If our greatest fear is to sink away alone and unremembered, the brutality that time will inflict upon each of us will always run stronger than any river’s murky waves. This book therefore shoulders the weighty onus of relocating a man’s lost life and explores the possible temptations that death will always present. The facts, shattered, are gathered, for your deliberation, like a broken mirror whose final piece has been forced into place.

Miguel Syjuco, Ilustrado

Ilustrado is the first book by a Filipino author whose name does not rhyme with Rob Long that I’ll be reading, and it’s a far, far cry from my previous, decidedly homogeneous, choices in homegrown reads. Its depth and style make for a sweeping novel that is a breath of fresh air in the often vacuous sphere of contemporary Filipino literature. I’m only past the prologue, which ends with the above-quoted paragraph, but I already dare to say so much about Syjuco’s work. While critical and popular reception is somewhat polarized, at this point I choose to maintain my faith in Syjuco, his proclivity to grandiloquence notwithstanding.

I and several online buddies (Pat, Cheska, Nash, and PJ) have agreed to read Ilustrado synchronously in hope of forming our very own Twitter book club. I have never been a member of a book club, let alone a Twitter book club, so this should be quite interesting, not to mention exciting as we are still figuring out how to properly hold reading discussions on a microblogging platform. I guess we’ll just have to work the kinks out as we go along, 140 characters or less at a time.

Meanwhile, en route to Pangasinan, I have on my lap another Filipino-authored novel. A much shorter one but no less intriguing, it’s just what I need for an interprovincial bus ride. It’s called Roles, and it’s written by a guy who goes by the very Filipino name of Siege Malvar.

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  1. figsandmilk reblogged this from aldrin
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  4. presidents said: LOL ROB LONG.
  5. followyourbliss said: I have notes from Miguel’s talk that I plan on posting sometime this weekend.
  6. aldrin posted this

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