The past week, like most other weeks before it, saw me living and breathing for books. More than that, though, it also saw me and my precious skin being saved by them. You see, the company I work in has partnered with a couple of small restaurant owners to supply us employers with packed meals every day so that those who choose to order from them wouldn’t have to go out of the office for lunch. Every morning, right after we punch in, I and most of my co-employees would check the available dishes for the day and specify what we’d like to have for lunch. Last Thursday I happened to arrive at the office mere seconds shy of being declared tardy, and not wanting to be reprimanded for coming late to our daily department morning meeting, I ignored the day’s menu and sprinted towards my desk straightaway. I figured I’d just tag along with my teammates who regularly eat lunch at nearby fast food restaurants or convenience stores—and I did as soon as the bell signaled lunchtime. Later, at least five employees were rushed to hospital for suffering severe allergic reaction apparently to the dish which they all ordered from one of the packed-meal suppliers. The culprit? Ginataang tulingan (tuna in coconut milk), something I, a sucker for fish-based viands, would have ordered in a heartbeat that morning had I not been almost late. (The tuna, the unlucky employees later told us, might have been mishandled or have already spoiled prior to preparation, thereby resulting in scombroid food poisoning.) And the reason I was almost late that morning? I stayed up till the wee hours of the morning reading books, of course.

In other (bad) news, the issue of whether J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye should (or could) be turned into a movie has again surfaced recently. The late Mr. Salinger’s estate is reportedly in dire straits right now on account of a certain tax law, which, like other tax-related stuff, is hardly worth one’s effort to understand, and the easiest way out appears to be one that involves selling the film rights to the author’s most popular novel. I say, bollocks. I shall agree to a film adaptation of The Catcher in the Rye if and only if the prospective producers (otherwise known as phonies) could commission a time machine to bring the 16-year-old Jared Leto to the present and have him portray Holden Caulfield.

On a happier note, the books in the Penguin Inks collection, included in the series of releases from Penguin in celebration of the world renowned publisher’s 75th anniversary, arrived at local bookstores no sooner than last Wednesday. Penguin Inks features six novels, each re-released with a new and striking cover designed in collaboration with tattoo artists. The novels are Martin Amis’s Money, Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones’s Diary, Keri Hulme’s The Bone People, Ian Fleming’s From Russia with Love, J.M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians, and David Foster Wallace’s The Broom of the System.

Finally, last night I and several friends from the office threw a farewell party for one of our teammates who has resigned to pursue a career in, well, job-hunting. It was a riot, to say the least, and a good portion of it was spent reading a book that was far removed from my usual literary selections of late: a KTV songbook, no less, featuring songs by Justin Bieber. Naturally.

27 June 2010 · Comments · Permalink · http://aldr.in/738785063

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The Invention of Hugo Cabret 
by Brian Selznick

Assembled by writer and illustrator Brian Selznick, The Invention of Hugo Cabret is a work of historical fiction that tells the larger than life story of a boy and his serendipitous encounter with a former filmmaker, a very famous one at that, in 1930s France. The boy is Hugo Cabret, a 12-year-old orphan living in a small, barely habitable room within the walls of a train station in Paris. The filmmaker is Georges Méliès, without doubt one of the most important persons in film history.

Left to fend for himself following the mysterious disappearance of his uncle, who stood in as his guardian after his father’s death, Hugo is driven not only to take over his uncle’s job as station clock keeper but also to steal food from nearby shops lest he die of hunger. He is also given to stealing toys from a toy store in the station and continually risking being reprimanded by its cantankerous owner in hopes of using the various mechanical toy parts to fix his most prized possession, a defective automaton that used to be under the care of his father, a watchmaker who perished in a fire. Hugo Cabret and Georges Méliès’ paths cross soon after the former successfully repairs the automaton, which sits facing a small desk, its hand poised to write on the piece of paper in front of it. The secret of the automaton, revealed the moment it is fixed, turns out to be so surprising and out of this world that the lives of boy and filmmaker are changed forever. 

“Surprising and out of this world” was also what The Invention of Hugo Cabret turned out to be. I found out about the book when news of a live-action 3D film adaptation, to be directed by none other than Martin Scorsese, emerged a couple of months ago. Thinking that it must be an extraordinarily good children’s book for it to pique the interest of Scorsese, who is a filmmaking legend himself and whose body of work is yet to include an honest-to-goodness kid-friendly film, I then set out to secure a copy. What I had in my hands several days later was a book so big and strange that it could only pack an equally big and strange wallop—which, thankfully, it did, within the few hours that I spent reading it and turning its pages and even long after I’d finished it. 

What you must know about The Invention Hugo Cabret is this: the book consists mainly of Selznick’s meticulously detailed pencil illustrations and stills from among the very first films ever made (including the legendary The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat and the iconic A Trip to the Moon, inarguably the most popular among Méliès’ works), interspersed with expository paragraphs written also by Selznick. It is a thick combination of prose and pictures, carefully calibrated so as to play out, as one critic succinctly stated, “like a silent film on paper.” The book’s unusual format, though, is not a mere gimmick, as the story it contains, apart from having a protagonist reminiscent of Antoine Doinel in François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows, pivots both on a character based on a famous turn-of-the-century filmmaker, no less than someone who was instrumental in the development of cinematic special effects, and on the nature and power of filmmaking itself. It’s no wonder, then, that Scorsese got attracted to it. 

Also, the book, a little self-referentially, underscores the importance of books and of writing. Upon seeing the automaton for the first time, Hugo asks, “What’s that?” “It’s a windup figure, like a music box or a toy, except it’s infinitely more complicated,” says his father, “I’ve seen a few before, a singing bird in a cage and a mechanical acrobat on a trapeze. But this one is far more complex and interesting than those.” “What do you mean?” says Hugo. “This one can write.” Hoping to find a secret, life-saving message from his recently deceased father, Hugo, now an orphan—“a literary category denoting staunchness and pathos,” according to Patricia Craig—has taken it to himself to fix the mechanical man with the help of a notebook that his father left him and the books that the toy store owner’s goddaughter and Hugo’s newfound friend, Isabelle, has read. As mentioned previously, what the automaton is programmed to write turns out to be no mere scribbling, as it sets off, like clockwork, a series of important events in the lives of Hugo Cabret and one Georges Méliès, after which nothing is ever the same. 

Another thing you must know about the book is this: The Invention of Hugo Cabret is a curious device. It is a rectangular parallelepiped eight inches long, six inches wide and two inches high. On its top face is the semblance of a keyhole, not unlike what one would usually find on a treasure chest, for it could very well be a treasure chest. Containing, as the book itself declares towards its end, “one hundred fifty eight different pictures” and “twenty-six thousand one hundred and fifty-nine words,” The Invention of Hugo Cabret is a two-and-a-half-pound chest holding a wealth of wonders and a myriad of unexpected pleasures. It is a box of tricks designed to inspire awe in any person who is fortunate enough to behold its contents. Most importantly, it is one of the most amazing books ever invented.

1 June 2010 · Comments · Permalink · http://aldr.in/652451677

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Wallace and Gromit: The W Files

In celebration of the 20th anniversary of Wallace and Gromit’s first ever appearance, in the stop-motion animated short film A Grand Day Out, a series of digital comics featuring Britain’s world-famous cheese-loving inventor and Dogwarts University alumnus duo was released as native iPhone/iPod touch apps. I just downloaded and read issue no. 1, ominously titled The W Files (opening panels in above photoset). It is free for a limited time (Crikey!) and is, unsurprisingly, cleverly funny.

When strange shapes and flashing lights are seen in the night sky, there are only two paranormal investigators that can solve the problem. Sadly they aren’t available; Wallace and Gromit might as well have a crack at it. After all, what could possibly go wrong?

16 November 2009 · Comments · Permalink · http://aldr.in/245990155

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The Queen’s Croquet Ground

To determine who gets to have my extra limited edition Vintage Classic copy of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, I turned to my trusty randomizing friend, random.org. There, not an hour ago, I played a little game inspired by the Queen of Hearts’ penchant for booting other characters out of her quirky croquet ground.

I entered the complete list of usernames of people from Tumblr, all 24 of them, who responded to my previous post, then I pressed the Randomize button, rather excitedly. Here’s the snag: from the resulting randomized list, I took away the bottom three and re-randomized the remaining usernames, until only three were left. Whoever owns the username that came out on top of the final list wins the book and should email me his or her shipping address as soon as possible, lest somebody steal the book from me along with—Who stole my tarts?!

Congratulations to the winner and thanks to everyone who joined. See you down the rabbit hole!

17 October 2009 · Comments · Permalink · http://aldr.in/215450823

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Facebook 3.0 

Today was a big day for Facebook users with iPhone handsets (or iPhone users with Facebook accounts, whichever works) as the past 24 hours or so brought with it the release of the much-talked about and much-awaited major update to the Facebook iPhone application. As promised by app developer Joe Hewitt, the latest version of the official iPhone client of Zuckerberg and company’s social networking and online marketing brainchild, Facebook 3.0, came packed with a slew of features that make this, hands down, the best version yet.

• See your upcoming Events and RSVP
• See your friends’ birthdays
• See Pages and post updates and photos to Pages you administer
• Write Notes and read your friends’ Notes
• Upload videos from an iPhone 3GS
• Upload photos to any album
• Complete photo management (create albums, delete albums, delete photos, delete photo tags)
• Change your Profile Picture
• Zoom into photos
• Like posts and photos
• See the same News Feed as the Facebook website
• Visit links in a built-in web browser
• See all of your friends’ friends and Pages
• See mutual friends
• Easily search for people and Pages
• Make friend requests
• Become a fan of Pages
• Quickly call or text your friends
• Create shortcuts to your favorite friends and Pages
• Friends sorted by first or last name according to your settings
• Chat friends sorted alphabetically

Take it from me. This version really is the best yet, both interface- and functionality-wise. I’ve been using it all day, and I must say that having the power to do the abovementioned tasks and functions on the palm of my hand, literally, now makes the iPhone app almost as powerful as the full site itself. The app suffers from intermittent display bugs and functionality hiccups, but it being fresh off the App Store’s grill, I’m willing to give it the benefit of the doubt and hope that an update to boost its stability, among other welcome improvements, will be issued soon. For now, though, I’m thoroughly enjoying the current Facebook-on-iPhone experience and celebrating the fact that those darned quizzes and games I’ve been ranting about did not make it on the above list.

28 August 2009 · Comments · Permalink · http://aldr.in/173903588

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