THE FILIPINO SHELFIE: JOEL H. VEGA

THE FILIPINO SHELFIE: JOEL H. VEGA 

What are your reading habits and/or tendencies (eg. favorite type of reads)?

 

I’d like to read as widely and deeply as I can, but due to eye health constraints I’d been more selective in the last ten years. So I’ve been focusing on poetry, novels, essay collections and short fiction, which I love to read in print form. I re-read poetry books, some favorite novels and short story and essay collections. I often read late nights and into the early morning hours, which lately became a bad habit because I lose sleep in the process. 

 

 

What are you currently reading?

 

I used to read one book at a time, but dropped that discipline many years ago. Currently piled up on my bedside table are Joan Didion’s Let Me Tell You What I Mean, Hernan Diaz’s Trust, J.M.G. Le Clezio’s The Round, Henri Cole’s Nothing to Declare, Eleonor Wilner’s Before Our Eyes, Marguerite Duras’ The Sailor From Gibraltar, Anne Michaels’ Held, Herta Muller’s Nadirs, and Jenny Erpenbeck’s Kairos. 

 

That’s a long list because I jumped from one book to another. I read a book for hours, and then drop it the next day to start a new one, drop that second book or novel to read a third book of poetry midway, then drop it the next day to start a fourth, return to the first book, then dip into the second for a few hours, return to the third or fourth after dinner, and so on and so forth.  With short story collections and poetry this habit of zigzagging from one book to another is manageable. With novels I risk losing the atmosphere or mood if I leave the book for days, which prompts me to backtrack to a previous page to get me back to the narrative’s mood and tension.

 

 

If you’re a published book author, choose a book (s) and share how you hope readers might read it.

 

I hope readers would read my second poetry collection Leviathan Days chronologically, although this advice contradicts my own habits. The reason for a chronological reading of Leviathan Days is because I’d prefer the reader to first experience the calm or tonal restraint of the first two parts. It’s like wading into a calm, open sea. It’s more inviting and comfortable to step into quiet waters, rather than plunging right away into the crashing foam of a raging shoal. Besides, the book’s third section is overtly political which, as Ninotchka Rosca mentioned in her blurb, is a counterpoint to the previous segments. Perhaps, it’s preferable for the reader to first experience the quiet meditations in the opening segment. 

 

 

Please share some favorite books.

 

Favorite in the sense that I re-read them and keep them for good in my bookshelf. That list would include Duras’ The Easy Life,” Bertrand Russells’s Why I am Not a Christian, any book by Jane Hirschfield, Ian McEwan’s Saturday, Antoine Saint-Exupery’s The Little Prince, D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover, and WilfridoD. Nolledo’s But for the Lovers. I have some more, but I’m afraid the list would be long. Also I tend not to finish a book or instead extend the reading as long as possible, particularly novels that really blew my head off. It’s like the company of a wonderful and erudite person. I want to hang around, I become an obsessive fan. To me finishing a fabulous, generous novel means the experience is over. Re-reading it is not exactly quite the same, but only a facsimile of the initial experience.

 

 

Ask yourself a reading-related question and answer it.

 

Do books in one’s bookshelf and the bedside table tell a lot what type of person the reader is?

 

Maybe yes, maybe no. But I’d like to add, I hope not. I would definitely encourage a reader to read as widely as possible, or at least read a well written book which one initially dislikes or feels uncomfortable with. Of course, maybe one reads for fun, diversion, comfort, information, nostalgia, etc…That’s all okay. But what I’d like to do is always add one or two books every now and then that I may initially dislike but are well-written despite the initial doubts and difficulty of ‘liking it.’ It’s giving the book a second chance. Novels and short story collections are mostly in this category, because one stays in them for longer reading periods. The initial tone may not convince or persuade. That’s why for aspiring novel writers the first pages can be the most tricky. A novelist has to make crucial decisions right at the beginning.

 

 

*****

 

Joel H. Vega is the author of "Leviathan Days" (2023) and “Drift” both published by the UST Publishing House.  “Drift” won the 2019 Best Poetry in English National Book Award from the  Manila Critics Circle and an equivalent prize given by the Philippine Literary Arts Council. His poems and short stories have appeared in Rattle, Runesanthologies, North Dakota Quarterly, SANDS, Versal Disquieting Muses Review, and other English literary journals in the US, the Philippines, The Netherlands, Germany, Austria, and France. He also received prizes from the Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for poetry and essay. He lives in Arnhem, the Netherlands, where he works as a medical copyeditor.