(This is part of my #30dayblogging challenge and I already skipped yesterday. Challenge unmet. Oh well.)
books
There are 17 posts tagged books (this is page 1 of 3).
O’ Rourke on dictator Ferdinand Marcos and the amount of money he and his cronies stole
According to Newsweek, American and Philippine economists estimate that [former president Ferdinand] Marcos and pals shipped as much as $20 billion out of the country. We’re not talking about Michele Duvalier’s fur collection. Continue reading
My top five books for 2013
Two thousand thirteen is my banner year for not reading.
Not only have I failed to finish eight books that I set out to read, I think I also forgot to list down all the books I read on that year, a hangover from 2012 when I was unable to assess my year in reading at all. [See: Unfinished Business]
UNFINISHED BUSINESS | 8 books I left unread in 2013 for reasons lame and otherwise

#SHELFIE. My Granta magazines, arguably the largest such collection in the Philippines. But literate frenemies have disputed my claim, which I’m unwilling to give up.
It’s the start of 2014.
It’s time for some people—myself included—to look back and take stock of the books they read the past year.
Except that that’s so last year.
For 2014, I’m doing something different.
Continue reading
Fischer on the trouble with Nietzsche’s dictum


Cover of The Thought Gang by Tibor Fischer (First Scribner Paperback Fiction edition 1997)
As my hands were cuffed behind my back, and I had a zet at the footwear of my arresting officers, I couldn’t help hailing Nietzsche’s dictum, what does not kill me makes me stronger. One could add that what doesn’t kill you can be extremely uncomfortable and can give you a very nasty cold. I sneezed with no hands and discharged some nose marrow across the short distance between my nostrils and the gleaming footwear of the detective in charge of the operation, where it spread-eagled and made itself at home.
The trouble with Nietzche—who in any case never prescribed instructions regarding conduct while being hand-cuffed on chilly floors in undignified circumstances—is that you can never be sure when he’s doing some levity or not.
The Metropolitan Police had the same problem with me. They were hugely unconvinced by my responses to their questioning.
— from The Thought Gang by Tibor Fischer, named by Granta Magazine as one of the best British novelists under 40 in 1994
Make me an offer I can’t refuse: Granta Magazines for sale

The only thing kept in order at the apartment.
I give up.
I’m selling some of my Granta Magazines as shown in these tweets and pictures below.
These are my spare copies and I chose to buy them because I then thought and felt that I, and only I—being a sensitive, kind, and intelligent soul—could appreciate their contents.
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Slack-O-Rama (or adventures in reading, drinking, and thinking, in that order)

Position of the feet when either reading, drinking, or thinking.
I’m in a rut.
Which means that for the past week or so—perhaps probably longer—I have been doing nothing but read—and of course, drink—in copious amounts. (I’ve been doing a lot of thinking too but then again, I’m just saying that.)
Continue reading