Tag: review
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(Un-)Reading: Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules For Life
Reading this book was a very disappointing experience. Reviews of 12 Rules For Life parade Peterson as a kind of intellectual prophet, and the blurb itself claims its author to provide, in the four hundred pages or so that make up the book’s unnecessary long run, “nuanced messages about personal responsibility”. The review that follows…
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Reading All Of Faulkner: Soldiers’ Pay
I’ve had the idea for this challenge for a while now – have been, in fact, ready with most of the books purchased and shelved for the better part of a year – only I could never quite get started for two reasons: (1) I am lazy, and (2) I’ve read some Faulkner before and…
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Quarantine Journals: If Cats Disappeared From The World
The day Fully Booked announced that they would be open for deliveries within Metro Manila amid the community quarantine, I was already on their online store browsing for books. That’s how much I missed being inside a book store. Looking at book covers through a screen didn’t quite emulate the experience, especially when half the…
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A Cinema of Melancholy: Prime Cruz and Ang Manananggal Sa Unit 23B
When I first saw Sleepless (2015) back in college, I thought it was a revelation. Telling the story of two call center agents working the graveyard shift finding themselves no longer able to sleep through the night, Prime Cruz delivered what we’d long accepted Filipino cinema couldn’t: a confidently-paced storyline that’s willing to dictate its…
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In the Mood for a Rewatch
I’ve had the main theme to Wong Kar Wai’s In The Mood For Love (2000) stuck in my head for about a week now. The music just pops up, and goes on playing in repeat for hours, until some other thought or activity interrupts. Unfortunately the music lends itself very well to repetition: a rhythmic…
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READING: Disappearing Asian Wives
Book review of Wang Ting-Kuo’s “My Enemy’s Cherry Tree”. Asian writers seem to have an obsession with disappearing wives.
Dominic Dayta 