Should JK Rowling write another Harry Potter?

Aye, there were rumors circling around that J.K. Rowling is contemplating of adding another one to the seven-book stack of Harry Potter series. And I have one word to say to that: Seriously?

I love Harry Potter. For me, it is the benchmark for any good writing (well, for young adults novels, at least). It is smart, thrilling and funny. The characters were almost “stepping out of the pages” and the plotting superb.  But creating another book when it was all obvious in the final chapter of the final book that it was all over, well, I think it wouldn’t be too smart. Of course, fans all over the world would be raving for that addition and who knows if it isn’t any good as its predecessors. But guys, I mean, c’mon. Clearly, Harry’s adventure is done already and there’s no need for an add-on. Anyway, what it would suppose to be about? Harry Potter and the Midlife Crisis?

What do you think Potter fans?

Why Do Chicks Dig Sparks?

I don't know. But whenever I ask the ladies whether they read books and they say yes, they would always add " especially Nicholas Sparks." What the hell is with the guy? Okay, his stuff are pretty much girly. Novels that are turned into tear-jerkers that proved to be commercial success on the silver screen (A Walk to Remember, The Last Song, The Notebook, Message In A Bottle). For a guy, he writes some stuff that women tend to enjoy more.

My sisters, friends and colleagues would sometimes rant about him and his novels nonstop that my ears start to bleed on the endless praises "oh, he's just sooo good" and "he knew how things are, really."

So, in vague attempt to at least understand why Sparks is the "name", I tried to read some of his stuff during the holidays  and my bum period as well. And yeah, women would definitely dig it because most of his male protagonists are portrayed as the weaker sex and women at the end would be the "hero" or more politically correct is heroine, so to speak.

I have read A Walk To Remember, Message In A Bottle and The Notebook and I find them, well, quite too girly. LOL. But what I liked about Mr. Sparks is the richness of emotions embedded in his works, although sometimes could be so melodramatic. But that's what chicks dig, so yeah. Whatever.

100 Best Novels of All Time (A New York Times Review)

I swear to my grave (morbid, LOL) that I'm gonna read all of these before I die. Haha!
This list I saw while I was browsing the net for Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go. Well, chaps here they are, the NYT best novels of all time

1. "Ulysses," James Joyce

2. "The Great Gatsby," F. Scott Fitzgerald

3. "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man," James Joyce

4. "Lolita," Vladimir Nabokov

5. "Brave New World," Aldous Huxley

6. "The Sound and the Fury," William Faulkner

7. "Catch-22," Joseph Heller

8. "Darkness at Noon," Arthur Koestler

9. "Sons and Lovers," D. H. Lawrence

10. "The Grapes of Wrath," John Steinbeck

11. "Under the Volcano," Malcolm Lowry

12. "The Way of All Flesh," Samuel Butler

13. "1984," George Orwell

14. "I, Claudius," Robert Graves

15. "To the Lighthouse," Virginia Woolf

16. "An American Tragedy," Theodore Dreiser

17. "The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter," Carson McCuller

18. "Slaughterhouse Five," Kurt Vonnegut

19. "Invisible Man," Ralph Ellison

20. "Native Son," Richard Wright

21. "Henderson the Rain King," Saul Bellow

22. "Appointment in Samarra," John O' Hara

23. "U.S.A." (trilogy), John Dos Passos

24. "Winesburg, Ohio," Sherwood Anderson

25. "A Passage to India," E. M. Forster

26. "The Wings of the Dove," Henry James

27. "The Ambassadors," Henry James

28. "Tender Is the Night," F. Scott Fitzgerald

29. "The Studs Lonigan Trilogy," James T. Farrell

30. "The Good Soldier," Ford Madox Ford

31. "Animal Farm," George Orwell

32. "The Golden Bowl," Henry James

33. "Sister Carrie," Theodore Dreiser

34. "A Handful of Dust," Evelyn Waugh

35. "As I Lay Dying," William Faulkner

36. "All the King's Men," Robert Penn Warren

37. "The Bridge of San Luis Rey," Thornton Wilder

38. "Howards End," E. M. Forster

39. "Go Tell It on the Mountain," James Baldwin

40. "The Heart of the Matter," Graham Greene

41. "Lord of the Flies," William Golding

42. "Deliverance," James Dickey

43. "A Dance to the Music of Time" (series), Anthony Powell

44. "Point Counter Point," Aldous Huxley

45. "The Sun Also Rises," Ernest Hemingway

46. "The Secret Agent," Joseph Conrad

47. "Nostromo," Joseph Conrad

48. "The Rainbow," D. H. Lawrence

49. "Women in Love," D. H. Lawrence

50. "Tropic of Cancer," Henry Miller

51. "The Naked and the Dead," Norman Mailer

52. "Portnoy's Complaint," Philip Roth

53. "Pale Fire," Vladimir Nabokov

54. "Light in August," William Faulkner

55. "On the Road," Jack Kerouac

56. "The Maltese Falcon," Dashiell Hammett

57. "Parade's End," Ford Madox Ford

58. "The Age of Innocence," Edith Wharton

59. "Zuleika Dobson," Max Beerbohm

60. "The Moviegoer," Walker Percy

61. "Death Comes to the Archbishop," Willa Cather

62. "From Here to Eternity," James Jones

63. "The Wapshot Chronicles," John Cheever

64. "The Catcher in the Rye," J. D. Salinger

65. "A Clockwork Orange," Anthony Burgess

66. "Of Human Bondage," W. Somerset Maugham

67. "Heart of Darkness," Joseph Conrad

68. "Main Street," Sinclair Lewis

69. "The House of Mirth," Edith Wharton

70. "The Alexandria Quartet," Lawrence Durrell

71. "A High Wind in Jamaica," Richard Hughes

72. "A House for Ms. Biswas," V. S. Naipaul

73. "The Day of the Locust," Nathaniel West

74. "A Farewell to Arms," Ernest Hemingway

75. "Scoop," Evelyn Waugh

76. "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie," Muriel Spark

77. "Finnegans Wake," James Joyce

78. "Kim," Rudyard Kipling

79. "A Room With a View," E. M. Forster

80. "Brideshead Revisited," Evelyn Waugh

81. "The Adventures of Augie March," Saul Bellow

82. "Angle of Repose," Wallace Stegner

83. "A Bend in the River," V. S. Naipaul

84. "The Death of the Heart," Elizabeth Bowen

85. "Lord Jim," Joseph Conrad

86. "Ragtime," E. L. Doctorow

87. "The Old Wives' Tale," Arnold Bennett

88. "The Call of the Wild," Jack London

89. "Loving," Henry Green

90. "Midnight's Children," Salman Rushdie

91. "Tobacco Road," Erskine Caldwell

92. "Ironweed," William Kennedy

93. "The Magus," John Fowles

94. "Wide Sargasso Sea," Jean Rhys

95. "Under the Net," Iris Murdoch

96. "Sophie's Choice," William Styron

97. "The Sheltering Sky," Paul Bowles

98. "The Postman Always Rings Twice," James M. Cain

99. "The Ginger Man," J. P. Donleavy

100. "The Magnificent Ambersons," Booth Tarkington

Second Chances and Letting an Opportunity Slip

Of course, I am just assuming all over again. Pero kung makikita ko siya, siguro sisiguruhin ko na na may way of communication na kami. You see, I like this person but the thing is, I was not so assertive as to get the damn digits, LOL. I chickened out, so to speak. Haha, loser! Pero bakit nga ba? Geez!

Will another chance go my way? I hope so. Dahil I think I might want to take risks this time and damn all the odds.

How about you guys? Have you ever felt that too, I mean you could have done something like ask her number or even FB account and yet you didn't because you thought, "maybe it's too early, I don't wanna freak her out," and finding out too late na, sheesh, wala siyang FB! And wishing upon a hundred stars that fate would give you another shot?

A Haiku for the Birthday Boy

This is a simple haiku for a friend who is celebrating his birthday today. Happy Birthday buddy!



Dance until they see
What a wonder life can be
It is your birthday!

As the Moon Was Waxing Gibbous

I saw my Dad step off the car

As he carried the usual stack of file

He brought home after work

And the maid turning the door open for him.

I heard my Mom talking on the phone,

“No, I clearly ordered red!” she said

And I wondered when was the last time

She had ever talked to me.

I tasted the cookies from the forbidden jar

That would go expired uneaten anyway

To see if anybody would notice

And the filthy belt greeted my skin anew.

I felt pain all over my body

For that one piece of cookie

But hey, I thought, pain is a more welcome feeling

Than to feel nothing at all.

I smelled death as the maid tucked me in,

Yes, the horribly sweet smell of eternal oblivion;

He was smiling, waving down when I opened the bedroom window

And as I fell, back first, I saw the moon was waxing gibbous.

Scribbler's Top Picks 2010 (Part 2)

Okay, so here's the long overdue Scribbler's Top 5 Picks for 2010-General Fiction. For Scribbler's Top 5 YA Picks for 2010 click here







1. Blindness (Jose Saramago) - The book that inspired the motion picture starring Julian Moore an Mark Rufallo, here comes the story of the doctor who was hit by the epidemic of "white blindness" and his wife who surprisingly retained hers despite the fact that the whole city was already infested by the plague. Here is the testimony of man's cruel nature, of his abuse to another man and the savage injustice imposed by one t another and of the proverbial "resonating voice in the wilderness" that delivers hope and salvation. his is a statement to Saramago's genius.


2. Ilustrado (Miguel Syjuco) - The debut novel by the Filipino author that catapulted him to the who's who of literary circle. Long before it was published, Ilustrado had been making noise bagging the coveted Man Asian Literary Prize and the local Palanca Award. Revolving on the story behind the death of the Lion of Philippine Literature, the story retells the three hundred long and bittersweet years of Philippine history--from Spaniards to post-colonial republic--through the story of the protagonist Miguel Syjuco (yes, the author's namesake). Although I could have used a different ending ( I already had empathized with the young Miguel to learn that he was just a projection, oh man!), this was a good and darkly humorous story. Caveat: dictionary, a must!

3. The Curious Incident of the Dog at Night Time (Mark Haddon) - This is an extraordinary account told on a first person perspective by an autistic narrator Christopher John Francis Boone. It started when one night the young Christopher found a dead dog lying on the neighbor's front yard with a garden fork sticking out of its stomach. He wanted to find out who did the murder, following the method of scientific deduction of his favorite character, Sherlock Holmes. His investigation, though, would lead him to deeper secrets that loomed their family and the touching narration of Christopher's character will surely open the eyes of the reader to the richness of human sympathy.

4. Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (Haruki Murakami) - This is my first book of Murakami and I should say that his take on this novel is nothing but avant-garde. Told in a first-person narrative, it has two distinct tones: one vivacious, witty and humorous while the other was melancholic or even phlegmatic. Think of Harry Potter as against A Little Princess. Like there were two personae in one body, whose separate account were simultaneously happening without one realizing the existence of the other--well, not until the grandiose climax where, in my personal opinion, Murakami had fallen short. But the extraordinary and highly inventive style of Murakami compensated for the ending and Murakami's style had me curious to read more of this artist's work.

5. 2666 (Roberto Bolaño) - Published posthumously (more than a year after the author's death), 2666 is an excruciating narrative of a writer's exploits, history and literary works told in five parts. Heavy in descriptions and slow in pace, the book is what is considered to be Bolaños's masterpiece although readers may find themselves tiring with Bolaños's sometimes complex structure and extremely long sentences (I had to read one paragraph composed of more or less twenty lines but was, in fact, only one sentence), the beauty of this work lies with highly evocative characters who were well-tuned with who they are and what they desired to become.


Well, they all have their own merits and I should say, although these books are extremely different with each other, they share a common quality: truth. And I absolutely recommend them either for leisure reading or academic analysis.