(via reginajuris)

Yesterday was the conclusion of the 32nd Manila International Book Fair (or, as I like to call it, one-of-only-two-occasions-when-I-would-gladly-travel-south-toward-SM-Mall-of-Asia [the other one being a Harry Potter IMAX screening]). The fair commenced on Wednesday, September 14, and already thousands and thousands of books were already in place (or, in the case of most of the bargain bins, disarray). Part of the fair’s opening day was the holding of the first ever Filipino Reader Conference: Filipino Readers Make It Social!, organized by a group of book bloggers headed by Honey. It was quite a success, and I was honored to have played a part in making it happen: I was on the book blogging panel, alongside Tarie, Charles, Chachic, and Sasha. There was also a panel on book clubs, run by Tata of Ex Libris Philippines, Gege of Flips Flipping Pages, and Jzhun of Filipino Goodreads. The Kobayashi Maru of Love author, publisher, and blogger Carljoe Javier gave the keynote speech, “No Line on the Horizon: The Merging of Readers and Writers through Social Media.” You can listen to the recordings here, courtesy of Charles, and while you do you may skip the rasping parts that are my voice.

Now time for some bullet points: books salvaged from the fair.

• Forbidden Fruit: From the Letters of Abelard and Heloise - Part of the Penguin Great Loves series. You’ll perhaps remember Abelard and Heloise from the scintillating street puppet show staged by John Cusack in Being John Malkovich.
• The Lincoln Lawyer by Michael Connelly - Matthew McConaughey looking all Matthew McConaughey-y on a Lincoln Town Car with a license plate that says, “NT GLTY.” Who says I read only Fiction with a capital F?
• Human Happiness by Blaise Pascal - Part of the Penguin Great Ideas series. Friends, stop reading Paulo Coelho’s books and Twitter timeline. Read this instead.
• Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys - A modern classic inspired by an old classic, Jane Eyre.
• Imagist Poetry by Peter Jones - An anthology of imagism (whatever that means lol).
• How to Travel with a Salmon and Other Essays by Umberto Eco - Includes the essay, “How to Recognize a Porn Movie.”
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney - A token from Scholastic. I first read this a couple of years ago. It’s funny.
• The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera - One of Los Angeles Times’s 61 essential postmodern reads, a list I’m trying to complete.
• Kraken by China Miéville - Too cool for the Man Booker.
• Wildwood by Colin Meloy - The first of a trilogy of children’s books written by the lead singer of The Decemberists and illustrated by his wife. Blurbs generously provided by Trenton Lee Stewart, Lemony Snicket, Jonathan Safran Foer, and Michael Chabon.
• Shot by Both Sides by Meisei Goto - Another book to satisfy my appetite for Japanese literature in particular and books in translation in general.