What do you think?
Rate this book
A-Side / B-Side
88 pages
First published January 1, 2009
4 people are currently reading
28 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
April 10, 2016
May lalim din ang aklat na ito at kurot sa puso.
Lalim na mag-iiwan ng bakas ng kahapon at nakaraan, ng realisasyon, ng mga patama sa buhay natin, ng mga pinagdaanan natin-senti moments.
Certified Beatles at Eraserheads fan din ako kaya ko nagustuhan ito.
Paborito ko ang Limang Lagusan sa Casa Fantastica-mula sa mababaw patungo sa malalim na ideya at siguradong may hugot, may makakatas, at may mabubuong Jukebox ng buhay mo.
Pakinggan natin ang mga munting piraso ng kuwentuhang kantahan ng buhay natin at sinasabing may B-side ang bawat istorya.
Lalim na mag-iiwan ng bakas ng kahapon at nakaraan, ng realisasyon, ng mga patama sa buhay natin, ng mga pinagdaanan natin-senti moments.
Certified Beatles at Eraserheads fan din ako kaya ko nagustuhan ito.
Paborito ko ang Limang Lagusan sa Casa Fantastica-mula sa mababaw patungo sa malalim na ideya at siguradong may hugot, may makakatas, at may mabubuong Jukebox ng buhay mo.
Pakinggan natin ang mga munting piraso ng kuwentuhang kantahan ng buhay natin at sinasabing may B-side ang bawat istorya.
May 29, 2011
Isang malupit na libro mula sa isang malupit na awtor.
May mga times na hindi masyado swabe, pero sobrang sakto. Gustong gusto ko yung pagka conversational ng librong ito, lalu na at naenjoy ko yung kwento ni Ligaya. Sobrang nakakarelate ako rito dahil sa aking UP life. :))
May mga times na hindi masyado swabe, pero sobrang sakto. Gustong gusto ko yung pagka conversational ng librong ito, lalu na at naenjoy ko yung kwento ni Ligaya. Sobrang nakakarelate ako rito dahil sa aking UP life. :))
July 23, 2016
Vlad Bautista Gonzales showcasing his writing skills. That's how this book appears to me. I had this book with me for 4 years before I had the urge to take this off my shelves and read. The reason was that I met Gonzales when he spoke to our bookclub Pinoy Reads Pinoy Books on how to do book reviews. This is in line with our writing project called "Tuklas Pahina." I am not sure if he will read this review and if this will make him proud that I learned something from his talk. I hope he will read this based on the review's merits and not on how many stars I've given his book. Three stars in Goodreads means "I liked it" so he should be happy.
Gonzales is a classmate of my friend Bebang Siy at UP. Siy is our bookclub's bridge to the world of local writers. She is the reason why authors agree to guest in our monthly book discussion. She is also the reason why I bought this book on December 7, 2012. It was a week after our first book discussion when I gave 3 stars to her phenomenal bestseller, It's a Mens World. Probably irked, she said: "Ito naman kasing si K.D., ang tipong basahin ay malulungkot na libro" so I said "Di ba talaga namang ang lahat ng Pinoy books ay malulungkot?" She responded quite quickly: "Merong masasaya." "Ano?" "Kay Vlad Gonzales." So, I hunted for this book and after a week bought it, sampled the first chapter and put it back on the shelves as it did not really catch my attention. It was not funny or maybe I am just a sucker of everything sad when it comes to work of art. Be it a book, a song, a film, a painting or a sculpture.
Until I met Gonzales and heard him talk about literature and how to do a proper book review.
After more than 3 years of book clubbing, the more local authors I read, the more I wonder how come most of them write books that they think cater to the local readers. There is nothing wrong with it really but I guess most of them do a disservice to the readers by lowering their supposedly high standards. Gonzales, like Siy, is a UP Creative Writing graduate. He explains everything very clearly and gave us good tips on to read popular culture. Thus he appeared to me as a very intelligent guy and this is, in my humble opinion, not really reflected on this book. There were glimpses like how he narrated the story of of Ligaya Nazareno, my favorite parts of the book or how he punctuated the book by the penultimate chapter, the whooping existentialist story about the Casa Fantastica. Maybe he wanted to appear humble because he signed my copy of this book with "Hi KD: MULA SA ISANG MANUNULAT NA MARAMING SABLAY, SALAMAT! SA UULITIN! - VLAD."
The book is a collection of short stories and creative essays mostly centered on Gonzales's familiar milieu, the University of the Philippines' Diliman campus. Gonzales, like Sy, graduated from this state university and so readers who have or had some affinity to the UP Campus life could relate this book. Then Gonzales peppered the articles with the songs that he grew up with or those that were popular during those years. I am more than a decade older than Vlad and Sy so I don't know some of those songs. However, I have friends with people of their age. Also, I was the one who influenced by daughter's music inclination and we appreciated the music of her younger years.
The writing is lucid and comparable to the best of what I've read so far locally. Gonzales pictures his scenes very vividly although at some points, again in my humble opinion, he tends to overdo the vividness like on how he described the grade school notebook on page 24. I am citing this as an example because it is also one of the pages where I saw the glimpse of Gonzales's creative skills in imagining that there is a UP student who writes on her notebook the moral lesson of some of her life events. I did not do anything like that when I was a student. So, I did not and could not imagine someone doing like that in real life. Gonzales made the life story of Ligaya Nazareno all believable. It takes some kind of genius of a writer to do something like that.
I would not think twice reading a Gonzales book again.
Gonzales is a classmate of my friend Bebang Siy at UP. Siy is our bookclub's bridge to the world of local writers. She is the reason why authors agree to guest in our monthly book discussion. She is also the reason why I bought this book on December 7, 2012. It was a week after our first book discussion when I gave 3 stars to her phenomenal bestseller, It's a Mens World. Probably irked, she said: "Ito naman kasing si K.D., ang tipong basahin ay malulungkot na libro" so I said "Di ba talaga namang ang lahat ng Pinoy books ay malulungkot?" She responded quite quickly: "Merong masasaya." "Ano?" "Kay Vlad Gonzales." So, I hunted for this book and after a week bought it, sampled the first chapter and put it back on the shelves as it did not really catch my attention. It was not funny or maybe I am just a sucker of everything sad when it comes to work of art. Be it a book, a song, a film, a painting or a sculpture.
Until I met Gonzales and heard him talk about literature and how to do a proper book review.
After more than 3 years of book clubbing, the more local authors I read, the more I wonder how come most of them write books that they think cater to the local readers. There is nothing wrong with it really but I guess most of them do a disservice to the readers by lowering their supposedly high standards. Gonzales, like Siy, is a UP Creative Writing graduate. He explains everything very clearly and gave us good tips on to read popular culture. Thus he appeared to me as a very intelligent guy and this is, in my humble opinion, not really reflected on this book. There were glimpses like how he narrated the story of of Ligaya Nazareno, my favorite parts of the book or how he punctuated the book by the penultimate chapter, the whooping existentialist story about the Casa Fantastica. Maybe he wanted to appear humble because he signed my copy of this book with "Hi KD: MULA SA ISANG MANUNULAT NA MARAMING SABLAY, SALAMAT! SA UULITIN! - VLAD."
The book is a collection of short stories and creative essays mostly centered on Gonzales's familiar milieu, the University of the Philippines' Diliman campus. Gonzales, like Sy, graduated from this state university and so readers who have or had some affinity to the UP Campus life could relate this book. Then Gonzales peppered the articles with the songs that he grew up with or those that were popular during those years. I am more than a decade older than Vlad and Sy so I don't know some of those songs. However, I have friends with people of their age. Also, I was the one who influenced by daughter's music inclination and we appreciated the music of her younger years.
The writing is lucid and comparable to the best of what I've read so far locally. Gonzales pictures his scenes very vividly although at some points, again in my humble opinion, he tends to overdo the vividness like on how he described the grade school notebook on page 24. I am citing this as an example because it is also one of the pages where I saw the glimpse of Gonzales's creative skills in imagining that there is a UP student who writes on her notebook the moral lesson of some of her life events. I did not do anything like that when I was a student. So, I did not and could not imagine someone doing like that in real life. Gonzales made the life story of Ligaya Nazareno all believable. It takes some kind of genius of a writer to do something like that.
I would not think twice reading a Gonzales book again.
January 25, 2014
Better than his 'Isang malaking Kaastigan'. Maybe I liked how it was a mix of fiction and creative essays, maybe I had fun reading Ligaya Nazareno's story (hmmm...now that I think of it, Ligaya Nazareno as a name is one big contradiction, Ligaya being 'joy' in Filipino, and Nazareno being the image of the Suffering Christ)..was that intentional? Anyway. There were stories, and they were concise, and they were striking. The overlapping of the essays and the stories was refreshing, kept me from being bored (parang inumin ba, refreshing nyehehehe).
September 11, 2017
Natapos rin basahin ang A-Side B-Side. Kalahati ng libro ang walang naging dating sa akin (parteng sanaysay, dahil hindi siguro ako maka-relate bilang mambabasa sa mga kanta at sa mga lugar na binabanggit sa libro na karamihan ay lugar sa UP) dahil hindi ko kabisado ang paikot-ikot ng UP. May mga mahahabang paragraph na nakaramdam ako ng pagkabagot, may mga joke na hindi rin naging epektib sa akin. Siguro, ang isa sa masasabi kong okay sa libro kahit papaano e iyong kwento ng buhay ni Nazareno Ligaya (okay lang, pero hindi maganda, kumbaga pambanlaw). Hindi siguro ang mga katulad ko ang target ng ganitong libro kaya hindi ako gaanong natuwa nung matapos ko na.
August 17, 2025
maganda. pero 15 years too late para maastigan ako dito. di ako graduate ng up. pag minsan na pumupunta ako don, naliligaw pa ko. di din ako ganon katanda at kababad sa mga music na ni-reference ni vlad para ma-gets talaga yung pinupunto ng libro. hindi din familiar enough yung mga eksena sakin para maka-relate ako. pero enough yung pagkakasulat para masilip ko yung panahon na -- bagaman pamilyar sakin, dahil kabataan ko yon -- inabot ko pero di ko naman talaga lubos na kilala.
January 28, 2017
"kasi kahit na anong pagkabilib ko sa second encounters at second chances, marami akong pagkakataong hindi na hinayaang umabot sa take two."
pag stranded sa edsa, sana asa bag mo 'to.
pag stranded sa edsa, sana asa bag mo 'to.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews