Page 2 of 7

Re: My Favorite Book 2011 Contest

PostPosted: October 31st, 2011, 1:29 pm
by admin
THIS WEEK'S WINNER






Royalty and infidelity
By Serena Estrella (The Philippine Star) Updated October 30, 2011 12:00 AM Comments (0)


Serena Estrella’s great interest and passion for world history started with a book about Henry VIII’s six wives when she was 11 years old. Nowadays, she helps out with her family’s business and continues to remain a keen observer of today’s society and how the lessons of history still apply to it regardless (or perhaps even because) of how evolved society has become. “The names Marie Antoinette, Henry VIII, and Elizabeth I stand alongside those of Warren Buffett and Robert Kiyosaki on my bookshelf and on my office desk.”

When there’s marriage without love, there will be love without marriage. — Benjamin Franklin

MANILA, Philippines - Prior to the 21st century, infidelity was one crime that most monarchs frequently got away with. The general public was quick to rally with their pitchforks if their ruler ever unjustly executed one of their own or emptied the treasury to indulge their every whim. On the other hand, they either looked the other way or watched in awe as their much-married sovereign paraded around with a breathtaking beauty. For years, I assumed that it was because a flashy paramour was simply another status symbol or that society can be rather lenient when it comes to certain people, males especially, engaging in such dalliances. Opening up Eleanor Herman’s Sex with Kings, however, showed me that there was so much more behind it.

Herman is quick to point out that royal marriages were more like business contracts. Some marriages served to solidify alliances against foreign powers and each princess represented massive dowries, peace treaties, and trade concessions. With the peace and prosperity of entire nations depending on which princess one chose to marry, I suppose it was unlikely that physical beauty, intellectual prowess or even basic compatibility was a main consideration.

Just imagine being 14 or 16 years of age and leaving your friends, family, and homeland forever to travel to a faraway country. After an uncomfortable sea voyage (where you could easily perish if stormy weather or some mythical sea creature capsizes your barge), you are presented to a man you have never met or seen (obviously they didn’t have Facebook back then). You are then married to this stranger, served food you don’t recognize or like, forced to make conversation in a language you don’t understand (they could well be telling you that your breath stinks, given how their equivalent of toothbrushes then were tree branches with the bark pulled back), and then stripped down to your linen shift. This would be the only layer of clothing standing between you and your new husband as attendants gently push you into bed with him. Notaries stand at the ready (in the same room), poised to record the first shriek or moan as proof that the marriage “has been consummated.” One can only perceive the awkwardness and great confusion of the whole affair and how resulting incompatibility can wreak havoc on a baseless union devised partly to create a much-longed-for heir to the throne.

The marriage between George IV of Great Britain and Princess Caroline of Brunswick was one such fiasco. Caroline found the then-heir to the throne very fat and “not so handsome” while fastidious George despaired at how he could possibly bring himself to impregnate such an ill-kempt creature: “She showed….such marks of filth…that she turned my stomach…I made a vow never to touch her again.” They both came to detest each other so much that George hired prizefighters to prevent his wife from entering Westminster Abbey and being crowned alongside him. In the midst of ill-conceived but utterly necessary marriages, I suppose these monarchs yearned for some relief. Though “sanctified” their blood may be, they still had the very human need to be held, cherished, and loved.

Enter the royal lover.

For kings and princes, there was the maitresse-en-titre, the principal mistress. She was usually a member of the aristocracy and was thus well-educated and well-mannered, although there were notable exceptions. A maitresse-en-titre could also be known for her luminous beauty but women who relied solely on such never held a sovereign’s interest for very long. Virginie di Castiglione, for instance, had a delicate, classic beauty and a magnificent bosom that she allowed to “dangle freely” but was also prone to conversing solely about her own glorious beauty, proclaiming herself “the most beautiful woman of the century” and thus prompting her quarry, Emperor Napoleon III of France, to declare that she “bores me to death.” As principal mistress, Virginie lasted only a year. In stark contrast, Camilla Parker-Bowles is very plain and is older than her lover and now husband Prince Charles. She’s hardly “the most beautiful woman of the century” and yet the heir to the most prestigious monarchy in the world has remained utterly in her thrall, even while he was married to one of the world’s most celebrated beauties. Why? Herman explains it quite succinctly: “Camilla was….fiercely loyal…reassuring, calm, capable, and — rare in a world of scepters and crowns — unpretentious.…Diana nagged, moaned, complained, accused, threw vases, slammed doors. Arriving at Camilla’s place, Charles would be offered some wine and cheese, asked how his day had gone, told a funny little story. Which companion would you prefer?” Little wonder that their relationship has been ongoing for more than three decades now and that Charles eventually married her and has remained loyal since.

Today, a majority of the world’s monarchies have been abolished and international laws and governing bodies mediate relations between countries. Businesses are conducted across continents, communication at one’s fingertips is commonplace and most foreign commodities are available locally thanks to advances in freight and storage technology. Modern royal marriages have crossed social class boundaries: Crown Prince Haakon of Norway married a former waitress who never finished her education, Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden married her personal trainer, and Charles’ own heir, Prince William, married his college sweetheart, the commoner Kate Middleton.

One might argue that the contents of Herman’s Sex with Kings are no longer applicable to our current world. Yet one reason why I love it so much is that it is a keen social history with underlying important lessons delivered with great panache and humor. My generation grew up bombarded by media messages that tell young women like me that we have to be whiter, sexier (i.e., waif-thin with huge breast implants), and injected with Botox to attract and hang on to our significant others. Incredibly foolish as that sounds, some young women still believe in it. (Watch this year’s “Teen Choice Awards” if you don’t believe me.)

Sex with Kings reveals that legendary royal consorts had their share of physical imperfections, wrinkles, and weight gain but it was their well-cultivated minds, kindness, loyalty, and devotion that bound kings, emperors, and princes to them. Perhaps the best lesson from the book is that the most enduring relationships are the result of not only choosing someone special who would treat you with the utmost respect and devotion but also choosing to be someone of substance while still able to make the significant other feel as loved and cherished as any revered monarch, whoever one’s king might turn out to be in this life.

http://www.philstar.com/Article.aspx?ar ... egoryId=86

Re: My Favorite Book 2011 Contest

PostPosted: October 31st, 2011, 9:56 pm
by mindspeaks375
Hello! I was just wondering how do I submit an entry via email? what are the requirements I have to submit and their formats along with my entry? thanks in advance

Re: My Favorite Book 2011 Contest

PostPosted: October 31st, 2011, 10:43 pm
by admin
mindspeaks375 wrote:Hello! I was just wondering how do I submit an entry via email? what are the requirements I have to submit and their formats along with my entry? thanks in advance


Hi mindspeak! The My Favorite Book Contest is being conducted by National Book Store, The Philippine Star, and Globe. We post winning entries here in order to share them with RP members as well. For contest rules and where to send entires, check out: http://www.philstar.com/Article.aspx?ar ... egoryId=86

Re: My Favorite Book 2011 Contest

PostPosted: October 31st, 2011, 11:42 pm
by mindspeaks375
Thank you for the reply, I've read that one earlier, but it only gave the email address where the entry will be sent, and I do not know if it's okay if I attach the other things require along with the entry. I hope you can help me with this

Re: My Favorite Book 2011 Contest

PostPosted: November 1st, 2011, 12:06 am
by admin
mindspeaks375 wrote:Thank you for the reply, I've read that one earlier, but it only gave the email address where the entry will be sent, and I do not know if it's okay if I attach the other things require along with the entry. I hope you can help me with this


Hi mindspeak375, based on feedback from members who have sent entries, yes you may just attach the other requirements such as 2x2 photo and personal info in the email (including name, age, address, contact numbers, and 2 paragraphs of background info) and send to myfavoritebook2009@yahoo.com. Good luck!

Re: My Favorite Book 2011 Contest

PostPosted: November 7th, 2011, 7:12 pm
by admin
THIS WEEK'S WINNER




Saving Middle-Earth
By Joel D. Techico (The Philippine Star) Updated November 06, 2011 12:00 AMComments (0)

MANILA, Philippines - Joel D. Techico, 31, works at St. Michael Rural Bank of Tarlac. “Facebook, Sudoku, Naruto, X-men comics and the classics keep me afloat in the pond of ennui.”

A sure indication a book is close to your heart is that you have an extra copy of it. A friend may borrow it and it may take years before he returns it. If he does return it, the book is already woefully spoiled. Also, a second copy will come in handy when you find your first one falling apart after many rereadings. But, above all else, an additional copy of your favorite book simply gives you additional happiness.

This is especially true with The Lord of the Rings. The book is very long but there is something very magnetic about it. Simply put, J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings is a beautiful book because it is a tale about good overcoming evil; it is a quest affectionately told with wit, charm and palpable danger. It is a masterpiece narrated in superb language, almost Miltonic in stature. But, most of all, it is an outpouring of an author’s heart for his deep love for nature.

I, too, am a nature lover. Reading Tolkien is like meeting a kindred soul. Though I live in the city, I always get smitten whenever I see pictures showing the beauty of creation. At daybreak, I lie still and listen to sparrows singing their greetings to the waking world. I remember that when I was small, the sky was always almost clear and you only had to look up to enjoy the majestic sight of innumerable stars dotting the firmament from horizon to horizon.

One turning point in the story is the uprising of the forest. After enduring senseless denudation, the trees finally resolve to avenge themselves. It is important to note here that their retribution is carried out with reluctance and sorrow. Even now, we experience nature’s indignation in response to man’s abuse and disrespect of her. But even in the midst of her fury you can feel her sadness for the resultant loss of lives and property.

Digging deeper into the tale, I feel that Tolkien surreptitiously provided us the answer to mankind’s problems which is, I believe, humility. Gandalf, Aragorn and Frodo are all humble persons. They represent the religious, political and common citizenry of Middle-Earth. Gandalf becomes the head of the White Council; Aragorn is crowned King of the West; and Frodo succeeds in destroying the One Ring. Yet through all these great feats, not a single strand of pride or arrogance goes to their heads.

As we age, pride creeps in. I am no exception. The egoism of other people can be biting, subtle and nauseating. They consider every misunderstanding an affront to their bloated ego. Whenever I feel slighted, I realize that it is not my self but my pride that is offended. Musing on imagined wounds suffocates joy and brings only bitterness. Swallowing your pride is not enough; it must be exorcised out of your system. The process is painful but attainable.

Of all the characters in the book Gandalf is the most mesmerizing. He enters Middle-Earth in gray cerements and leaves it in white robes. For me, the color gray signifies that important crossroad in life where one has to choose the direction of his destiny. One cannot remain gray for a long time; sooner or later, a decision has to be made. Still, one must be alert. The case of Saruman bids us to be wary. It is distressing that many of us idealistically swear not to let the shadow in but we end up succumbing to it.

On the lighter side, it was fun collecting the three books of The Lord of the Rings. I prefer the earlier Ballantine editions as its font won’t give you eyestrain. For first-time readers, they will feel the excitement of following the fellowship from the Shire to Rivendell; from the Mines of Moria to Rohan; and finally from Minas Tirith to Mt. Doom. They will realize that they haven’t read anything like this before. While for the not-so-first-time readers, there will be nostalgia. As they flip through the pages, they will feel that they will never encounter books of this caliber again.

Also, the world of Middle-Earth is so believable that the reader can say with lucidity that the events Tolkien narrated could have happened several ages ago in our very world. The topography of Middle-Earth may have changed but the trees, the rocks, the rivers, the valleys, the mountains, and the constellations are all the same as ours. This is only one of the unique attributes of The Lord of the Rings. Middle-Earth, unlike many fantasy worlds out there, never alienates.

Finally, the conclusion of the tale is both sad and hopeful. Sad in the sense that many fair and wonderful things are now passing away. Our forests are fast becoming treeless hills; our seas are being lawlessly ravaged. Is this the manner of stewardship that we present to God’s earth? But there’s still hope. And one of those hopes is that after we die, the books Tolkien wrote will still be here to remind future generations of the sacredness of caring for the earth.

http://www.philstar.com/Article.aspx?ar ... egoryId=86

Re: My Favorite Book 2011 Contest

PostPosted: November 14th, 2011, 9:27 am
by admin
THIS WEEK’S WINNER





To table and to bed, come as bid
By Rosario Patino-Yap (The Philippine Star) Updated November 13, 2011 12:00 AMComments (0)


MANILA, Philippines - Rosario Patino-Yap, 39, teaches high school English. She recently won second place in the 111th Philippine Civil Service Anniversary (PCSA) Essay Writing contest sponsored by the Civil Service Commission. Reading and writing are her comfort zones.

Love, food and magic all mixed together — elements in a paperback that beckon me to drop everything, curl up, and read. The bookworm in me itches to just immerse myself in my pocket wonderland and let go of cares and worries. But why read paperbacks? Why not enjoy the multi-media feast that a movie offers?

My love affair with books started when I was five years old. I recall how our house smelled of imported books and PX goods. My father had befriended a Peace Corps volunteer who chose to stay with us. Who could forget how “uncle” Douglas Hotchkiss would bring out books — The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings, among others — and sit by the window and read his afternoons away. Wanting to impress him, I would get a book and pretend to read. To my chagrin, I was lured into the wonderful world of letters. What started as a game of mimicry soon blossomed into a lifelong love affair with anything printed. There, the love of reading started.

I would read anything my little hands could hold. Every time I was not playing with the kids on the block, my mamang would know where to fish me out. She would find me cocooned inside the folds of a hanging muskitero (as we called mosquito nets then) with a book stuck in my face. Or at times, she would see me with my feet wrapped in that much-loved muskitero with a book in front of me.

With each paperback, there was always something salient and worth remembering. Like lost loves that pass through our lives at one time or another, each book leaves behind something that beckons to me each time I need to write an essay or an oration. It pains me whenever I have to let go of a paperback in order to make space for another one. It’s like saying “so long” to a dear friend who held your hands in the dark.

The long weekend recently gave me ample time to compute my students’ grades, take care of and pamper my love, and catch up on my reading. The respite gave me time to put my feet up — gone is my muskitero of yesteryear — and lose myself as I got reacquainted with Tita, Pedro, Rosaura, and John. Holding the paperback Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel was like being embraced by a long-lost friend.

I first read Esquivel’s novel when I was in college. Back then, I was very idealistic about love and life, thus Like Water for Chocolate was like an istampita that I kept in my schoolbag. And why not? Being able to feel the emotions and pain of Tita, the main character, was balm to my innocent and unloved femininity. I was living vicariously the life of Tita, I was curious about the life and the angst that go with unrequited love. Plus, the novel put together love, food, tradition and a sprinkling of fantasy and magic — sure ingredients for a cannot-put-down paperback.

Reading the novel again opened several doors in the past that I had already relegated to the dustbin of yesteryear. Memories, both happy and painful, came rushing like stemmed water. Just like Tita who concocted sumptuous dishes for her family, every milestone and trial in my family was punctuated by a special dish. How could I forget the first time I cooked dinengdeng ng saluyot leaves and bamboo shoot? The memory of that fateful night remains till now — and it still crushes me. My mother suffered cardiac arrest and was rushed to the hospital and passed away shortly after that.

Just like Tita, I had to learn the ropes of life vis-à-vis the sudden loss. Barely 13, I had to grow up fast. And growing up fast meant learning the ropes in the kitchen and feeding my siblings. Whereas Tita cooked Christmas rolls for her beloved Pedro, I had to experiment on my embutido for my family. Whereas she prepared champandongo for a niece’s baptism, I had to do pacham a la almondigas or “pachambang almondigas.” Her “beans with Chile Tezcucana-style” found a counterpart in my bituelas with pork pata. Her cream fritters were my banana fritters.

Just like Tita, who was submissive and did not know any better but gradually became courageous in expressing her inner fire, I, too, freed myself from the shackles of submissiveness and domestic violence. Like the proverbial Phoenix, I rose from the ashes and picked up the pieces of my life. And I turned over a new leaf, which meant loving myself more, knowing the real me, searching deep within me for the fire that kept me aflame during the hard, hungry years.

“Each of us is born with a box of matches inside us but we cannot strike them all by ourselves. We need oxygen and a candle to help ignite it. The oxygen would come from the breath of a person you love; the candle would be any kind of food, music, caress, word or sound that engenders the explosion that lights the matches. For a moment, we are dazzled by an intense emotion. A pleasant warmth grows within us, fading slowly as time goes by, until a new explosion comes along to revive it. Each person has to discover what will set off those explosions in order to live.”

John, one of the book’s characters, succinctly worded the hope and rekindling of the flame that seemed to fade away in Tita’s lonely life. He also gave me one of life’s universal truths: We all have to discover what will set off the fire in us — the explosions in order to live — since the combustion occurs only when the right person ignites it and this person nourishes our soul. If we do not find out in the nick of time what will ignite the powder keg in us, we lose all reason to live. Just like a box of matches that dampens with disuse, not a single match will ever be lighted. The fire in me is lighted — the fire to keep on learning in order to be a more effective teacher, the fire to be more loving to my better half, and the fire to be a better sibling. I guess I am luckier than Tita because I have found the one who ignited my fire without extinguishing my life.

http://www.philstar.com/Article.aspx?ar ... egoryId=86

Re: My Favorite Book 2011 Contest

PostPosted: November 21st, 2011, 5:23 pm
by admin
THIS WEEK’S WINNER




Mister Sandman, bring me a dream
By Melannie Joy D. Lando (The Philippine Star) Updated November 20, 2011 12:00 AMComments (0)



MANILA, Philippines - Melannie Joy D. Lando, 26, was raised by a family of teachers and agriculturists. She inherited her love of reading from her mother. “I see books as an escape from the realities of life, they afford me a breathing space when there is none to be had. am a Neil Gaiman fan and have the complete set of the Sandman series and most of the books that he has published.”

I started reading before I even started first grade, thanks to Sesame Street and my mother. At the time, my mother was a teacher at a high school in our community. She herself loved to read, and I could not remember ever being short of books. Aside from the mystery books that she liked to read, we had encyclopedias, dictionaries, assorted science magazines (Discovery or National Geographic), old issues of Reader’s Digest and, of course, some children’s books for me.

I became an avid reader at a very young age. This is mostly because there was a scarcity of playmates and neighborhood kids. Also, my mother and my grandmother did not think that watching TV was any good, much less for a growing kid. Thus, I was pointed in the direction of the shelves of books that were always available. I started reading fairy tales and fables. I read about Snow White and Cinderella. I read about the Fox and the Hound and all such fables. In time, these books proved too short for me and I moved on to reading books such as White Fang, Black Beauty, Pinnocchio, Little Women and Little Men. I even tried reading some of my mother’s mystery books but they proved a little dry for my taste. Then I discovered my mother’s science fiction books. She had books written by Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Michael Moorcock and Stephen King. I simply thought they were the bomb. Reading these books was like walking into a waking dream where I discovered universes and met creatures that had never seen the light of day. This was the beginning of my fascination with science fiction and fantasy, after I had read the books that were available at home, I was introduced to Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings. The former, I read all seven books in three days.

In those days, my science fiction-wired brain became steeped in magic and sorcery, in dragons, gold, goblins, elves and orcs. In my head, I could see the forests of Lothlorien and the Great Hall at Hogwarts. I could almost smell the flowers in the gardens at Rivendell, and taste a bogey-flavored jelly bean. I did not care for debates regarding who had the upper hand, was it Harry or was it Frodo. To me, it was all one great story. My flights of fancy kept me sane throughout college and the first years of employment.

My workload eventually affected my free time and I could spare almost no energy to keep reading. At times, it was all I could do to get ready for bed before I actually fell asleep. Longer and longer hours at work kept me focused on spread sheets and PowerPoint presentations and e-mails, so there was no longer any room for imagination. After some time, I feared that I’d outgrown the world of imagination altogether or maybe that it had escaped me. Fortunately, that changed rather unexpectedly.

It was my day off and I couldn’t sleep, so I decided to take a walk and go window shopping. For me, that meant visiting all the closest stores that had books for sale. Shopping for books affects me like shopping for clothes or shoes affects other women. I suppose that means it takes a load off my mind, and besides, I hadn’t read a good book in a while.

At the second book shop I went to, they had a selection of graphic novels and comic books. I never really paid any attention to comic books and graphic novels, except for Pugad Baboy and Kikomachine comic books, which I think are indispensable to every Filipino who has a sense of humor. Still, since I was window shopping, I went through those shelves as well. Of course, there were the Marvel vs. Capcom type comic books, then you have the super hero ones. I picked up a Batman comic book and flipped through it for a few seconds. If there were any superheroes I liked it would be Batman because he is so human and the Martian Manhunter because he is not.

I browsed through a few more titles and was about to leave when a different set of comic books caught my eye. They were for a superhero that I didn’t recognize had never or even heard of before. I picked up the volume marked “1” and stared at the glossy cover. “Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes. I said to myself, “Who the hell is the Sandman?” I was trying to place the comic book in the Marvel vs. Capcom genre but it didn’t look like it fit there at all. Dying of curiosity, I flipped through the initial pages and was surprised to find an introduction. I’d never heard of a comic book with an introduction before. I flipped through that and landed smack in the middle of a story that I had never ever encountered in any nuance or incarnation. It blew me away. This did not even compare to the feeling of discovering alien worlds and alternate realities. I felt like I had discovered the Holy Grail of all stories.

I walked home that day with that comic book in my hand, I knew even then that I would be walking home from that book store with one more volume of that comic book on every pay day for the next 11 pay days...because I had to have all there was of this, this Holy Grail that I stumbled upon. In those pages, I found questions about existence and humanity. It raised questions about circumstances and the human condition. I would discuss these questions with my friends over coffee, lunch and smoke breaks...and while walking home from work. Why is it that other people remember their dreams and others don’t? Are there really people who do not dream at all? Why have we always seen Death as a grim reaper with a scythe...why could Death not be a young woman who is fond of eyeliner and spiky hair?

As I read my way through the series, stumbling every once in a while because I could not cope with everything that seemed to be happening all at once, old stories came back to me. The stories that I had read from when I was six, about the gods of Olympus and the gods of Asgard, jumping out of the pages of these books. The ancient gods of the Nile also existed in those pages, as if they had always belonged there. Here was the world where elves existed with humans and dreams were made of more than just whimsy. Most importantly, this is the home of the Endless. There are seven of them, in order of age, they are: Destiny, Death, Dream, Destruction, Desire, Despair and Delirium (once known as Delight). They are not gods, though they are as old as all of existence. They rarely interfere with human affairs, and they do not seek anything, but simply to carry out their functions. They are ageless but are not immortal, they can die....but since they are functions, existence will replace them with another who will perform their functions...and yet, they are more human than even the Roman gods at times.

Dream is the center of this story, of this telling. He is Morpheus, he is the Sandman. He is powerful, and he holds everything that exists in dreams in the palm of his hand. Indeed, he made all of it. It is in his power to send people dreams that may make them mad, to create nightmares that can walk among humans, to preserve worlds that once existed inside tiny glass bottles. Despite all this power, Dream has the capacity to fall in love, still feels the need to be loved back...and knows that he has a duty to the universe and to existence.

There is no other hero in any other story that tells the story of humanity and existence quite like Dream. In his melancholy demeanor and his temper, you can find most of humanity. In his aspirations, you can find the future of all mankind. He does not limit his understanding to what are usually considered sentient beings, but also extends them to galaxies, stars, animals and every being that dreams...and yet he is no god.

Neil Gaiman’s Sandman brought my imagination back to me and taught me that it is not parallel universes and strange galaxies and advanced scientific discoveries that make existence interesting or worthwhile. It is the human condition and what it is that we hold inside our heads.

http://www.philstar.com/Article.aspx?ar ... egoryId=86

Re: My Favorite Book 2011 Contest

PostPosted: December 7th, 2011, 10:18 am
by admin
This week’s winner




Grief is not a failure
By Neyo E. Valdez (The Philippine Star) Updated November 27, 2011 12:00 AMComments (0)

MANILA, Philippines - Neyo E. Valdez, 40, is a widower and father of three. He is Rex Bookstore Inc.’s in-house editor and does freelance writing and editing. He is working on a reading book for elementary pupils and has a regular column in Bannawag magazine, a literary magazine for the Ilocanos. He is also in the last semester of earning his law degree. “And thank goodness for books. I always find reading therapeutic. It really helps me keep my sanity, before and during my wife’s illness, and most especially now that I am at my lowest ebb, three months after her death.”

This one is a brief review of the novel Ordinary People by Judith Guest. It was a fairly quick read, but I still feel its lasting impression. And here’s why.

I didn’t know anything about the book, its author, or its theme until I picked it up and browsed it. Upon reading the backside that its movie adaptation, directed by the legendary Hollywood actor Robert Redford, was highly praised and won the Oscars for Best Picture in 1980, I didn’t hesitate to buy it.

Why not? Between choosing bestsellers and award-winning books (Pulitzer Prize, National Book Awards, Nobel Laureates’ magnum opuses, etc.), I prefer the latter category. And books made into highly acclaimed movies have always been a good alternative. After reading Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front and Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient, both winners of Best Picture in the Academy Awards in 1930 and 1996, respectively, I’ve been on a frantic hunt for novels whose movie adaptations won the Oscars’ most coveted award.

Ordinary People is one of those novels (actually an old book from the ‘70s, when no cell phones, computers, or social networking got in the way of a good story) I didn’t realize was out there to be discovered or explored. Its theme is universal, which is the loss and the different ways people deal with it.

It is written from the perspective of a reserved teenager, Conrad Jarret, trying to tackle by himself the loss of his older brother. Out of guilt for not being able to do anything to help his brother in an accident while boating together, and feeling disconnected from his parents, he attempts to commit suicide, which lands him in the hospital for eight months. Later on, his father helps him find a psychiatrist.

So disparate is the family grief that it drives the members apart from one another, instead of bringing them together when they need each other most.

The family the book depicts is appropriately “ordinary,” that is, they’re familiar to us. They could be your neighbors or relatives, or could be your own. The characters seem real: you hear them speak and you see their pain, and feel for them.

I can relate to the book’s compelling theme. I really felt for the surviving son and his father Cal, as he tries to reach out to him. I felt connected to both of them. I lost my wife last August, or barely a month before I read this book. With her untimely demise due to breast cancer, all my dreams of getting old, complete and satisfied, with her and our children sank into a black hole and I have yet to cope with the ordeal of being a shocked survivor. I had this uneasiness, however, in seeing my own incomprehensible emotions laid out before me page after page in this novel.

Reading through the struggles of the surviving family members, it brings to mind Hamlet’s affecting question: “To be or not to be?” You suddenly feel envious of the dead, because they are in peace while the survivors have to live long and deal with the traumatizing event, and suffer with more and more issues, like the idea of suicide, isolation, brokenness, deep longing for connection, and a cesspool of unwanted memories.

I’ve read some novels with the same subject — bereavement — and I can only remember Bag of Bones by Stephen King (a writer suffering a severe writer’s block after the death of his wife); The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold (a father who is consumed with guilt at having failed to save a daughter and a mother who drifts away and leaves her husband after the tragic death); and The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett (a rich hunchback shutting off from his mind a sickly son and a beautiful garden after an accident killed his wife), but none had put more than the usual amount of emphasis on depression from a clinical standpoint.

Ordinary People is a very psychologically astute book that tells us matter-of-factly that depression is, in the words of the novel’s psychiatrist, Dr. Berger, “not sobbing and crying and giving vent, it is plain and simple reduction of feeling.” It’s your own choice why you feel numb or void of feelings, because it is your mind’s way of protecting itself. But it is the kind of isolation and being lonely and miserable that is unforgiving and cannot be forgiven when there are people who are more than willing to listen and patiently try to lift you up. I really like that shrink.

So for anyone who has ever struggled with similar loss or depression, this is an eye-opening book. It shows how grief may drive people away from the shelter of the family unit, and yet the same grief may also draw some closer together, like the son and his father in the story. Even “ordinary people” can overcome difficult and unthinkable circumstances all the time, and some handle these poignant and razor-sharp emotions differently, most of them with success. And some made good with the help of a counselor or a psychiatrist.

There is goodness about all things. The book tells us then that there is no insurmountable pain in bereavement. Life may be a lot of problems, yet it is full of hope. The good Dr. Berger has also remarked that after bereavement, “there is just Phase Two. Recovery. A moving forward.” That could be a guiding principle, a perfect mantra, in any depressing time or some shattered relationship.

Except for the deterioration of the marriage between Cal and his wife, the novel ends on a positive note. Conrad Jarret slowly starts to respond to Dr. Berger, and comes to terms with his feelings. The teenager becomes his own man and gets over wallowing in his intoxicating survivor’s guilt and identity crisis, thus resolving the internal conflict of the story.

People just need to learn to work with and around each other in order to live their lives and be happy. I would not have learned these things if I didn’t pick up this outstanding book. I am now well reminded of the reasons that life is still worth living in spite of some horrible things.

After all, grief is not a failure.

http://www.philstar.com/Article.aspx?ar ... egoryId=86

Re: My Favorite Book 2011 Contest

PostPosted: December 7th, 2011, 10:22 am
by admin
THIS WEEK’S WINNER




Fated to choose
By Faye Gonzalez (The Philippine Star) Updated December 04, 2011 12:00 AMComments (0)

MANILA, Philippines - Faye Gonzalez graduated cum laude last March from Ateneo de Manila University with a degree in Communications and a minor in Sociology. She is currently a Jesuit volunteer assigned in the Diocese of Borongan in Eastern Samar. “I love films, nature, books, and chocolate. I want to be a filmmaker, a photographer, a lawyer, and sometimes a marine biologist. Still, I don’t know what to do after my volunteer year.”

In the modest number of years that I have lived, not once have I been troubled by a lack of freedom. I was, in fact, too boldly free for my own good so that shortly after graduating from college, I violated my parents’ wishes and chose to be a Jesuit volunteer. Fresh from middle-class Manila and brimming with idealism, I stuffed some 20 shirts into my behemoth of a suitcase and flew to Eastern Samar last June.

Friends ask about my plans after this and I am quick to say, “I don’t know.” The possibilities are many and it is taxing to go through them. More taxing is to be weighed down by the question on the meaning of my work. Was I sent here for a reason? Some days I have the answers to console myself. But some days I imagine Tomas rearing his head from under a blanket to say: “Es konnte auch anders sein (It could just as well be otherwise).”

In The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera illustrates the human condition: people stumbling from one pole of human existence to another only to discover how closely these ends touch. Thus the womanizing Tomas inexplicably falls in love with the vulnerable Tereza. The artist Sabina, disgusted with collective sentiments, finds herself enamored of Franz who perpetually dreams of becoming part of a revolution. Compassion is defined capriciously as pity, but also as the supreme ability to feel the whole gamut of emotions another person feels. When Yakov, son of the powerful Stalin, electrified himself because he could not justify habitually streaking the soldiers’ latrine with his shit, Kundera notes, “No one felt more concretely than Yakov how interchangeable opposites are, how short the step from one pole of human existence to the other.”

In darkness we grope for answers, in light we are overwhelmed by many. In poverty we complain of hunger, in prosperity we lament that there should be more to life. We have witnessed how history overthrew kings and proclaimed rebels as heroes. And have you realized that the hands we use to receive the body of Christ are the same ones we use to wipe our asses? It is this world where something can be simultaneously scorned and exalted that accounts for the coming together of Kundera’s colorful characters in a deceptively simple merger between choice and chance.

Tomas, a surgeon, was never the hopeless romantic. Outside the operating room, his hands skillfully and dutifully pried into each female body he encountered in bed. He believed that the only dissimilarity worth discovering in womankind is the one not easily exposed. No one could be more surprised than him when he was gripped by an emotion he couldn’t identify—“Was it love or hysteria?”

Tomas would continue to stroll the distance between love and sex. Yet in love there is desire for physical union. Intimate acts can in turn water the soil of love. A drunken escapade can excusably be a pretext for starting a family.

Kundera remarks that we are drunk on the idea that our love can never be ordinary. “We all reject out of hand the idea that the love of our life may be something light or weightless; we presume our love is what must be, that without it our life would no longer be the same.” In a song, one pleads, “Tell me how two people find each other in a world that’s full of strangers.” I’ll tell you how: people just really tend to marry within the same social class, interest spheres, and geographical zones.

In all this, where does love really begin? Should I fall sad at the realization that I and my future lover’s names are not written in the stars? Maybe to accept that love can be ordinary is to believe in a relationship’s capacity to transcend its mundane beginnings, and that to have faith in a relationship is to be able to bank on your maturity to keep things together rather than blame bad luck for your every argument.

“We can never know what to want, because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come,” Kundera writes.

We have only one life and that is a burden. What fatigue would we suffer if we had a dozen lives to spare? We can have an itinerary for each and not spend a minute panicking over how our souls might be saved. The first one we can spend in guiltless indulgence and the last in begging for absolution. But in this tragedy of having only one life, there is grace in the power to choose. In choosing, I still the waves of uncertainty. In choosing, I create my own certainty. Perhaps our heaviest yoke — the unbearable lightness of our being — is that in love and in life, we are fated to choose.

Known for his dalliances but crushed by his strong feelings for Tereza, Tomas does the unexpected and marries her. She cannot stand the smell of another woman in his groin yet she stays with him. Tomas “came to the conclusion that the love story of his life exemplified not ‘Es muss sein!’ (It must be so), but rather ‘Es konnte auch anders sein’ (It could just as well be otherwise).” I can only surmise what they both held onto, but they showed me how hope can be grounded in a certainty that may be absurd but which I myself have created. I volunteered not because I was sure I would survive a year away from everything that is comfortably familiar; I knew I would survive because I signed a piece of paper signifying my year-long commitment to it. My having chosen it prepared me for the worst. That’s why after amoebiasis and typhoid fever, insurmountable frustrations, and the heavy experience of disillusionment, I am still here. I volunteered not because I was sure my efforts would amount to something; I was only sure of my fragile but unrelenting hope that they would.

On Dec. 6, my friend Bro. Kim will be ordained to priesthood, and it’s not because he’s absolutely sure that no woman could ever lure him out of his priestly vestments. For all we know, he may one day meet the girl of his dreams and find himself in shady situations where the only certainty is his vow of loyalty to God, which should then be enough to decide everything.

http://www.philstar.com/Article.aspx?ar ... egoryId=86