This is the continuation of our South Cebu-Negros Oriental excursion way back in November 2015. November 30, 2015 Finally, we arrived at the fourth and last day of our excursion. Yesterday, unlike our previous two days, was more laidback and more relaxing. My first taste of Negros Oriental was full of promise that I looked […]
Author: carllbatnag
I am a lot of things. I am that book with endless words. I am that pen that never ceases writing. I am an imagery that captures the beauty that there is. I am a celebration of life. But most of all, I am a memory, a speck of dust that somehow coexisted and survived with other mindless dusts in our personal space in time.
Book Review # 107: 99 Nights in Logar
Book Specs Author: Jamil Jan Kochai Publisher: Viking Publishing Date: January 2019 Number of Pages: 275 pages Genre: Bildungsroman Synopsis Twelve-year-old Marwand’s memories from his previous visit to Afghanistan six years ago center on his contentious relationship with Budabash, the terrifying but beloved dog who guards his extended family’s compound in the rural village of […]
Book Review # 106: Snow Falling on Cedars
Book Specs Author: David Guterson Publisher: Vintage Contemporaries Publishing Date: October 1995 Number of Pages: 460 Genre: Legal Story, Fiction, Novel Synopsis San Piedro Island, north of Puget Sound, is a place so isolated that no one who lives there can afford to make enemies. But in 1954 a local fisherman is found suspiciously drowned, […]
Negros Oriental 2015: Into the Island of Turtles
This is the continuation of our South Cebu-Negros Oriental excursion way back in November 2015. November 29, 2015 The previous day was exhausting – we swam with the whale sharks in Oslob, climbed Cebu’s highest point, and explored remnants of the Spanish colonization. It was filled with many activities that we nearly missed the last […]
South Cebu 2015: A Spanish Affair
This is the continuation of our South Cebu excursion way back in December 2015. The Secrets of Boljoon When we departed from Osmena Peak, rain started to fall. It was an element we were totally unprepared for because of the fine weather we’ve had so far. Our drivers drove as far as they can because […]
Book Review # 105: Middlemarch
Book Specs Author: George Eliot Publisher: Everyman Publishing Date: 1997 Number of Pages: 747 Genre: Novel, Bildungsroman, Realism, Classic Synopsis Subtitled ‘A Study of Provincial Life’, George Eliot’s greatest novel is a tale of many marriages centering on the town of Middlemarch. A complex web, Middlemarch society is woven of myriad lives: the ardent idealist Dorothea […]
Mt. Arayat: The King of the Central Plains
In the midst of the Philippine central plains looms an anomaly that seemingly sprouted out of nowhere. Where one expects to see vast stretches of plain and green rice fields, Mt. Arayat stands tall. As one plies the Northern Luzon expressway, the prominence of this towering and freestanding structure is the object of many a […]
Book Haul: January 2019
Okay, I did make a promise to buy read more books instead of buying more; it is actually part of my 2018 and 2019 Reading Goals and Resolutions. I swear, I tried my best to keep that promise. But how can I resist buying more when they’re practically begging me to buy them *innocent sobs*? […]
January 2019 Book Wrap-Up: Goalsetting
So, 2019 has officially started. With the new year comes new and endless possibilities. It also represents a fresh start, 365 fresh blank pages which we are going to fill with memories, with experiences, and of course, books read. It is also a time to set goals for the coming year. It is in this […]
Book Review # 104: The Fountainhead
Book Specs Author: Ayn Rand Publisher: Signet Book Publishing Date: 1943 Number of Pages: 687 pages Genre: Romance, Philosophical Synopsis This is the story of an intransigent young architect, of his violent battle against the world’s standards and conventions and his explosive love affair with a beautiful woman who loved him passionately yet struggled to […]
