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Moby Dick, the Great American Epic and alternative bible by Herman Melville, in the arresting blue Penguin Drop Caps (hardcover) edition, Php849 at National Bookstores.

Ang Kuwento ng Haring Tulala, Marlon James Sales’s Tagalog translation of Cronica del Rey Pasmado, the historical sex-comedy by the beloved Spanish author Gonzalo Torrente Ballester, published by Cacho Publishing House and designed by Ramon C. Sunico, Php350.

Also from Cacho: Ang Banal Na Aklat Ng Mga Kumag, stories and drawings by Allan N. Derain. We thought it was a translation of a French novel and kept saying “De-rahn”. It’s a Filipino novel, first prize winner at the Palanca Awards: unexpected, beguiling, and full of strange enchantments. Cover and book design by Ramon C. Sunico, Php350.

William Boyd, one of our favorite authors, takes a crack at the James Bond franchise with Solo, a Bond novel set in West Africa in 1969. Boyd knows the terrain well—A Good Man In Africa, An Ice-Cream War, Brazzaville Beach are set in Africa, and he’s done literary espionage in Any Human Heart and Waiting for Sunrise. So we have high…high-ish hopes for this book. Well, higher than our expectations for the “P.G. Wodehouse novel” by Sebastian Faulks. The idea makes us want to pelt him with kippers, cucumber sandwiches, newts, etc. Solo, Php729.

It’s like that remake of Ishmael Bernal’s Salawahan, entitled Status: It’s Complicated. We’re not even going to watch it, because we are so fond of Salawahan, there is no way the remake could possibly live up to our expectations. The trailer alone is annoying. It is neither arch, ironic, nor fabulous—the three essential adjectives for Salawahan.

The short satirical novel by the genius recluse whose few photographs date back to his schooldays, so nobody knows what he looks like, Php375.