(The
cover of Hortus Sanitatis by Frederic
Coche.)
(The
cover of Memoria Technica by Satoru
Yuiga.)
When my sister and I were
leaving the Book Fair, I told her if a bomb went off at that very minute the
entire literate population of Manila would disappear. I don’t know which would
make me sadder, the ashes of readers or the ashes of books.
I was a sticky-fingered brat at the
Fair. Shelves and stacks and mounds of books and they inexplicably adhered to my
hands all the way to the cashier. I picked up Tad Williams’s The War of the
Flowers, Steph Swainston’s The Year of Our War, Powers – Who Killed Retro Girl?
and Powers Forever, Hortus Sanitatis by Frederic Coche (as if a
maddened frail angel had been given pen and ink in the Heavenly Sanitarium),
Memoria Technica, a compilation of breathtaking manga illustrations from Satoru
Yuiga, Kwaidan out of Dark Horse Comics; and I almost decided to buy George R.R.
Martin in bulk, except Lucien was squirming and refused to get back into his
stroller.
I also bought Ngalang Pinoy (A
Primer on Filipino Wordplay), Antukin (a song book of traditional Filipino
lullabies) and The Best Filipino Short Stories of the Twentieth Century (in
English).
I will probably write rarely
in the next two weeks, as I shall be mostly trembling with starvation. Ah
well.