JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

Saffy and Drogon guard the books.

1. What was the first book you read repeatedly?
2. What book have you reread the most?
3. What book do you wish you had written?
4. Do you have a book fetish?
5. What book do you wish would be made into a movie?
6. What book/s do you reread when you are glum?
7. What book beloved by many have you never read?
8. What is your favorite trashy book?
9. What book/s have you attempted many times and abandoned, but still resolve to read someday?

* * * * *

I’ll start.

What was the first book you read repeatedly?

An anthology of fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, and Andrew Lang. I would reread it under the blanket with a flashlight. I especially liked The Little Mermaid because it was so sad. With each step she felt like she was treading on knives! She cast herself into the sea and turned into sea-foam, for a wussy prince! Yes, at 7 I could recognize a wuss. I’ve never seen the Disney version. It would probably make me angry.

(more…)

The Key to Dreams by Rene Magritte

I had this dream a few days ago. (I’d woken up at 8am and gone back to sleep.)

We were filming the travel show in Texas, right after Hurricane Harvey struck. The high-rise office building we were in was flooded up to the second floor. We did not mind the conditions, being used to typhoons and monsoons. I had a dog with me, a brown askal which ran off to play with the other dogs taking refuge in the upper floors. The dog did not respond when I called him, so I figured I’d pick him up when we finished filming.

On our way out I tried to get the dog, but a security guard barred me from looking for him. I started arguing with the guard. I told him I could not possibly leave my dog, and he said I had to leave the building. I was getting very upset.

You know that scene towards the end of The Usual Suspects, after the detective has let Verbal Kint go? The detective sits in his office drinking coffee and looking at the pictures tacked on the walls, and he suddenly realizes where Verbal got his stories. That’s what happened in my dream.

I was yelling at the guard when a series of thoughts popped into my head.

How did I transport my dog from Manila to Texas?

Wait. I don’t have a dog.

Then I woke up.

Read How to Remember Your Dreams

The Stories So Far has been nominated in the Best Book of Short Fiction in English category. Thank you, National Book Development Board and Manila Critics Circle.

The full list of nominees is here.

The Stories So Far was published in paperback by Anvil last year. The paperback edition might still be available in National Bookstores.

TSSF was originally published in hardcover by the Library of Babel in 2014. Great big thanks to the people who made the publication of The Stories So Far possible. Jay Lozada did the cover design (Ricky Villabona did the cover of Geeks Vs Jocks). Ige Ramos did the book design. Tina Cuyugan did the editing. Juan Chua published the whole shebang. Karina Bolasco adopted the books for Anvil. And my cats stared at me until I wrote enough short stories for a second fiction book.

Another book I produced was nominated in the Best Book on Professions category. The Management Association of the Philippines commissioned me to write and Ige to design Winning: Management Lessons Outside the Classroom. Winning was published by Anvil and is available at National Bookstores.

Jacob Totoro “Tormund” Howlett overreacts to the nomination.

We have hardcover copies of The Stories So Far and Geeks Vs Jocks (essays on sports, politics, film), Php199 each. To order signed copies, please email saffron.safin@gmail.com.

Following the show’s arc, Drogon and I have agreed on our house allegiances.

It’s been eight days since the season 7 finale of Game of Thrones, and every day somebody sends me a show-related meme (many cats dressed as Lady Olenna Tyrell), joke (usually about incest), video, or mathematical meditation on Jon Snow’s ass (Fibonacci). Nearly everyone in my sphere is experiencing withdrawal symptoms that can only be alleviated by (increasingly bizarre) speculation on how the series will end. Someone should make a series about how people deal with the long wait.

In the meantime, you can read A Song of Ice and Fire, the sixth volume (The Winds of Winter) of which readers have been waiting for almost as long as the HBO series has been around. Then you can study the beautifully rendered maps in The Lands of Ice and Fire, and delve into the history of Westeros from the Children of the Forest to the First Men to the Doom of Valyria in The World of Ice and Fire. The anthology Dangerous Women includes the story The Princess and The Queen, or, The Blacks and The Greens, a thrilling account of the brutal war between rival branches of House Targaryen known as The Dance of the Dragons. And A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms (the Dunk and Egg stories) follows the adventures of the future Ser Duncan, commander of the Kingsguard, and a boy called “Egg”, an ancestor and namesake of the not-bastard formerly known as Jon Snow.

At the very least, you will be better equipped to speculate on the ending (and scream, “That’s not canonical!”).

Read Seneca on the Antidote to Anxiety in Brain Pickings.

From 100 Days of Overthinking by Maria Sanoja

Dear Moleskine,

As a loyal Moleskine user I am dismayed that your recent Limited Edition notebooks (Avengers, Beatles, etc) are available with ruled pages only. Consider that many of the people who shell out uncomplainingly for your expensive merchandise are the sort of people who appreciate the freedom of plain, unlined pages. I am close to deserting Moleskine for Leuchtturm 1917 or those Romeo spiral notebooks by Itoya, both of which have pristine, heavier paper. Only habit and my preference for seeing rows and rows of notebooks of the same height but differently-colored spines (and your flat-opening pages) keep me faithful. Will it kill you to put out a few Rolling Stones Moleskines with plain pages?

Jessica