Last night, I finally finished reading my copy of Stainless Longganisa by Bob Ong. I’ve had this copy for over 5 years now, and I had made many attempts to try and finish this book over the last couple of years…to no avail…until last night. For those who are not familiar with this book, it’s a  book written by Filipino writer Bob Ong (pseudonym), and it is of course written in Tagalog. To tell you the truth, I do not read Tagalog novels or books. I may have been raised in the Philippines, and yes I speak the language now, but my first language is English and in my youth, the only way you could get me to read any Filipino book was to have it as a reading requirement in Filipino class. And this book came as a surprise when I first encountered it in my Filipino11 class in Ateneo, because it was the first readable Tagalog book that I could read with ease. I’ve read Nena at Neneng, Florante at Laura, Noli me Tangere and El Filibusterismo for my Filipino class, but they were all just too hard and full of words and ideas that I couldn’t really grasp.

After encountering Stainless Longganisa in that Filipino class, it dawned on me that I could actually read Filipino books, and not as a requirement for any class. I also bought Bob Ong’s ABNKKBSNPLAko and MacArthur. So okay okay, initially I thought Bob Ong was really Chinese and that’s one of the things that pushed me to try and read his works. I mean…I was Chinese too, so if he could write ’em, I could most probably read ’em. Of course I found out later on that this was a pseudonym, but by then I was in a sense, hooked.

Years later, I still enjoy his books, and I’ve learned to like reading  (some) Filipino books, though I’m still picky about what kind of Filipino books I read (baby steps!), but still…

Actually, this entry was supposed to talk about something that has been on my mind for quite some time now. It continues to surprise me, how I can finish an 800-page Harry Potter book in one weekend, but it takes me months (or years) to finish a much smaller less than 200-page book with somewhat large texts and lots of spaces. The thing that helped me finish this book was to read the text out loud, either speaking it to myself, or reading it word by word and having my brain mentally say it out loud. It was like having a conversation with Bob Ong himself.Haha.

The same goes with reading Chinese text. I look at an English novel and I just take it all in and read. But when it comes to encountering Chinese books or Tagalog books, I get this nagging sensation of an impending headache. Then I check what the book’s about. how long it is, how large the text is, if the words inside are too complicated or if they’re read-able, things like that.

I guess, to some extent, reading is really like that. No matter how much you enjoy reading, or how much you enjoy certain books, people will (almost) always go for books (or their translations) that are (or are closer) to their preferred language.