth and Campus section was on break during the holidays–thank god–but now that it’s back to work for everyone, the column should appear regularly again.

If you sent us press releases/event announcements — Sorry we weren’t able to reply. We’ll put everything in the next column.

Since it’s pretty official already: The club also now has a quarterly print publication called, well, Read Or Die, which is published by National Bookstore. It’s primarily a reader-oriented magazine though I’m swinging for some literary content. It’s free and the first issue should come out in March. “Read Or Die” will be distributed in all NBS outlets nationwide. Watch out for updates in this space.

A radio program is also in the offing. Haha. I’m hoping other members will keep on blogging as we’re spending more and more of our time ‘offline,’ if you know what I mean.

But seriously, this is really exciting and fun. Thanks to everyone who helped us out in the past year. I’m writing a special post just for you guys.

On with the column…

Reading 2.0 (January 5, 2008)

The Rules of Reading

The way we read certain books and certain authors influences to a certain extent the way we understand them That is, we read books according to what they are supposed to be. It may not always be a critical process, but it’s nonetheless very conscious. On a rarefied level, we have the extremely complex genealogy of Talmudic readings, dating from the fifth and sixth centuries BC in Babylonia and Palestine up till the standard scholarly edition of the Talmud was produced in the late 19th century. And then we have the Kafka readings because Franz Kafka is perhaps the only writer who has been read in so many ways by so many different people. For a while there (and I’m not alone in this sort of reading, I think), I thought “Metamorphosis” was a comedy and subsequently found it very funny–all those bugs, you see. Jorge Luis Borges read the story as a restatement of Zeno’s paradoxes. Vladimir Nabokov read it as an allegory on adolescent Angst. George Lukacs dismissed it as a trashy bourgeois novel. So on, so forth.

On a more basic level, we read books according to what the author or publisher or–that most discerning of personages–another reader says about them. Your elementary school teacher says “Pilgrim’s Progress” is a religious allegory so you read it expecting to be preached at. “Noli Me Tangere” is supposed to be a nationalistic manifesto so you come away from it thinking that Jose Rizal should be read simply because he’s an eminent patriot and you forget the fact–because it is non-existent to you–that he is also a pretty good novelist.

There are epistemological rules for reading and all of them are contained in this multiplicity. Readers create their readings and their readings create stories. There’s an interesting theory by the scholar Wolfgang Kayser as to how literary genres may have been derived from the three persons that exist in every known language: I, You, He/She/It. A not implausible extension of this theory is how readers invent genres to situate stories based on how these stories address them, based on what they think the author is addressing, based on what they think should be addressed.

On the other hand, one might also say that books create their readers, and in the case of some books, there’s something almost fateful in this dialectic. Was it Jorge Luis Borges who speculated about the existence of a perfect reader? The sort of reader who, upon first reading a book, immediately penetrates its core, for whom any notion of criticism is replaced by a mystical understanding of the book’s contents in a way that even the author cannot hope to intuit. It sounds slightly ridiculous, doesn’t it? You will have to breed–or invent–a perfect reader since I don’t believe the skill can be acquired even through the most rigorous of apprenticeships. It’s a fun prospect, though. Imagine applying for tenure as a literary reviewer armed with a certificate stating that you are genetically programmed to be a Perfect Reader (especially wired in the ways of postmodern theory).

Until such time that these literary messiahs decide to make their presence known, though, the most we can all aspire to is to be great–if flawed–readers. I think that James Joyce’s “Ulysses” is one of those works with such a vocational quality, I mean in terms of challenging its readership. Reading “Ulysses” demands commitment, intelligence and an awful lot of energy. There are readers who disdain the novel because they either distrust Establishment opinion or because they have very set expectations of what a story should be, and “Ulysses” certainly violates a lot of norms in this respect. But that’s precisely where the challenge lies. Reading is a satisfactory activity, but it can also be–with an attentive and even unconventional level of commitment to the text– truly rewarding. “Ulysses” generated new forms and techniques of reading. I first read it when I was eleven or twelve and didn’t understand a word and have kept reading it since then. I can write an entire book about how I ‘learned’ to read the novel though I suppose there’s already an entire cottage industry of such books, which just goes to show.

Continuing Sagas

I wrote about how Read Or Die started out as a club in the previous column. From being a bunch of girls (mostly) who had pretty romantic and grandiose ideas about spreading the love for books and literature in a presumably unreceptive society, we suddenly found ourselves knee-deep in unglamorous and all too mundane tasks as we started to prepare for the Read Or Die Convention. There were six of us who planned the event from start to finish, with support coming in from friends and—later on—other interested organizations. A lot of hard work went into brainstorming RodCon, but all our ideas were based on idealized notions of how such an event ought to be staged instead of any grounded practical knowledge, and we were very much insulated from what was going on in the publishing industry. We were newbies, to put it more bluntly, who had no background in publishing, few connections to the literary community, and absolutely no idea of how things were done in this particular area of business. A few of us had already organized events but these were for a totally different community and with a different set of operational procedures, so to speak. What fueled RodCon in the end was a mixture of gut instinct, overzealous idealism, misguided expectations, and hardheaded determination. And there was something a little fated about it, too, that I should end up working with people who—instead of shrieking “Stop! Brake! Para!”—especially when it became clear early on that we were not on the same page as our potential sponsors—only shrugged, put their money on the table, and said, “Let’s do it.”

So we did it, and a very messy, frustrating, and anguished business it was. There were also moments of inspiration—touched with a little bit of insanity, I must admit—and I can’t remember feeling as alive and exhilarated as I was during those long months of preparation. I was also never more exhausted. We all had day jobs so time spent contacting partners and sponsors was time spent sneaking away to use the office phone when the boss was not looking. I would arrive home from work to type letters and pack them in envelopes. I’d then drop off the letters at a courier service—Air 21 because they were the cheapest—on the way to or from work the next day. Another member—either M or Lora—would call or fax follow-up letters to our sponsors the day after.

Looking back on it now, I wonder that we actually managed to pull it off. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that we somehow blundered into it, as if RodCon had already been existing before we even thought about it, an ideally imagined and perfectly executed event tailored just so for readers floating about in some celestial emporium of ideas, before we barreled across it and knocked it off its perch. The fall to earth was a long, bumpy, and interference-ridden process. The end result bore little resemblance to the original product.

There was the fact that nobody really believed us, for one, which could be sourced mostly to a problem in terminology. For instance, “convention” was understood by most sponsors as a business affair, complete with plenary speeches, hotel packages, and champagne by the buckets, whereas on our part we had in mind the informal fan-based conventions organized by fans to celebrate their love for, well, whatever it is they’re a fan of—comics, anime and manga, toys, costumes, games, cars, the Victorian era. These conventions are non-profit and are run by volunteers, which is a model we instinctively adopted for RodCon since we had also taken part in similar conventions and for pretty much the same purposes. In RodCon, we had simply shifted our focus of interest to books. That is, as readers, we considered ourselves fans of books, so if we could spend time, money and effort helping out in conventions for the benefit of exulting in our love for Japanese schoolgirls and rampaging robots, then we could certainly do the same for something less harmful to the state of our immortal souls, i.e., literature.

Or so we reasoned. The algorithm was clear to us but was understandably opaque to the people whom we were asking for sponsorship involving rather large amounts of money (remember what I said about misguided expectations?). Let me get this straight, was the usual response. You want us to help you fund an event called Do or Die..? It’s Read or Die, sir. Well, yes, but what is it, exactly? It’s a gathering for readers. Right, and what will you be doing there? … Reading?

Unfortunately, reading does not have the same titillating element as kissing, which is where the analogy with Lovapaloozah ends. I mean, let’s be honest here: The sight of hundreds of people reading does not exactly make one’s pulse race compared to watching couples kissing. It’s a sport for anthropologists but not exactly the stuff which world-breaking records are made of.

There was a definite disconnect between what we wanted and what the people whose support we needed the most thought we were doing. The next few months were spent re-adjusting learning curves. Ours, for the most part.

Reading 2.0

Speaking of connectivity, I’m compiling material for a feature article on gadgets for the wired reader, mostly out of curiosity, since I’m not very enabled in that respect. I don’t have a Palm Pilot or ebook reader and my phone is not connected to the Internet. This is not to say that I’m averse to online applications or techie things. Far from it, in fact, but when it comes to reading, I’m as old-fashioned as they come. I only need the book, additional furniture (like a chair) is optional.

Of course it’s different for other people. My boss told me that he, on the other hand, hardly buys books and instead gets his daily dose of reading material from his various RSS feeds—connected to sites as varied as news portals, blogs, and Project Gutenberg—which are all plugged into his Blackberry and laptop and which he can access at will. He’s probably one of the most well-informed and cleverest people I know so I’m not knocking the prospect of digital technology trumping the bulky interface of books in their physical form.

Furthermore I’ve never really subscribed to the perceived incompatibility between using the Internet and reading books. Media is a hybrid and chimerical beast. It can assume unpredictable forms and mate with unlikely partners. I wouldn’t be surprised if an alliance between the Internet and traditional print literature would produce some very interesting children—if they haven’t already.

That being said, gadgets like the much-hyped Amazon Kindle and various ebook readers are simply accessories to reading. They make the act of reading easier in the same way that credit cards facilitate more streamlined financial transactions without actually making an impact on the product being transacted. Owning a Kindle means that I won’t have to suffer bruised shoulders and a strained back due to having to tote around ten books at a time. It won’t make a difference to my reading habits, though. I’ll still be reading the same books, only this time they’re compressed in a single little machine. It’s the eponymous Centrum-based approach to reading. “I want to be complete!” Why carry dozens of bottles of vitamin supplements when you can have them all in one capsule?

I think that the true impact of the Internet on reading doesn’t really lie in the ubiquity of ebook applications or in the digitalization of libraries. Instead I find them in the creation of so-called social networking websites which cater specifically to readers.

Most Filipinos will already have heard of Friendster. Let me rephrase that: Most Filipinos probably have accounts in Friendster. Given the number of Friendster users in the Philippines, we might as well declare it as a colony. Or an extraterritorial region. I once read an article in Wired.com which says that the Filipinos exist as a virtual nation. The writer was talking about the Filipino diaspora—which irritated me because he seemed to think it was a good thing—but the term ‘virtual nation’ can also be used to refer to the use of digital platforms to connect people in different ways.

These digitally enabled connections are collectively referred to in the context of the Internet as social networks. They are not meant to replace networks already existing between people established through other mediums—family, friendships, penpal columns (do these still exist?)—but to extend and enrich them. While the first wave of social networking sites such as Friendster, Multiply and MySpace can in theory accommodate a limitless number of users connected to each other through infinitely extensible friends lists, they are also circumscribed by the fact that human beings will just as soon settle in a common niche or create their own customized ecosystem as venture out into the unknown. Very soon, other websites emerged which catered to this penchant for niches, i.e., which networked a specific demographic united by a shared habit or area of interest.

Some would argue based on outdated stereotypes that readers are not a very adventurous lot (ha!) especially when it comes to the Internet, but the fact is there’s not just one, but three major networking sites which reach out to and house readers the world over. Furthermore, while these sites share some common features, they address different needs and appeal to a wide range of preferences when it comes to structuring something as elemental as a reading list or one’s bookshelf.

LibraryThing (http://librarything.com) is the pioneer among these sites. It was created in 2005 by Tim Spalding . LibraryThing enables users to create virtual catalogs of their libraries. In order to ensure that the users can make their catalogs as comprehensive as possible, LibraryThing stores the catalog of the Library of Congress, the respective inventories of all five national Amazon.com sites, and the bibliographic databases of about eighty libraries in the entire world. This means that a user will have the capacity to accurately re-create his or her library in the Internet without all the back-breaking effort which cataloging entails. LibraryThing pulls the necessary data—book covers, ISBN numbers, publisher information, product descriptions—and supplies them to the user who only has to click a book to add it to the catalog. LibaryThing also gives users the capacity to comment to and cross-reference each other’s catalogs. Individual libraries are shared. Instead of being viewed in isolation as in the case of physical libraries, they become community hubs, where curious users can come together to talk about each other’s books.

Creating an account in LibraryThing is free though if you want to build a catalog containing more than 200 books, you will have to buy a paid subscription.

Where Library Thing concentrates on building catalogs, Shelfari (http://shelfari.com) gives primacy to—as its name suggests—the bookshelf. LibraryThing’s layout is bare and streamlined while Shelfari relies on the use of widgets and visual bling to attract users.

For readers who are more concerned with tabulating and indexing the contents of their libraries, Shelfari will probably not compare favorably with LibraryThing. However, Shelfari’s primary purpose is to display and enumerate books, not describe them. If looking at a website cannot replicate the feeling of holding and touching books, viewing one’s shelf in Shelfari can at least simulate the excitement of seeing them. Shelfari also appeals to the exhibitionist streak in readers. You can choose to display your bookshelf photographically, that is, as it would look in your own room or study, or you can choose to create an idealized version thereof since Shelfari also enables you to pick different book covers and editions for a single title. I’ve seen shelves which display the entire classic Penguin line—based on Marber’s designs—and have no idea whether the users actually own these Penguins or whether the books that do exist in their ‘real’ libraries are but threadbare shadows of the glories displayed on their Shelfari shelves.

Better yet—since readers are also natural voyeurs—you can view other people’s bookshelves and how they arrange and structure their books. In a way, while Library Thing is quite literally an archive of different libraries, Shelfari is a museum of book displays. Shelfari does have the option of commenting on other people’s bookshelves

Founded by software engineer and bibliophile Otis Chandler in 2006, Good Reads (http://goodreads.com) takes a different tack from LibraryThing and Shelfari while at the same time coming closest to integrating LibraryThing’s functionality and Shelfari’s intuitive interface. However, though Library Thing claims to be a ‘Facebook’ for readers, GoodReads relies explicitly on a community-powered platform to keep it going. If LibraryThing enables its users to build virtual libraries, and Shelfari virtual bookshelves, GoodReads goes one step further and generates reading lists, which in most cases usually translates to to-buy lists. A user can instantly see new books added by friends along with reviews by other users in both his or her immediate network and in related Good Reads networks. Books are rated and ranked according to preference. Through a Good Reads network, a reader can be appraised of what trusted friends are reading and what he or she in turn would be interested in reading without having to go through the bother of plowing through the reams of consumer reviews in Amazon.com.

In a way, GoodReads has more in common with other metadata-based sites like Metacritic which aggregates product reviews and offers them to users as standards for judgment than Library Thing or Shelfari. GoodReads syndicates book reviews and commentaries and feeds them to already interested consumers who just need that extra nudge. GoodReads has 650,000 users and over 10,000,000 book reviews.

Postscripts

Read Or Die has a Shelfari account at http://www.shelfari.com/readordiephilippines/shelf. Read or Die member Marianne Suba also wrote about Shelfari in this blog post: . We also have a GoodReads account at http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/366356. I’ll be talking about the Filipino communities in these websites—and in other communities online—in another column. In the meantime, feel free to add us and we’ll add you back.

I find it a bit curious that while we almost instantly had friends in Shelfari–which means that several people in our address book also had Shelfari accounts–Good Reads sadly informed me that none of our contacts had accounts in their system. Well, aside from Vim Nadera—director of the UP Institute of Creative Writing—who invited us to join early on, and whose friends list is composed almost exclusively of UMPIL writers.

I’ve been reading an interesting book by Paul Theroux about his long and complex friendship with V.S. Naipul. In one chapter which recounts his early attempts at writing while he was a young university lecturer in Uganda, Theroux touches on the ‘de-mythologization’ of the writer and the writer’s life. Where in past times–i.e., presumably before the invention of the Internet–a writer retained a sort of priestly sanctity in that he merely served as an avatar for his work—which loomed in the public consciousness while the writer’s life remained strictly beyond the pale—nowadays the writer’s celebrity precedes his art. His face is plastered on book covers, he’s trotted out like a carnival attraction in literary festivals, and his work is read as a commentary on his life. Paul Theroux implies that it should be the opposite: the writer’s life should be inconsequential in connection with his writing. Jorge Luis Borges did contest that all art is preceded by an autobiographical incident and that poetry is the incarnation of a moment lived in time but even he, I think, would be a bit iffy about getting a blog, though he might be more inclined towards displaying his bookshelves virtually in Shelfari or GoodReads since he talks about what he reads all the time anyway.

I had a point here. Oh yes–but isn’t displaying one’s bookshelves an unduly revelatory act as well? For readers like us, a Shelfari account is merely a point for reference, a casual attempt to figure out what our members are reading and to embark on a shared club catalog. It’s a little different for writers though, isn’t it? The Guardian (http://guardian.co.uk) has a special feature called “Writers’ Rooms” where they take photographs of, well, writers’ rooms and post them online along with short write-ups by the writers describing the contents of their rooms (The descriptions range from rambly itemizations to historical accounts and philosophical treatises). The entire exercise hardly qualifies for the de-mythologization which Theorux speaks of but it does make for a rather tantalizing de-mystification of that which is purportedly sacred and private. If writers are priests, then their holy of holies will be the place where they practice the act of demiurge, i.e., writing, and the books they read are their arcana. Social networking sites like Shelfari display the arcana, while a service like Good Reads could even provide us with the appropriate commentary and glosses, assuming the writer-priest is feeling particularly accommodating.

I’m not trying to make a hard and fast distinction between writers and readers since I’m well aware that writers are readers (most of them anyway) and it’s not as if they can’t catalog their own collections. It’s very soothing, making lists, and far be it from me to deprive anyone of the right to order their world and feel nice and smug about it. My curiosity here is a bit on the metaphysical side, something to do with the creative process and its more secretive components, in the context of Web 2.0. I’ll get back to this.

Coming Up

The year of reading dangerously…

For comments please email us at readordie.ph@gmail.com or visit our website at http://read-or-die.org

January 5, 2008 | Filed Under Latest | 13 Comments

I can has database

We’re revamping Libro.ph (internally, that is) in terms of farming out content to form separate websites. We stopped updating in November 2007 as planned to evaluate the beta phase of the site and we scrapped sections which we feel weren’t working or were duplicating existing information. So the main site should henceforth function as something like an aggregated literary broadsheet, with sub-sites devoted to hosting other literary groups (like UMPIL, PEN, etc) and focusing on different literary genres (i.e., Pambata).

In the meantime we’ve also started to build our author/book database, which we had initially planned to host in the main directory but our concern is that content organization might end up getting too unwieldy. I’ve had several arguments about this already. As readers/potential visitors, would you guys prefer that author directories and Filipino book catalogs be hosted in another website (or a Libro.ph sub-site, at least)? Just curious.

Loading …

December 16, 2007 | Filed Under Latest, Miscellany | Leave a Comment

Read Or Die and Repertory Philippines Read Tuesdays With Morrie

Premiere theater group Repertory Philippines will be staging a theatrical adaptation of Mitch Albom’s best-selling novel “Tuesdays With Morrie” from January 1 to January 27 2008 at OnStage, Greenbelt 1, Ayala Center, Makati City. Starring Jose Mari Avellana and Rem Zamora, “Tuesdays With Morrie” is a heart-warming play that perfectly combines comedy, drama and poignancy. In a challenging commitment of time and expense, busy sportswriter Mitch Albom makes weekly treks from Detroit to Boston so he could spend Tuesday mornings with his former professor Morrie Schwartz, who is dying of Lou Gehrig’s disease. It unfolds the story of how these visits changed Mitch’s outlook on life. The play is directed by Baby Barredo.

Cast actors Jose Mari Avellana and Rem Zamora will be reading excerpts from “Tuesdays With Morrie” in a special appearance in Powerbooks Greenbelt on December 15, 2007 (Saturday). The event will kick off with a discussion of the novel which will conducted by Read Or Die at 4:30 PM followed by the theatrical reading. There will be an open forum with the audience afterwards. Free tickets to the premiere will also be raffled off to bookstore attendees.

The event is sponsored by Powerbooks and is part of Read Or Die’s Books On Stage program which aims to promote literature appreciation through the medium of theater. For more information please visit http://read-or-die.org/booksonstage/ or email us at readordie.ph@gmail.com. Thank you.

December 14, 2007 | Filed Under Latest, Events | Leave a Comment

← Previous Page — Next Page →