the wonderful autograph neil gaiman gave me which occoupied
a whole page of my copy of endless nights…i think this is
both a lovely sketch of morpheus lord of dreams, and a self-portrait

Last week, we went to see Neil Gaiman at the local launch of Fragile Things, his latest collection of short stories and poems. The event took up the better part of three hours, from the time we got our book copies and tickets, to the short interactive session when Mr. Gaiman read a story and a poem from the book and answered questions from the audience, to the long wait for our number to be called and have our books signed.

Like most good things in the world, it was worth the wait, although like many events of its kind it was imperfect - slightly marred in part because one of the bookstore staff got a serious talking-to from a tired Mr. Gaiman when the staff asked a man to step away from the autograph line because he didn’t have a copy of Fragile Things, and in part because I turned into a flustered fangirl when it was my turn to have my books signed. But, as they say, all’s well that ends well, and it was all-in-all a lovely and insightful evening with one of my most favorite authors in the world.

Since then, I’ve been reading Fragile Things. I find the book, for the most part, a fun and easy read. My favorite stories are the first and last ones - A Study in Emerald and The Monarch of the Glen, respectively. The first is a Sherlock Holmes-meets-the-world-of-H.P. Lovecraft type of story, while the second tells of the latest adventures of Shadow, the likeable although somewhat reluctant protagonist of American Gods. The other stories I particularly like include Other People, Keepsakes and Treasures, The Facts in the Case of the Departure of Miss Finch, Goliath, and Sunbird, as well as the poem Instructions.

Forgive me for the lack of the usual superlatives here, which is usually the norm when reviewing Gaiman - although I found most of the stories and poems enjoyable, a handful are disappointing, including October in the Chair and Forbidden Brides…, which, strangely enough (for me at least) won the Locus Award for Best Short Story in 2003 and 2005, respectively. And then there’s The Flints of Memory Lane, a story which even Gaiman admitted dissatisfaction with in the book’s introduction…I find the story so unsatisfying that I wonder why he even thought to include it in this book.

Collectively, the works here are neither as dark, deep, disturbing, unnerving or involving as those in The Sandman series, nor as quirkily magical as the stories and poems in Smoke and Mirrors. None of the stories have the same dark humor found in Good Omens, nor that nonchalant wit in American Gods.

Now that I’ve told you what they’re not, I think it’s just fair that I tell you what they are. Allow me to use a metaphor at this point. The stories and poems in Fragile Things (with the exceptions of a few) are more like small, charming, light meals rather than superbly satisfying 7-course feasts.

I believe if you will think of them this way when you start reading the stories and poems, then there’s a good chance that you will enjoy the book too.

Posted under Reading

some of the books about the philippines, and
written by filipinos, that we brought from home

Please allow me to tell you a story about how one blog entry led to a project envisioned to make info about Philippine music and literature more accessible on the Internet.

One day in July 2001, Mark posted a press release on his personal blog. The press release was an invitation to a mini festival of Filipino contemporary short movies, which also mentioned Filipino authors and filmmakers.

This press release included the words short story and Rogelio Sikat, words that Mark couldn’t have imagined would be the subject of hundreds of comments on that post.

In the last 5 years, there have been 500 comments on that entry…and the only reason it stopped at that number was because Mark finally decided to close the comments section for that post. However, the emails still keep on coming. What kind of comments or emails? Here are some examples (verbatim):

I think you get the idea. In case you want to read the other interesting, and often desperate requests (sometimes demands) for help, you can view them here.

Honestly, at first I was only amused by the response…then perplexed…then saddened. Mark, too, became more and more disturbed by the sheer amount and urgency of the requests.

We began to wonder - was there no other place on the Internet that students could find this information besides a personal blog that clearly wasn’t about epikos and anekdotas at all? We searched, and found out that, apparently, there wasn’t much out there. For a long time, Mark’s post was the #1 result on Google when someone searched for “Rogelio Sikat”. Thankfully, that spot is now occupied by a Wikipedia entry, which gives some info about Sikat’s life, but really not much in the way of examples of his works.

THE PROJECT: WHY A WIKI?

On the 6th year anniversary of Mark’s personal blog, he decided to launch PINOYLITWIKI.COM and PINOYMUSICWIKI.COM.

These were inspired by the success of Wikipedia, and his idea was that it would be best to have a community effort to put these information online. While there are already efforts made by some people to do this, there is so far no central repository which points to these sites.

The purpose of the wikis is to have a place for people who are interested in Filipino culture to have a starting point in their search.

The goal is to be able to develop encyclopedic entries for Filipino writers, musicians, publishers, and their works. When these entries are mature enough, maybe we can then contribute these to Wikipedia for a wider reach.

To find out how you can contribute to these projects, please visit Mark’s blog entry about the project.

Posted under Helping , Reading