Yearend reads & gifts

(Conclusion)

Last week we featured four books that we urged you to acquire for gift-giving as holiday reads.

Those were: The Jupiter Effect, a novel by Katrina Tuvera, (Anvil); Ten: Coming Home and Nine More Short Stories by Albina Peczon Fernandez (Holy Angel University); The Story of Loren Legarda: Her Legacy and Vision, by Maria Rosa Nieva Carrion-Buck and Maria Lourdes Javier Brillantes (Seagull Philippines Inc.); and The Mountain That Loved a Bird by Alice McLerran, illustrated by Beaulah Pedregosa Taguiwalo, with editions as translations into Filipino, Iloko, Hiligaynon, Kinaray-a, and Binisaya or Cebuano (Mother Tongue Publishing, Inc.).

Now here are five more titles to add to our Filipiniana shelves.

Science Solitaire: Essays on Science, Nature, and Becoming Human by Maria Isabel Garcia (Ateneo de Manila University Press) was launched a few weeks ago at Figaro in Shangri-La Plaza with a panel discussion on science vis-à-vis art.

Maribel Garcia writes the De Rerum Natura column that appears every Thursday in the Science & Technology section of The Philippine STAR. And what a wonderful weekly offering it is, in all meanings of the word.

We wouldn’t exchange it for many of the socio-political columns that we find a glut of in the papers today. Garcia enlightens us every week on some area of science as well as metaphysics, plus their intersections with art and culture. We get to indulge in "deep" reading that makes us exercise more of our brain cells than some part of our curmudgeonly gut.

She writes with passion and flair. Her obvious knowledge and understanding of the latest trends and breakthroughs in science help keep us updated. And it’s not cut-and-dried science that’s offered, but a remarkable welter of "takes" on certain features that bear "humanizing," as may be gleaned from some of her essay headings: "Beetle Sparks and Souls on Fire"; "Taste Twists of the Tongue"; "Eternity for Dummies"; "The Sex of Science?"; "The Mystery of the Useless ‘O’"; "The Buying Brain"; "The Masochist’s Coffeepot"; "Water, Mr. Darwin," and so forth.

As was stressed in that launch forum, we need more of such science writing to sex up our collective unconscious, let alone the national ken for S&T and R&D, the better to improve our growth, inclusive of our GNP.

Food Tour: A Culinary Journal (With Illustrations and Recipes) by Claude Tayag (Anvil) was launched at PowerBooks in Greenbelt some weeks back. Missed it, and what must have been a terrific buffet table prepared by no less than the author as Renaissance man-about-towns-and-markets.

Claude’s a chef, painter, sculptor, wood worker, and not the least a columnist for this paper. You’ll also see his bottled creations (of taba ng talangka, for one) on most supermarket shelves. And he’s already immortalized himself with dessert creations to-die-for, per his own nouvelle cuisine peers.

In this book, his sketches alone, on visually appetizing buff paper, are worth the copy price. Our own back-cover blurb attests:

"From sisig to durian, from bagnet to Bicol Express to bacalao a la vizcaina, Claude Tayag seems to know exactly which food trips this foodie would trip to slaver over. These are among the drop-dead enticements I would never pass up, never mind the potential ‘bout with gout’ that Claude cheekily reminds us of.

"Cheekily? That brings us to sisig, which is a common denominator among seekers of the Holy Grill. Like Claude, I too have not passed up on a sizzling plate of the stuff since I lucked into a neighboring Trellis in UP Village in the early 1980s. Then I remembered that my mother claimed Pampanga as provenance, so that when she wasn’t doing her bacalao for the whole clan during Lent, I lent her my ears, and snout, straight from the wet market.

"This book rouses a great menu of memories, especially since its author also establishes a wonderful correspondence between food and places, and tosses everything into his salad of precious insights. Here are memorable meals galore that should turn everyone, like him, into a gourmet, gourmand, and ‘goormoink.’"

The Governor-General’s Kitchen: Philippine Culinary Vignettes and Period Recipes 1521-1935 by Felice Prudente Sta. Maria (Anvil) is another collectible whose launch we missed.

From one kitchen to another, then, our moveable feast of menus, authors and designers spells history in the making and remaking, especially in the hands of an author whose grace of focus and svelte prose always transmute the bare facts earned from research into a golden, delicate tapestry, much like the intricate paper cutouts that package and adorn our best pastillas (and which figure as her hardbound book’s endpaper).

Over four centuries of a colonial record of kitchen preparations, eating and digesting, inclusive of the burps of contentment, are appreciably woven into this tapestry. Domesticity turns into history thence culture thence a finer knowledge of ourselves, and what we live by – from rice to betel nuts, "Heavenly Hearths" to "One-Pot Orchestration," "Culinary Contrivances" to "Stalls and Stores," the Yakan diet to Rizal’s cook...

A marvelous book this is! Mabuhay ka, Felice!

Tabayag: Little Containers of the Cordilleras (from the collection of Bencab) with Photography by Wig Tysmans and an Introduction by Floy C. Quintos (Bencab Art Foundation) was launched at the Yuchengco Museum at RCBC Plaza.

Again, this handsome book of photographs and annotations ought to rank high on the culturati’s desiderata, as well, specifically, on the ethnocultural front. Tysmans’ photographs are first-class, and so are his subjects: the artistically crafted Cordilleran containers for betel quid chewing ingredients.

Quintos offers an elegant intro into the practice with "Betel Quid Chewing Among the Ifugao." Bencab himself contributes an essay on "The Passion for Collecting."

We learn all about, and proudly appreciate the aesthetics of, these antique containers which are grouped according to shape and material: scrotum and scrotum-shaped, bone, wood, mixed, rattan basketry, and Metal. And we marvel at how the human aptitude and desire for excellence in fashioning what are otherwise practical tools and appurtenances can transform anything into a stab at the divine.

Why, these aren’t just handicrafts but high art, quite possibly higher than the high experienced in chewing betel and lime, high up on those mountains. We only have to regard a pregnant figure in wood, animal heads incorporated in the design parts, bulol shapes, rattan and bead interweavings, and a wooden birdbeak-stoppered rattan vessel that is as sinuous as our northern mountain range, to acknowledge that the high-art gods dwell among us.

Ed Angara: Seer of Sea & Sierra by Nick Joaquin (UP Press) was launched late last month at The Loft in Rockwell Center, with a full house of high-places attendees, including the Philippine President and Congressional leaders. Well that should have been, as the title pays tribute to both the subject of the biography and its author.

In fact, since its launch, this book has gained the most number of reviews, and today if you go to a National Book Store branch you will see a promo tarpaulin with the following quotes:

"Seer of Sea and Sierra chronicles the exceptional life of an extraordinary man." – Dr. Alejandro R. Roces, National Artist for Literature; columnist, The Philippine STAR

"Angara comes out a full man in the hands of a master." – Adrian E. Cristobal, Columnist, The Manila Bulletin

"The story of what has been, by any measure, a remarkable career." – Manuel L. Quezon III, columnist, Philippine Daily Inquirer

"The life of a leader as best seen through the eyes of a master storyteller!" – Joel Salud, book reviewer, Manila Standard Today 

"You will love two people at the same time – Angara for spending his life trying to make our lives better and Joaquin for giving us pure aesthetic pleasure with his gift for words." – Isagani F. Cruz, book reviewer, BizNews Asia

"Joaquin exhibits a sharp poetic style that enlivens his narrative. He has aptly delineated the Angara mystery." – Cirilo F. Bautista, columnist, Philippine Panorama Magazine

"A life story that is part folk-tale and part in the mold of West Wing." – Joanne Rae Ramirez, editor, The Philippine STAR Allure Section

"Breezy, ebullient, lyrical. Joaquin’s biography of a reluctant politician is so quiet, it roars – but only if you know how to read between the lines, and imbibe the changing climes of Sea and Sierra." – Susan V. Ople, columnist, Philippine Panorama Magazine

All proceeds from the sale of this book will be donated to the University of the Philippines. That’s one more reason to acquire this title. It won’t silence the typically knee-jerk protest against the impending tuition hike at the State U., which the biography’s subject served with distinction as president. But it could help the current administration (of UP!) in shoring up its cash-starved coffers, no thanks to another level of administration and others that preceded it.

Happy holidays, and happy reading!