Tuesday - September 06, 2005
Bibliomania strikes again.
(The cover of Hortus Sanitatis by Frederic Coche.)
(The cover of Memoria Technica by Satoru Yuiga.)
When my sister and I were leaving the Book Fair, I told her if a bomb went off at that very minute the entire literate population of Manila would disappear. I don't know which would make me sadder, the ashes of readers or the ashes of books.
I was a sticky-fingered brat at the Fair. Shelves and stacks and mounds of books and they inexplicably adhered to my hands all the way to the cashier. I picked up Tad Williams's The War of the Flowers, Steph Swainston's The Year of Our War, Powers - Who Killed Retro Girl? and Powers Forever, Hortus Sanitatis by Frederic Coche (as if a maddened frail angel had been given pen and ink in the Heavenly Sanitarium), Memoria Technica, a compilation of breathtaking manga illustrations from Satoru Yuiga, Kwaidan out of Dark Horse Comics; and I almost decided to buy George R.R. Martin in bulk, except Lucien was squirming and refused to get back into his stroller.
I also bought Ngalang Pinoy (A Primer on Filipino Wordplay), Antukin (a song book of traditional Filipino lullabies) and The Best Filipino Short Stories of the Twentieth Century (in English).
I will probably write rarely in the next two weeks, as I shall be mostly trembling with starvation. Ah well.