Traveling this summer? Here are 5 slim but substantial books to bring to your adventure

Summer is already here and with governments across the world loosening coronavirus restrictions, the travel industry is hopeful to be back on its feet. Whether you are traveling this summer for leisure, work, school, or to simply change sceneries, chances are your trip includes a book. Make it a good book, too, for a truly worthwhile summer reading experience.

The perfect travel reading companion is a slim book that could be packed and brought out easily and, at the same time, its storytelling should be engrossing and meaningful. Traveling comes with reflection and learning, after all.

Here is a small selection of Ateneo University Press titles to complement your summer adventure.

At 110 pages, Dominic Sy's A Natural History of Empire is not just a slim composition of seven short stories but a collection that challenges its readers to question who they truly are and who they want to become. 

Fraying at the edge of a life lived uselessly, an old man ponders over things that were and things that may have been. A vanishing guerilla, a knife fight across the ocean, a chat with a friend who came back from the dead. These are tales about doubles, delusions, and self-deceit that encourage us to reevaluate our relationship with history and literature.

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The Age of Umbrage by Jessica Zafra is about Guadalupe, a 15-year-old girl who grew up in the servants' quarters of one of the richest families in the world. She lives with her mother, the family cook. While a life of luxury is all she knows, it isn’t really her life. She's unhappy in school and invisible at home so she lives inside her head—in a world made of books and movies. Outside, Manila is in turmoil: protest rallies, a bloodless revolution, coup attempts, and the Web hasn’t even arrived yet. When is Guada going to leave her imaginary shelter and get a life? 

At 126 pages, The Age of Umbrage, penned by one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary Filipino writing, is funny, caustic, moving, and definitely a page-turner this summer.  

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Love Potion and Other Stories by Alvin Yapan, translated by Randy Bustamante

Author of Sangkatauhan, Sangkahayupan Alvin Yapan shares: "It all came together when Randy translated a title in my short story collection, 'Apokalipsis' to 'Apocalypsis' and not 'Apocalypse.' More than just typography, the translation speaks of deep religious knowledge and philosophical bent that I, in turn, have always admired in Randy’s own poetry. The translations here are a product of several coffee conversations. I am grateful for Randy’s sensitivity to my original stories in Filipino, their religious and cultural contexts, and the grace with which he turned them into his own stories in English. It is an honor to be translated by a fellow and admired writer like Randy Bustamante. It is a great loss that we said our goodbyes too soon just when he decided to dedicate himself to translating to English the many works in our national language that he treasured."

About the translator

Writer, editor, and translator Randolf Munoz Bustamante (1971–2020) has copyedited for various presses a wide range of manuscripts from the literary to the academic and scholarly. His poems and essays are anthologized in various books. More recently, before he passed on, he was gaining praise for his fluid elegant translations from English to Filipino, and Filipino to English.

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Novels and short stories easily come to mind when talking about summer reading. But must it only be fiction? What Kapitan Tiago Served and Padre Damaso Ate: Studies on Jose Rizal, His World, and His Works by Jose Victor Torres is a collection of scholarly essays about our national hero Jose Rizal that should definitely be read (whether during summer or not). 

This book reexamines how we see Rizal by addressing the sociohistorical context of Rizal’s nineteenth-century world, his novels, and his ambitions. In 90 pages, What Kapitan Tiago Served reconfigures our perception of Rizal to gain a richer appreciation of his life and legacy. Beyond looking at Rizal as a hero, we might want to discover who Rizal was at the end of the day—a human being.  

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What Passes for Answers is a poetry collection by Mikael de Lara Co that attempts to answer life's hardest questions. Delicate and sure-footed of expression, this collection is a lyrical and quiet reflection portraying the human experience.

Manuel L. Quezon III reviews the book as: "...a book without artifice, devoid of poetic pyrotechnics and self-indulgence… a collection imbued with classical rigor, elegant construction, lyrical provocation, and thoughtful revelation that gives voice to the artist’s truth-telling imperatives."

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BONUS

A short story by National Artist for Literature Francisco Arcellana first published in 1944, How to Read depicts Zacaria's decision to sell his most precious collection of books. Here's an excerpt: “It was then that he began wondering about the books: were they really ten of the greatest books ever written? Were they great books, at all?”

The thinnest of all the titles on this list, the Little Blue Book No. 1 is a compelling read that shares the joy and power of reading with its readers.

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Mookie Katigbak-Lacuesta's College Boy is a collection of poems that examines the small assaults and transgressions that take place in the plain settings of the playground, the parking lot, the workplace, the route home. The poet discovers how these personal acts are nourished by a dark constellation of learned tendency and behavior that are at the root of toxic masculinity.

At 100 pages, College Boy is a slim book that could easily be packed and read during your travel downtimes and is certainly a thoughtful read.  

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Website | Shopee | Lazada

NOTE: Although restrictions have loosened, remain mindful of the safety protocols and other guidelines imposed by the national and local government units when traveling. Your health and safety must always be a priority.