Jessica Zafra's Blog, page 40

How the Manila galleon trade gave rise to both the Chinese yuan and the US dollar

The Silver Way is available at National Bookstores (check the Glorietta branch), Php335. “The Silver Way” refers to the Manila galleon trade, in which spices, silk and other goods were carried on ships from China to Mexico, via Manila. It was the first transoceanic shipping line, and it replaced the Silk Road in which goods […]

Personal Alert Levels and the book and video therapies

My anxiety levels (5 being the highest) and the books, movies, and TV series I use to deal with the dread/prevent myself from going completely bonkers. 1: Tranquil Detective novels Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot 2: Ordinary, everyday tension Seinfeld Kate Atkinson novels Early Cameron Crowe movies (Say Anything, Almost Famous) […]

Reading alone was regarded as a dangerous pastime

Woman Reading by Felix Vallotton, from Biblioklept, which has many pictures of people reading. Reading in bed was controversial partly because it was unprecedented: In the past, reading had been a communal and oral practice. Silent reading was so rare that in the Confessions, Augustine remarks with astonishment when he sees St. Ambrose glean meaning […]

The things I love about the myth of King Arthur are not in the movie

The best part of Medieval English Lit class, where one could become catatonic from reading Piers Plowman, was studying the many versions of the story of King Arthur. I have loved T.H. White’s The Once and Future King since I saw Walt Disney’s The Sword in the Stone, and I enjoyed reading the sources of […]

Tell us your own yaya stories.

While commenters wage war in the social media over Alex Tizon’s last article—even in the antisocial media we can hear the gnashing of teeth—let’s talk about our own histories with domestic helpers, maids, yayas. We had a succession of maids and yayas in our house when I was growing up, but none of them lasted […]

Goodbye to my youth, part 3,047: Chris Cornell is off to the Superunknown

Chris Cornell is dead at 52. Goodbye to my youth, and the perpetual ringing in my ears, and looking for open restaurants at 3am (There were no BPOs then), and feeling very close to people I just met two seconds ago whose names I didn’t hear, and laughing at the idiotic things friends did because […]

Colossal is bizarre, funny, and messy, the way life often feels.

Colossal’s premise is weird: a woman’s anxieties are manifested as a monster stomping a city on the other side of the world. But Nacho Vigalondo’s movie aims for more than that Wii connection. It takes Godzilla-like monsters and giant robots, the staples of our protracted adolescence, and uses them to make its protagonist confront the […]

How printed books are beating ebooks: with beautiful covers and textured pages

Penguin Bespoke Editions: Bruce Chatwin’s works wearing Burberry Book covers looked very different a decade ago when the appearance of e-readers seemed to flummox a publishing industry reeling from the financial crisis and Amazon’s rampant colonisation of the market. Publishers responded to the threat of digitisation by making physical books that were as grey and […]

Weekly Report Cards 14-19: Embarrassing parents, secretive wives, and adorable uncles

Week 14 Book: A Venetian Affair by Andrea di Robilant. A packet of old love letters is the entry point to a fascinating history of 18th century Venice, full of scheming politicians and courtesans, grand palaces, masked balls and intrigue. A true story. Recommended for readers who like Venice, history, and tales of forbidden love. […]

Alien: Covenant—Back into the slimy dark we go

Michael Fassbender does the uncanny valley. In the not-so-distant future, assuming the species survives its current stupidity, humans might colonize other planets. Before they do I hope they see the Alien movies (and its ripoffs) and think hard about security protocols, especially those concerning contamination. And that they develop powerful portable floodlights because so much […]