Cheers to the metaphysical

I was told that people from Baguio are poetic after my friend Kenneth and I talked about the metaphysical during a particularly rainy afternoon somewhere in Diliman. I wouldn't call it talking, in so much as it is an involuntary reaction of our systems, manifested by sudden laughs after split-second soul breakdowns. It's a dark and twisted comedy Kenneth and I consume on a daily basis. Sometimes it actually consumes us.

In other news, I have been splurging on books the past few weeks. Here's my July reading list:

I think Immanuel Kant and I would be friends. Excuse me while I introduce him to Murakami and Fulghum. We're having beer.

The Art of Getting By -- not a review, but a review

I hated it when Murakami penned the summation of my existence thru his overcoat wearing, train riding, smoking character (at least that's how I imagined him) in one of his stories from The Elephant Vanishes. Something about fear and not knowing and hurting people during the process. I think this existentialist shit is getting old (after someone made it look like hipster emo).

I hated The Art of Getting By, too. Because the same overcoat wearing, train riding, smoking character was there, only this time he draws cute monsters for party invites and wears a t-shirt for graduation.

Maybe there's something about hate that I need to wind my mind around. I also like the word draw.

New date friends and a mention of advanced capitalism

Last Wednesday, I had lunch with Haruki Murakami's The Elephant Vanishes, then went to bed with Chuck Palahniuk's Snuff. When I woke up the next day, I felt like walking around with Dante's Inferno. My non-existent bank account is complaining, though. Apparently, my new friends aren't cheap.

Nevertheless, Murakami's story on how a couple robbed a McDonald's store in the middle of the night kept me entertained enough to finish the pizza I ordered, which in my opinion, had too much tomatoes. Snuff kept me wondering how far I could stretch the limits of my image, as walking around reading a book that looks like pornographic material is quite challenging. Dante Alighieri hasn't gone out with me yet, though I must say Allen Mandelbaun's translation looks promising.

I wish I have a portable reader. I'm still pondering on getting an iPod touch. There goes some advanced capitalism.

Black on plum and a mention of vanity and social rehabilitation

It's a working Saturday, and I can't start working. Maybe it's the uneasiness I feel about how my nails consume the microscopic amounts of vanity I painstakingly inhaled from various sources, some questionable. I can't produce a clean slate just yet, hence the black on plum. The mess is a shame for someone who has an eye for detail, and I know he has eyes not only for detail but for beauty. There it goes again, another mention of my hopeless fixation. Which just got hopeful. Or not. Black on plum. It would be a nice color for sketching his hands. Not that this information is for public consumption. It just came out of an abundance. Which is still running, as you can see. Get scared. Cringe. Now.

I am finding it easier and easier to be with the Y-chromosome bearing species, just like when I was a ten year-old tomboy in grade school. The DOST team is almost complete, and I almost didn't notice that the only one with ovaries is me. Which is a good thing. I don't feel like extracting more vanity for social purposes.

Murakami is great. No, scratch that. Murakami is relatable. For my dark and twisties-infested head, at least. Dance, Dance, Dance is a dimension of being I was once at. Or am still at. It's too dark to know anyway. The skies are the color of my nails. Black on plum.

I'm gonna go get another cup of that white instant coffee.

Bookworm Adventures: 2011 gave birth to these wonderful babies

Of course my list of to-read books goes on and on and might even come to the point of running across the entire length of China's Great Wall, but I would like to still hold on to the possibility that I may one glorious day be rich enough to walk inside National Bookstore and just grab whichever baby I lay my eyes onto.

Ergo, these five items (book descriptions from Goodreads):

How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive by Christopher Boucher. Welcome to Christopher Boucher’s zany literary universe, a place where metaphors shift beneath your feet, familiar words assume new meanings, objects talk, trees attack, and time actually is money. Modeled on the cult classic 1969 hippie handbook of the same name, How To Keep Your Volkswagen Alive is an astonishing tour-de-force that tackles some of life’s biggest questions: How do you cope with losing a parent? What’s the secret to raising a child? How do you keep love alive? How do you get your car to start?

A Guided Tour Through the Museum of Communism by Slavenka Drakulic. Called "a perceptive and amusing social critic, with a wonderful eye for detail" by The Washington Post, Slavenka Drakulic - a native of Croatia - has emerged as one of the most popular and respected critics of Communism to come out of the former Eastern Bloc. In A Guided Tour Through the Museum of Communism, she offers a eight-part exploration of Communism by way of an unusual cast of narrators, each from a different country, who reflect on the fall of Communism. Together they constitute an Orwellian send-up of absurdities during the final years of European Communism that showcase this author's tremendous talent.

The Final Testament of the Holy Bible by James Frey. What would you do if you discovered the Messiah were alive today? Living in New York. Sleeping with men. Impregnating young women. Euthanizing the dying, and healing the sick. Defying the government, and condemning the holy. What would you do if you met him? And he changed your life. Would you believe?

The Postmortal by Drew Magary. Imagine a near future where a cure for aging is discovered and - after much political and moral debate - made available to people worldwide. Immortality, however, comes with its own unique problems-including evil green people, government euthanasia programs, a disturbing new religious cult, and other horrors. Witty, eerie, and full of humanity, The Postmortal is an unforgettable thriller that envisions a pre-apocalyptic world so real that it is completely terrifying.

Science Ink by Carl Zimmer. Body art meets popular science in this elegant, mind-blowing collection, written by renowned science writer Carl Zimmer. This fascinating book showcases hundreds of eye-catching tattoos that pay tribute to various scientific disciplines, from evolutionary biology and neuroscience to mathematics and astrophysics and reveals the stories of the individuals who chose to inscribe their obsessions in their skin. Best of all, each tattoo provides a leaping-off point for bestselling essayist and lecturer Zimmer to reflect on the science in question, whether it's the importance of an image of Darwin's finches or the significance of the uranium atom inked into the chest of a young radiologist.

***
Now, if you'll excuse me, I shall google Santa's private line.

The world through the eyes of pixlr-o-matic

Talking doesn't feel natural, and writing may have alleviating effects, but for the most part devouring old books wins again in the field of finding something to do with yourself while the better, microscopic part of your head makes everything all right (or manageable, at least). I finished re-reading David Sedaris' Naked yesterday, and since the only other Sedaris in my possesion is Me Talk Pretty One Day, an already very battered book, I had to find something else. I couldn't face another Zafra without reciting the lines by heart even before opening the book, and Robert Fulghum feels too preachy for my current taste.

I looked at my shelf, teeming with science textbooks more than anything else. In between the bunch of my genetics notes and a thin Don Delillo book I have yet to appreciate is my unread copy of New Moon (a friend's gift). I have read the entire Twilight saga on pirated e-book copies back in college, curiosity getting the better of me after all of my girl friends fell in love with the now infamous Edward Cullen. I cringe whenever Star Movies airs Twilight or New Moon, and was all the more disgusted when I had to explain the story of Eclipse to my mom who followed the series on cable TV. Not that it is so bad, but after a few years of mind-altering life experiences and bouts with alcohol intoxication, a story about a girl whose world revolves around a boy who happens to be a vampire suddenly becomes cheesy. Despite being a confessed reading geek, I still find it hard to associate myself with the teenage phenomenon. The nonconformist in me agrees.

But it was either New Moon or another 18-hour Sims Social session over on facebook, and since I think my genes are close to mutating from all the radiation I have been absorbing the past four months, I surrendered in bed with the book while simultaneously watching Dragon Ball Z with Emman. I think Majinboo is God's way of saying evil can be cute too.

I love the weather. It has been mildly raining endlessly, and obviously I don't mind because I have unlimited access to a blanket and a great cup of coffee. And a warm bath.

One thing's for sure though, despite the very attractive chance of sleeping for a straight 24 hours, I have to trade the sedentary lifestyle with something productive.

There goes the fear again.

The Rebounds

Two things that I love about Baguio City are the book shops and the street lights.

At Mt. Cloud Bookshop, beside Casa Vallejo

Upper Session Road

Almost two hundred kilometers away, at a place called Manila, there's an endless list of things to hate. But I'm beginning to see hope.

The Mt. Cloud Rebound (Bookay-Ukay in Maginhawa)

The Session Road Rebound (UP Diliman's Academic Oval)

Cheers to my friend Jonver for the Manila photos.

Unapologetic bluntness, attraction to the humanities, and more procrastination

David Sedaris and Jessica Zafra are my kind of authors, probably because we share the same amount of rage and of disbelief in the possibility of goodness by the human race, and because these are people who profess their thoughts with the sheer beauty of simply having the naked truth in mind (scandalous or attractive, then). I was up rereading Me Talk Pretty One Day until around two am, after a double dose of Jesse Eisenberg on HBO and a failed attempt at writing a piece about greatness. I came to a semi-stoned state after seeing The Social Network to the point of almost worshipping Mark Zuckerberg's unapologetic bluntness - Sedaris and Zafra welcome the guy to the club with open arms.

Don't. Move. The Pile.

500 Days of Summer's OST is still playing in my head, and along with it is an urge to read philosophical texts and some books from my pile (which I had to temporarily kick out of my bedside to make way for... text books. Gah.). Speaking of books, I believe my behavior towards arranging my piles is bordering towards the obsessive-compulsive; this morning my mother tried to put the pile that I kicked out of bedside to the shelf space voided by the textbooks now acting as my pillows, and I got so irritated I almost snapped at her. She said sorry and stopped midway, and I undid her arranging the minute she went downstairs. This was followed by an attempt to melt my rage by listening to Le Festin, washing my hands dirtied by dust, clipping my nails, and washing my face. Perhaps I'm not a morning person. Either that, or my hormones are back.

I have been meaning to devour philosophy (specifically, theories on existentialism as they are adjacent to the concoctions of my brain on most days), and my enthusiasm got reignited when I discovered last night that Friedrich Nietzsche is German. Of course he is. The land of the profound and un-celebrated-slash-misdirected deep thought.

The fact that almost everybody hates this guy makes him all the more interesting.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go back to (a very futile attempt at) studying polymerization of ribonucleotides by RNA polymerase during transcription.

yeah, right.

Chandler's "gah-uh-ah": my reaction exactly

Well, that's the best I could get out of the internet. Close enough.

I was in the middle of watching The Voice and Glee reruns this morning as both AXN and Star World decided to air marathons. I'm still partial to downloading Glee episodes; sometimes the show seems too bubbly for my taste, plus I hate social conventions and there's like a cult of Glee followers out there, so maybe not. But I'm slowly falling in love with Sue Sylvester much like how I root for the kontrabidas in Pinoy Telenovelas (I used to watch ABS-CBN dramas just so I could hear Cherie Pie Picache's evil laugh), so maybe the next time I get sentimental I might just download Glee.

Anyway, in the middle of all that lung power extravaganza, I switched channels and saw Mary Shelley's Frankenstein on Star Movies, a clear example of what one might expect from cable TV this dark and twisted month of October. I learned from the Barnes & Noble Classics edition of Frankenstein that I'm currently reading that there has been multiple movie adaptations of arguably one of the most well-known horror creatures ever made. Still, I think most people do not know about the monster's story, apart from the bit that he is made up of different dead body parts sewn together by a mad man.

I'm still on chapter seven of twenty four so in as much as I am thrilled to see Robert De Niro playing the role of what is possibly one of my favorite literary stars, "gah-uh-ah", I can't watch the movie adaptation just yet.

Then the cable went out so I ended up going on line against my will (I'd like to think that I have a life, especially on weekends, and that my existence is not merely subsisted by the internet despite the reality that proves otherwise). I have previously negotiated with my hypothalamus that I will not go on facebook to check on the latest updates of people I know from Baguio because it makes me extremely sad and mushy to the point that I am sometimes emotionally crushed to pitifulness by a single photograph. So when I innocently browsed pictures on an album of a friend, it's like the spirit of Sue Sylvester herself threw a large brick on my face. "Gah-uh-ah," I didn't want to see that, that was exactly what I was avoiding to see, despite the partial awareness that I might see just that, since well, uhm, the album has his face on it.

Oh, and "gah-uh-ah" to Steve Jobs' death too.

Bookworm Adventures: Hello October!

For the stress-fed individuals who pleaded to be waken up when September ends to the tune of Greenday's rock song, rise and shine! Say hello to the dark and twisted horror-struck month of October. Wear orange, dye your hair green, and show the blood lust with those lined eyes.

Or you know, you could just try reading this bunch (book descriptions copied from Goodreads):

Bram Stoker's Dracula. The aristocratic vampire that haunts the Transylvanian countryside has captivated readers' imaginations since it was first published in 1897. Hindle asserts that Dracula depicts an embattled man's struggle to recover his "deepest sense of himself as a man", making it the "ultimate terror myth".

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. At once a Gothic thriller, a passionate romance, and a cautionary tale about the dangers of science, Frankenstein tells the story of committed science student Victor Frankenstein. Obsessed with discovering "the cause of generation and life" and "bestowing animation upon lifeless matter", Frankenstein assembles a human being from stolen body parts. But upon bringing it to life, he recoils in horror at the creature's hideousness. Tormented by isolation and loneliness, the once-innocent creature turns to evil and unleashes a campaign of murderous revenge against his creator, Frankenstein.

Thomas Harris' The Silence of the Lambs. As part of the search for a serial murderer nicknamed "Buffalo Bill," FBI trainee Clarice Starling is given an assignment. She must visit a man confined to a high-security facility for the criminally insane and interview him.

That man, Dr. Hannibal Lecter, is a former psychiatrist with unusual tastes and an intense curiosity about the darker corners of the mind. His intimate understanding of the killer and of Clarice herself form the core of The Silence of the Lambs - an unforgettable classic of suspense fiction.

Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Robert Louis Stevenson originally wrote Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde as a "chilling shocker." He then burned the draft and, upon his wife's advice, rewrote it as the darkly complex tale it is today. Stark, skillfully woven, this fascinating novel explores the curious turnings of human character through the strange case of Dr. Jekyll, a kindly scientist who by night takes on his stunted evil self, Mr. Hyde. Anticipating modern psychology, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a brilliantly original study of man's dual nature -- as well as an immortal tale of suspense and terror.

Chuck Palahniuk's Haunted. Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk is a novel made up of stories: twenty-three of them, to be precise. They are told by people who have answered an ad headlined "Writers' Retreat: Abandon Your Life for Three Months," and who are led to believe that here they will leave behind all the distractions of "real life" that are keeping them from creating the masterpiece that is in them. But "here" turns out to be a cavernous and ornate old theater where they are utterly isolated from the outside world - and where heat and power and, most important, food are in increasingly short supply. And the more desperate the circumstances become, the more extreme the stories they tell - and the more devious their machinations become to make themselves the hero of the inevitable play/movie/nonfiction blockbuster that will surely be made from their plight.

Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray. Oscar Wilde's story of a fashionable young man who sells his soul for eternal youth and beauty is one of his most popular works. Written in Wilde's characteristically dazzling manner, full of stinging epigrams and shrewd observations, the tale of Dorian Gray's moral disintegration caused something of a scandal when it first appeared in 1890. Wilde was attacked for his decadence and corrupting influence, and a few years later the book and the aesthetic/moral dilemma it presented became issues in the trials occasioned by Wilde's homosexual liaisons, trials that resulted in his imprisonment. Of the book's value as autobiography, Wilde noted in a letter, "Basil Hallward is what I think I am: Lord Henry what the world thinks me: Dorian what I would like to be—in other ages, perhaps."

Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book. After the grisly murder of his entire family, a toddler wanders into a graveyard where the ghosts and other supernatural residents agree to raise him as one of their own.

Nobody Owens, known to his friends as Bod, is a normal boy. He would be completely normal if he didn't live in a sprawling graveyard, being raised and educated by ghosts, with a solitary guardian who belongs to neither the world of the living nor of the dead. There are dangers and adventures in the graveyard for a boy. But if Bod leaves the graveyard, then he will come under attack from the man Jack—who has already killed Bod's family.

Max Brooks' The Zombie Survival Guide. The Zombie Survival Guide is your key to survival against the hordes of undead who may be stalking you right now. Fully illustrated and exhaustively comprehensive, this book covers everything you need to know, including how to understand zombie physiology and behavior, the most effective defense tactics and weaponry, ways to outfit your home for a long siege, and how to survive and adapt in any territory or terrain.

Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar. Plath was an excellent poet but is known to many for this largely autobiographical novel. The Bell Jar tells the story of a gifted young woman's mental breakdown beginning during a summer internship as a junior editor at a magazine in New York City in the early 1950s. The real Plath committed suicide in 1963 and left behind this scathingly sad, honest and perfectly-written book, which remains one of the best-told tales of a woman's descent into insanity.

Zombies Vs. Unicorns. It's a question as old as time itself: which is better, the zombie or the unicorn? In this anthology, edited by Holly Black and Justine Larbalestier (unicorn and zombie, respectively), strong arguments are made for both sides in the form of short stories. Half of the stories portray the strengths—for good and evil—of unicorns and half show the good (and really, really bad-ass) side of zombies. Contributors include many bestselling teen authors, including Cassandra Clare, Libba Bray, Maureen Johnson, Meg Cabot, Scott Westerfeld, and Margo Lanagan. This anthology will have everyone asking: Team Zombie or Team Unicorn?

Currently Reading: Little Women ("Playing Pilgrims" to "Meg Goes to Vanity Fair")

I don't do ball gowns, tea parties, and all that glitter. The spirit of womanly poise has long ago abandoned my complicated human parts (to the delight of my father who swears that he shall use a bolo to lacerate the life out of anyone crazy enough to propose marriage to his only daughter). Hence, reading Louisa May Alcott's Little Women is like watching a unicorn throw up.

Not that the classic novel is too cheesy; after all, an allowable level of romance is expected of novels its age (the book says it was published in 1994). Little Women is refreshing actually, much like a quiet Sunday afternoon.

The first few chapters so far have presented themselves as unique short stories, each with its own moral. The wisdom is plain and simple, but resonates beyond its years.

From chapter five (Being Neighborly):

...children should be children as long as they can. 

From chapter seven (Amy's Valley of Humiliation):

You have a good many little gifts and virtues, but there is no need of parading them, for conceit spoils the finest genius. There is not much danger that real talent or goodness will be overlooked long; even if it is, the consciousness of possessing and using it well should satisfy one, and the great charm of of all power is modesty. 

From chapter eight (Jo Meets Apollyon):

My dear, don't let the sun go down upon your anger; forgive each other, help each other, and begin again tomorrow.

*** 

Watch and pray, dear, never get tired of trying, and never think it is impossible to conquer your fault. 

From chapter nine (Meg Goes to Vanity Fair):

Learn to know and value the praise which is worth having, and to excite the admiration of excellent people...

*** 

To be loved and chosen by a good man is the best and sweetest thing which can happen to a woman... 

Everything seemed old-fashioned, from the concept of good manners to womanhood. Still, no matter how conservative the novel sounds, it kind of makes me long for that period in time when the glory of life's simplicity was fed by clear cut societal demarcations.

That era when women were supposed to be demure and beautiful and pleasant, and being a gentleman was more than just the occasional holding out the door for a lady. When little girls learned knitting and baking and playing the piano, and young boys sent flowers to their friend's mother. When proper education was a requirement to matter in a society.

I'm all for women empowerment and the dynamism of modern day advancements. But sometimes, I just envy the ease of old-fashioned things.

Bookworm Adventures: Family Drama and Its Antidote

Mark Haddon's A Spot of Bother appeals to me because it's surprisingly easy to read. I snatched it from my uncle's book shelf a few weeks ago along with Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake, Richard Bach's Jonathan Livingston Seagull, and Don DeLillo's Falling Man. I expected greatness from Mark Haddon, with all his fame from The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time (which I have yet to read, depending on the infinitesimal growth of my bank account contents); A Spot of Bother is pleasant, nonetheless.

And so it became a buffer during my feats with literary greatness, alongside Wally Lamb's I Know This Much is True. After reading Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol and the fifth installation of Kikomachine Komix, my book devouring was placed on a hiatus and I was able to read leisurely.

Despite being light, Mark Haddon's fiction spoke at a wavelength that my subconscious was able to pick up. His words were elementary, but once in a while I would find myself taking deep breaths.

He didn't want much. Companionship. Shared interests. A bit of space.
The problem was that no one else knew what they wanted.

***

The music was raucous and tuneless, but as the drink began to do its work, he realised how young people, possibly drunk themselves, or under the influence of mind-altering drugs, could find it entertaining. The driving rhythm, the simple melody. Like watching a lightning storm from the safety of one's living room. The idea that there was something even more violent happening outside one's head.

***

It seemed so violent, suicide. But here, now, up close, it seemed different, more a case of doing violence to the body that kept you shackled to an unlivable life. Cutting it loose and being free.

 It came to the point that mixing all that subconscious talk with the infectious frustrations in I Know This Much is True resulted in my psychology's pleads for a halt, a change of scenery. Being surrounded by family drama both in the literary and actual realms could be taxing.

Hanna came to the rescue by suggesting that Anton Chekhov's short stories might help. The Witch and other stories seems interesting; let's see if it will be a buffer or something to devour.

Bookworm Adventures: Battle With the Dusty Bookshelf

I am currently fighting my way through two family dramas - Mark Haddon's A Spot of Bother and Wally Lamb's I Know This Much is True (the aggression is necessary to scare away depression). But both I just read in between my devouring books that I really like - Lualhati Bautista's Bata, Bata... Pa'no Ka Ginawa?, Richard Bach's Jonathan Livingston Seagull, and a reread of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird a few days back. I still have The Origin of Species from my recent National Bookstore loot, but something as special as Charles Darwin's writing shouldn't be read just because I couldn't put my hands on anything else anymore (i.e., it needs the force of pure, unadulterated scientific interest, and as of today my reading mood is along the lines of the humanities).

Unfortunately, what remains in my humble bank account is a microscopic vestige and I still owe Emman three hundred pesos for the Parokya ni Edgar concert tickets he bought me last week, and the National Bookstore panic buying I had two weeks ago. I want to go back to Bookay-Ukay, I'm itching to get my Lord of the Rings trilogy deal with Jonver, and I already missed the 32nd Manila International Book Fair. And imagine my pain when Emman and I had that Johnny English movie date - we went to Booksale while waiting for the 4:10 screening, and I saw a stack of paperback classics from Jane Austen to Ernest Hemingway, but I just stared because it's heart breaking to choose just a couple, and leave the rest.

I tried blog hopping to distract me from my need to smell slightly yellowed book pages, but in my head, hard bounds are constantly dancing, urging me to touch one. It was not a simple hunger for reading, it was a complicated, nagging lust for books. I surrendered and voluntarily inhaled book shelf dust mites just so I could get my hands on another batch of reading material.

And my effort's weren't in vain. I was surprised to see that I actually have Louisa May Alcott's Little Women and Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None (if I remember correctly, they were gifts along with Mary Higgins Clark's Loves Music, Loves to Dance five, maybe six years ago). Here's the stack that I got:

plus Wally Lamb's She's Come Undone and Louisa May Alcott's Little Women

These will block my jitters away for a while (I'm waiting for UP Diliman's confirmation of my exam schedule for my graduate school application).

Happy rainy day reading!

Bookworm Adventures: Banned Books Week

September 24 to October 1 is Banned Books Week, an annual event celebrating the freedom to read and the importance of the First Amendment. Banned Books Week highlights the benefits of free and open access to information while drawing attention to the harms of censorship by spotlighting actual or attempted bannings of books across the United States.

Intellectual freedom—the freedom to access information and express ideas, even if the information and ideas might be considered unorthodox or unpopular—provides the foundation for Banned Books Week.  BBW stresses the importance of ensuring the availability of unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints for all who wish to read and access them.

As a devout reader, Banned Books Week caught my attention. The 2011 BBW is already on its 30th year, and there are a lot of familiar titles on their list, primarily there due to issues on sex, profanity, and racism. However, as U.S. Supreme Court Justice William Brennan said, “If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.” I sure do hope that Philippine legislators/public officials and religious leaders think the same way. Just sayin’.

Here are some of the titles included in the 2010 to 2011 list:

Burroughs, Augusten. Running with Scissors. (St. Martin) – Challenged as a suggested reading in a class where juniors and seniors earn college credit in Hillsborough County, Fla. (2010). Four high schools — Plant, Middleton, Hillsborough, and Bloomingdale — voted to keep the book and place a “Mature Reader” label on the front cover. Three high schools — Sickles, Robinson, and Lennard — will require parental consent. Gaither High School and Riverview High School voted to ban the book. Riverview’s report stated: “This book has extremely inappropriate content for a high school media center collection. The book contained explicit homosexual and heterosexual situations, profanity, underage drinking and smoking, extreme moral shortcomings, child molesters, graphic pedophile situations and total lack of negative consequences throughout the book.”

Frank, Anne. Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl. (Doubleday) –
Challenged at the Culpeper County, Va. public schools (2010) by a parent requesting that her daughter not be required to read the book aloud. Initially, it was reported that officials decided to stop assigning a version of Anne Frank’s diary, one of the most enduring symbols of the atrocities of the Nazi regime, due to the complaint that the book includes sexual material and homosexual themes. The director of instruction announced the edition published on the fiftieth anniversary of Frank’s death in a concentration camp will not be used in the future despite the fact the school system did not follow its own policy for handling complaints. The remarks set off a hailstorm of criticism online and brought international attention to the 7,600-student school system in rural Virginia. The superintendent said, however, that the book will remain a part of English classes, although it may be taught at a different grade level.

Foer, Jonathan Safran. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. (Houghton) -- Challenged in the Richland, Wash. School District (2010). Used in a tenth-grade honors language arts class at Hanford High, the book tells the story of Oskar Schell, a young boy whose father died in the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks. The book contains profanity, sex, and descriptions of violence.

Collins, Suzanne. The Hunger Games. (Scholastic) -- Challenged and presented to the Goffstown, N.H. school board (2010) by a parent claiming that it gave her eleven-year-old nightmares and could numb other students to the effects of violence.

Haddon, Mark. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time. (Doubleday) -- Removed from the Lake Feton, Mich. summer reading program (2010) after parents complained about its "foul language." The book is about an autistic child who investigates the death of a neighborhood dog. It was a joint winner of the 2004 Boeke Prize and won the 2003 Whitbread Book of the Year award.

Salinger, J.D.  The Cathcer in the Rye. (Bantam; Little, Brown) -- Challenged, but retained, in the Martin County Fla. School District (2010) despite a parent's concern about inappropriate language.

(source)

I’ve frequented libraries during the entirety of my grade school, high school, and undergraduate education. I can’t say I have encountered issues as to banned books, since most of the time, the unavailability of books itself is the problem. And in a country like the Philippines, most people do not consider book reading as a hobby, especially if there’s not enough money to put food on the table.

We can’t challenge ideas, since we are unaware as a nation most of the time. Yes, the literacy rate in the Philippines is beyond 90 per cent. Still, there is a shortage of stimulating ideas in the society such that when presented with ideas out of the norm, the reaction of people is mainly influenced by the conservative harness of the Catholic church or the capitalist hitches of local media. Take Mideo Cruz and James Soriano as examples. And yes, I say we can’t challenge ideas as opposed to we don’t, since the capacity is seemingly lost due to a mixture of an education system crisis, and the poverty of our nation. It seems like no one could afford to feed the mind nowadays, with all those grumbling stomachs malnourished and empty.

With all the rage as to “freedom of expression” (thanks to technological advancement), I sure do hope that reading and the influx of ideas continue as a revolution.

Oh, and by the way:

***

Banned Books Week is sponsored by the American Booksellers Association; American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression; the American Library Association; American Society of Journalists and Authors; Association of American Publishers; and the National Association of College Stores. It is endorsed by the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress. In 2011, the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund; National Coalition Against Censorship; National Council of Teachers of English; and PEN American Center also signed on as sponsors.

For more information on getting involved with Banned Books Week: Celebrating the Freedom to Read, please see Calendar of Events, Ideas and Resources, and the newBanned Books Week site. You can also contact the ALA Office for Intellectual Freedomat 1-800-545-2433, ext. 4220, or bbw@ala.org. (source)