Edgar Calabia Samar > Recent Status Updates

Restarted studying Japanese with this alongside The Kodansha Kanji Learner’s Course. I rewrite all the sample sentences at least twice, making sure that I know all the words and understand the grammar in each sentence. For words I am not a hundred% sure, I use the built-in Japanese dictionaries in iOS and only refer to my Jisho app when a word is not in the native dictionary, like いちもにもなく.

Decided to restart using this as my main learning guide alongside its companion series, The KLC Graded Reading Set. After rereading the lengthy introduction, I now intend to follow the course one kanji at a time. This time, I don’t just read the sample sentences from the reading set, I also write them at least twice—it helps me recognize the kanas I was weak on. Let us see if I can keep this. 🙏🏼

Rebisyon sa kahulugan ng aking star system dito sa Goodreads para sa mga akdang nabása: Hindi ko nagustuhan (2 stars); Okay ito/Okay naman/Okay lang (3 stars); Nagustuhan ko (4 stars); at Minamahal ko kaya hindi malilimutan (5 stars).

Rebisyon sa kahulugan ng aking star system dito sa Goodreads para sa mga akdang nabása:

2 stars: Hindi ko nagustuhan
3 stars: Okay ito/Okay naman/Okay lang
4 stars: Nagustuhan ko
5 stars: Minamahal ko at/kaya hindi malilimutan

Dahil sa star system para sa mga akdang nabása, heto sa ngayon (dahil puwedeng mabago ito) ang kahulugan ng bawat isa para sa akin (hindi ako magbibigay ng 1 o 2 stars dahil tatlo lamang naman ang pinakamababaw––at kung minsan ay pinakapangmatagalan kong pagtataya sa isang akda): Hindi ko nagustuhan (3 stars); Nagustuhan ko (4 stars); at Minamahal ko at/kaya hindi malilimutan (5 stars).

I finally updated by Goodreads Author Profile, made use of the Events and Ask the Author functions (yes, you can now publicly ask me questions about my books), and decided to remove my blog and all my previously read books: my Goodreads Bookshelf will now only include books I read and/or reread from 1 September 2016 onwards.

Could I abandon writing, and, as Derek Walcott suggests, be “the greatest reader in the world” instead?

“A writer who does not write is a monster who invites madness.”

“Archive of abandoned poems.”

The snowball effect of reading: how writers encourage us to read other writers who had influenced them. In my two novels I did, but more so in Walong Diwata ng Pagkahulog where I mentioned, or alluded to, more than a hundred writers who made my first novel possible. Every novel is a bibliography of influences. Who wouldn’t want to read Herman Melville after this book?

Vila-Matas questions our desire to write, and be remembered, by cataloguing those writers who decided to stop writing after an initial success or promise of greatness. But then, there were those who failed, and on this he thought that: “... there is no merit in being a writer of the No because you have failed.”