Book Review: TROLLS FOR SALE by Jonathan Corpus Ong

Trolls for Sale by Jonathan Corpus Ong
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It's February 25 in my country and it isn't a holiday.

For as long as I can remember, the 25th has been a big deal. Growing up, it was "EDSA Day." It was the name of a highway, yes, but more importantly, it was the name of a bloodless revolution, the success of democracy and the people over a dictator.

But the Philippines in 1985 is no longer the Philippines of 2024.

To understand why, we need to look at what happened to the number one social media capital of the world.

This short book is a compilation of disinformation researcher Jonathan Ong's works, namely, a summary of a longer report ("Architects of Networked Disinformation" co-authored with Jason Vincent Cabañes), a transcript of a talk in Columbia University along with Sheila Coronel, and the article "Southeast Asia's Disinformation Crisis: Where the State is the Biggest Bad Actor and Regulation is a Bad Word."

It's a short but rage/grief-inducing read, tracing the social media campaign story of 2022 linked with that of 2016.

My key take-aways were the lack of ethics displayed by short-term contractual workers who managed to distance themselves from their devilry by being gainfully employed in legitimate PR firms or call centers during the day. The transference of responsibility in saying that "it's just a job" and "there are others worse than I."

It is this collective relaxation of morals that has led us to our situation today, so far removed from the ideals of 1985.

Removing history from the curriculum isn't helping any. Erasing historic dates from the list of state-recognized holidays adds to the national forgetting.

But only if we let it.

Ambeth Ocampo once said that history repeats itself only because we let it.

Thankfully, there are books like this one, as well as plays written, movies made by brave artists unbeholden to old sponsorship. For as long as there are those of us who read, and write, and remember, there is hope still.

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Book Review: LOVE ON THE SECOND READ

Love on the Second Read by Mica De Leon
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I love romance books.

There was a time I used to read nothing but romance. I read romance back when it was looked down upon, so my book club friends and I took to wrapping those bodice ripper covers in opaque wrapping paper. (Today, if you dare raise an eyebrow at romance readers, it's YOU who will be given an aggressively questioning glare back. Do this at the risk of being judged as a narrow-minded snob, you elitist Lit major, you.)

The good thing that came out of reading all those romances is the realization that this genre is a grown-up's Disney fix.

It's the bone-deep assurance that it all will work out fine, in the end.

It's acknowledging that joy is a choice, no matter what curveballs and balls of waste Life throws at us. Heck, to read romance is to choose idealism and light and hope, a revolution against this culture of despair and death. And that is no small thing, and worthy of respect indeed.

So I particularly enjoyed LOVE ON THE SECOND READ! Mica de Leon's debut romance is special because it's my favorite kind of book: a well-written, cleverly nerdy one by a Filipina, and set in the Philippines, where characters have real problems (and not first class, white people ones) and have been through the trauma of the pandemic and the pain of losing family along the way (I abhor books that gloss the pandemic over, like it was a minor blip when it was anything but).

It was so good, I read it in one sitting one glorious Saturday afternoon.

I had plans. I was going to go out.

But the first few pages drew me in and so I was compelled to read it while drinking 3-in-1 coffee instead of an overpriced latte from a fancy cafe that only accepts credit cards (these have NO place in Manila! #hugot).

Reading this brought joy, and Pinoy pride as well! Mica de Leon joins that ever-growing list of world-class writers picked up by international publishing companies, and when you read her excellent first book, you'll understand why. She writes with a confidence and ease that is amazing in a debut book.

This is a romance that booklovers will love, the geekier the better. Where else can you find Austen quotes amidst Star Wars and Red Rising references?

Reading this brought back memories of flirtations in bookstores, crushes blossoming over conversation about books you read to get closer to said crush.

I also love reading books with value added, and Mica does this with an amazingly detailed insider look at the world of Philippine book publishing. Our two leads are both editors who take their office rivalry up a notch when they're forced to collaborate on a book that straggles the line between sci fi and romance.

This romance felt extra real to this Filipina, but it is universal, too, in the appeal of clever dialogue, references to global literature, and the twin blessings of good pacing and a clearly drawn plot.

This book is one of the most joyful I've read in a while! Will be on the lookout for her next books!

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Book Review: THE MANIAC by Benjamin Labatut

The MANIAC by Benjamín Labatut
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"Lost faith is worse than no faith at all, because it leaves behind a gaping hole, much like the hollow that the Spirit left when it abandoned this accursed world... These god-shaped voids demand to be filled with something as precious as that which was lost. The choice of that something - if indeed it is a choice at all - rules the destiny of men."

Labatut reminds me a bit of Richard Powers, in that they're both capable of writing books that serve as place markers in humanity's story. And if perhaps Labatut's writing does not seem as finely polished, the phrases not as perfect, perhaps it is only to be expected as the Chilean author wrote his second novel in English (unlike his first).

Labatut especially excels in showing the twin terrors wrought by technology: fearsomely fast progress, yes, but the author asks: at what cost?

This would make for a fitting companion read with the Oppenheimer biography AMERICAN PROMETHEUS.

The title may suggest incredibly intelligent supermen who step off the edge of the razor-thin line separating genius and madness, and while the book does do that, it also speaks of a very old but very important computer. The MANIAC (acronym for the Mathematical and Numerical Integrator and Calculator) was smaller than its predecessor, the ENIAC, and made the hydrogen bomb possible.

The bomb that was five hundred times more powerful than the atomic bomb that exploded over Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Those bombs that followed a scientist's rational, inhumane logic when he calculated that they had better be blown up before hitting the ground, for maximum damage inflicted onto innocent civilians whose only crime was being born Japanese.

That mad scientist was John von Neumann, whose story takes most of the pages of the book.

Perhaps the most affecting portion is the last one, which focuses on the game go, and how in 2016, a computer beat the best human player in four out of five games (AlphaGo versus Lee Sedol).

The part where Labatut analyzes the one win, and not the four losses, makes his readers hope in a future where ChatGPT and AI has not yet totally subsumed our world.

We read Labatut to have the threads of events past and present woven in a pattern all can read, and just barely, he affords us a glimpse into the future we're so recklessly diving towards.

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Book Review: OLD GOD'S TIME by Sebastian Barry

Old God's Time by Sebastian Barry
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"You saw more clearly what the gift of life could be - something precious given, then snatched back by the mean gods."

My first Sebastian Barry broke my heart.

Honestly I thought it was going to be about appreciating life by the sea in one's well-deserved retirement, and helping out with a police case to liven up the day.

But then the protagonist attempts suicide, and can't help but weep as he walks in the rain.

My God. What must have he survived?

And then he starts speaking to people whom you're not entirely sure are still alive. But you don't know who is dead and who isn't, until the very end.

How skillful an author Barry is, to take a taboo institutionalized societal problem and spin this tale of triumph over tragedy from it.

But be warned. Like I said, this book can break hearts. Whether from the sheer sadness of events unfolding hidden in the privacy of silent rooms, or the musical lilt of Barry's gorgeous prose, this is literature that cuts, and cuts deep.

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Book Review: THE FOUNTAINS OF SILENCE by Ruta Sepetys

The Fountains of Silence by Ruta Sepetys
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Sepetys describes herself as a transition author, with books read by teens and adults. Her forte is the historical novel, choosing specific historical events that the world needs reminding about. And while it might seem like a dreary list of events (families torn apart by wars, sunken battle ships, stolen children), Sepetys writes with a heart ablaze with the light of hope. This shines through in every page, so the books are sad but never defeatist, the tone urgent with a broken and remade heart's plea to remember. These paeans to memory are simply written and fantastically paced, with brief sentences constructed for maximum impact. This is a writer for all, whose work deserves all the attention we can give them.

I jokingly sent a pic of me reading this book at a café to students discreetly inquiring where I was planning to eat in a nearby mall after our Drama Club's rehearsal (because no one wants to bump into their teacher on a weekend, haha). The book title could be a fitting caption for what teachers desire, too, at the end of a work week.

Jokes aside, the book's title refers to a darker time, when guardia civil roamed the land and tortured Spanish citizens who were deemed undesirable by the authoritarian General Franco.

When so many have been hurt, Spain underwent "El pacto del olvido," or the Pact of Forgetting. A state wide forgiving, an iron hand under a country's chin forcing it to look forward, turning its back on a traumatic past.

Spain isn't the only country with this kind of forgetting, submerging all underneath these fountains of silence, in the name of unity.

"There is a tension that exists between history and memory... Some of us are desperate to preserve and remember, while others are desperate to forget."

Sepetys' book is tense... but all musicians know that tension is necessary for a string to sing its true tune, for there can be no truth without this accompanying strain.

Two more Ruta Sepetys books to go. And years of eager waiting for her seventh and succeeding books yet to come.

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