Archive for the ‘literature’ tag
Book Baton
Oh crap. My seams will show on this one. Ok, kates (good luck to us in our business-plans-in-our-head-for-now, dude) passed the book baton to me, so here’s the obligatory list:
Number of books on my shelf:
50, more or less
Last book bought:
John Freeman’s The Photographer’s Manual
Book I read now:
Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon
Ricky Lee’s Trip to Quiapo: Scriptwriting Manual
Last 5 books book I read:
Ian McEwan’s The Comfort of Strangers
Books I’ll cherish:
Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, edited by Stephen Mitchell
Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis and Other Stories
No more passing of the baton.
On How-to Photography Books
I’m not by any far cry a bookworm, but I do try to see if I can score worthy bargain books whenever I can. Cheapest, interesting book I bought was an Asimov-edited sci-fi short story compilation for four pesos.
Since I started dabbling in photography though, I’m now a lot more interested in rummaging through photographer-centered coffee table books, photography manuals, and the occassional photo-magazines. I don’t have an extensive collection, but I do believe I have a pretty interesting bunch. I’ve posted about the picture books I currently have before (link), now I’ll babble about the instructional books
John Hedgecoe, whose name is quite familiar whenever I do browse the web for any photo-books, came out with The Book of Photography in 1976. Just this weekend, I purhcased a 1990 edition for Php220 (click here for the new, 2005 version). This is easily the best how-to book photography book I’ve paid for, that goes through the basics (cameras, composition, technique), old-school style, which I am so enamored with. The accompanying pictures have a fine-art slant to it, definitely refreshing from the standard commercial and nature photography more often seen.
A rather more expensive buy (a little too expensive for a bargain book, whose cost I’ve erased from memory by inking the price tag with permanent black marker) is a Time-Life book on Photojournalism, reprinted in 1976. The sheer quality of the photographs included are eye-popping, and some downright disturbing. I’d always skip the page where some lucky photographer caught someone, who committed suicide by jumping from a building, about 8 feet above-ground, just before impact. As for content, the chapter on the History of “Covering the News” is a damn good read, from how 19th century journalism considered it in very poor taste to include news pictures in print, to how the press wanted woodcut drawings instead of realistic photographs.
Pinoy film critique: the brutal but right way
Look out, Pinoy cinema’s (most likely) most notorious film critic just came out with Critic After Dark: A Review Of Philippine Cinema, which is currently only available in Singapore. He did indicate in the NMR group that there is a local edition being worked on.
I never was able to send him a copy of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Kairo, which he took interest in. He was going to provide me a Michael Winterbottom movie in exchange for it. This was all when the indiefilipino forums was still alive and satisfying my online forum fix quite well.
One lines per
I’ve actually gotten to know more than two characters in Ian McEwan’s The Comfort of Strangers, so that means I’m past one chapter, after probably half-a-dozen attempts of going past, oh, page 10?
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After seeing bits of the Stone Roses DVD, I’ve come to the conclusion that I’d rather just hear them than see them, since Ian Brown is fugly, and don’t get me started with his dance moves.
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Cleaned a part of the living room Sunday afternoon, took away most of the accumulated and dusty wedding, baptism, birthday souvenirs, and my camera’s are now more appropriately displayed, with 10 of the proper one’s in a more prominent view.
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Something I learned today: nilagang baka is always best cooked over a slow fire (not pressure-cooked!), and Monterey beef short ribs seem to cook a little faster than previous meat cuts I’ve used.
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Intentionally made Aurora Ramone die, for the sole reason that I got bored with her lonely life, but she did get laid, earned more than $500 a day.
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I can still iron polo’s, having learned to do so from better-forgotten high-school days, but I still half-suck at it.
in the stash
somewhere in Manila, i found these, and bought them on SALE:
Roald Dahl’s “Complete Tales of the Unexpected” (BBC Radio 4 Books)
Sylvia Plath’s “The It-Doesn’T-Matter Suit” (Penguin/Faber Audiobooks)
ok, so they’re on cassette tapes.so what?
