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The very cool people of Seven A.D. invited me to their monthly Sietehan, where we talked about my strange career, the writing process, and how to survive the discovery that your father is not Darth Vader but Jar Jar Binks. Teeny, who heads the agency, was my classmate at UP——there were only a handful of Comparative Literature majors, so our classes were held in the teachers’ offices at the Faculty Center. (If you’ve seen that wonderful San Junipero episode in the third season of Black Mirror, that was my college soundtrack.)

Tey asked me to recommend books and movies for the younger staff who, being of the digital age, are swamped with reading and viewing options. Here are seven books and seven movies, paired according to mood.

1. The Outsider by Albert Camus and Blade Runner by Ridley Scott

The short novel is about a young man who casually commits murder because life is meaningless. The movie is about a cop who is assigned to kill clones who aspire to be human. The two protagonists should talk to each other.

2. Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy and Vertigo by Alfred Hitchcock

In the novel, a young woman goes to the house of a titled family and claims to be related to them. It turns out that she is the genuine article and her “relatives” are fake. Terrible things follow. In the movie, a detective becomes obsessed with a client’s wife, has a nervous breakdown, and then hires a woman to pretend to be his client’s wife. Only she’s not pretending to be that woman. Terrible things follow.

3. A Sport and A Pastime by James Salter and The Earrings of Madame de…by Max Ophuls

A swoony, sexy novel about young lovers driving across France, as told by a friend who imagines their affair. A swoony, romantic movie about a sophisticated marriage that is shaken up by a sudden, grand passion.

4. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell and Magnolia by Paul Thomas Anderson

Seemingly random groups of characters turn out to be connected in ways we did not suspect.

5. Any Human Heart by William Boyd and Children of Men by Alfonso Cuaron

A delightful novel about the life and times of a writer near the end of his life, and a heartbreakingly beautiful movie about a man facing the end of the human species. You dive into the depths of despair, and somehow emerge hopeful.

6. A Time of Gifts by Patrick Leigh Fermor and The Last Days of Disco by Whit Stillman

After being kicked out of boarding school, a young man decides to walk across Europe on the cusp of World War II. After graduating from college, a group of young people make their way in New York City. Common theme: Young people figuring out how to be adults.

7. Scoop by Evelyn Waugh and Young Frankenstein by Mel Brooks

A timid nature writer is mistakenly sent to cover a war in East Africa. The grandson of Victor Frankenstein recreates that infamous experiment. Both are hilarious.

In October I got an email from Kathleen McCaul-Moura, a novelist, journalist, and doctoral candidate in creative writing at the University of East Anglia. She’s doing work on megacity fiction and how the infrastructure and architecture of massive urban hubs affect the literature which is created within them. She was looking for partners for the Megacity Fiction website and the anthology to be published by Boiler House Press in 2018. I’ve written several stories about Manila so I said yes, and volunteered my friend Budjette Tan (now based in Denmark) whose Trese series investigates Manila’s mystical underworld.

The Megacity Fictions site is up, with stories by Budj and myself. (Lamentations 5:23, which I wrote for an art exhibition many years ago, appeared in my book The Stories So Far). Coming up: stories from Moscow, Jakarta, São Paulo and Chongqing. Visit the site, enjoy the stories, and submit your own writing.