The books published this year, whether deliberately or not, distinctly capture the contemporary condition. A book about the Marcoses’ rewriting of history was released a few days after Bongbong Marcos arbitrarily changed the date of the national holiday for the People Power Anniversary. A Girls’ Love komiks anthology sold out in less than a month as the SOGIE Bill spends another year in limbo. An author writes about her experience with disability as our health department reveals it is again unprepared to face impending waves of COVID-19.

In this sense, books help us make sense of what’s around us, but also – more beautifully so, if you can forgive the cliche – what’s within. There is a paragraph in writer Rayne Fisher-Quann’s essay “notes from the end of summer” that I keep coming back to when I’m reminded of the passage of time. On revisiting the feeling of teenage obsession, she writes, “Few things about our everyday lives are more genuinely magical to me than the way that loving something with commitment can rewire your understanding of time.”

I always used to say that I aged in phases of obsession rather than years: the boyband phase (12 years old), the poet phase (15), the Fleabag phase (19). “I want my life to be textured by the periods I spent perfecting a stone fruit hot honey cake or watching murder mysteries. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to one day taste a cake and remember how you felt in September?”

The titles on this list offer a vernacular for our increasingly emotionally turbulent times, and when I look back at 2023 it is these that I remember. I remember the randomly bought poetry book that would be my companion throughout October. I remember the chapbook-turned-essay collection I first read at 20 then at 23, which leads me to think of all the ways I’ve changed but will also stay the same. I remember the joy of being found by a book, always at the perfect time.

‘ ‘4’: ‘image’: ‘jcr:d57a9c94-1104-4eff-9600-e6188d858777’ ‘imageCaption’: ‘This reception comes as no surprise to anyone who’s read a piece from this poetry collection, even just through viral screenshots. Photo

“Sa Antipolo pa rin ang Antipolo” by Abner E. Dormiendo (Librong LIRA)

“Naubos na ‘yan bago pa mag-4 p.m.,” said a member of Librong LIRA when I asked if copies of “Sa Antipolo pa rin ang Antipolo” were still available. It was at an annual small press expo where gates opened at 1 p.m. “Literal na mabilis pa sa alas-kwatro.”

This reception comes as no surprise to anyone who’s read a piece from this poetry collection, even just through viral screenshots. Language transforms at the hands of Abner E. Dormiendo — it turns into something that can be touched, that you can get inside of. The lines, “Kaya lang distansya. Kaya lang may SLEX sa pagitan ng ating mga hita,” have not left my mind since I first read them.

It’s hard to describe this collection without revealing confessions of my own, perhaps a testament to how affecting it is. What I can say is it led me to realize that love is contained in streets and mountains and windows and cities and mouths and books, which is to say it’s impossible to contain at all.

‘ ‘9’: ‘image’: ‘jcr:4c062545-2b91-4539-81ab-8a0465ff4e41’ ‘imageCaption’: ‘”Unbecoming” collates brief passages chaptered by different

“Unbecoming” by Angeli Lacson (Paper Trail Projects)

Through literature, cultural theory, and autobiography, “Unbecoming” offers incisive insights into the anthropological “sick role.” “Disability is feared primarily because it is perceived to be synonymous with the certain death that is not-working,” writes its author Angeli Lacson. “The collective and unconscious acceptance of able-bodiedness as the ‘natural order of things’ is crucial to the maintenance of neoliberal capitalism.”

The book collates brief passages chaptered by different dictionary definitions of the word “note.” This warrants Lacson the space to traverse multiple truths. “Note” can mean “a written promise to pay a debt” but also “to notice or observe with care,” allowing for the exploration of loss, illness, healthcare, and community always in the context of capital. It is in this way that “Unbecoming” is an apt title for more reasons than meets the eye. There is unbecoming of one’s earlier life, yes, but also of systems that are oppressive by design, and the longstanding belief that we cannot live any other way.

‘ ’13’: ‘image’: ‘jcr:9358289c-eccc-44f6-9454-0f2ee8147a8b’ ‘imageCaption’: ‘“Silakbo” is an anthology of Filipino Girls’ Love one-shot

“Silakbo” (Penlab Comics)

Filipinos are romantic people, goes the age-old adage. But “kilig” has been heteronormative as much as it’s been untranslatable — in the introduction to the 2021 (!) book “Tingle: Anthology of Pinay Lesbian Writing,” editor Jhoanna Lynn B. Cruz writes, “To say that this anthology is much-belated and much-awaited is an understatement and a reprimand-of-a-kind.” The Filipino lesbian experience is “reminiscent of what Terry Castle calls the ‘apparitional lesbian’ — there, but not there.”

Like “Tingle” and the other contemporary sapphic media before it, “Silakbo,” an anthology of Filipino Girls’ Love one-shot komiks set in high school, wishes to undo this invisibility. The 11 stories brought to life by young artists are all love letters — to a beloved, but also to a past or present self, or the reader. Each page, printed in full color, is so full of care and is home to many new exciting voices in komiks.

‘ ’17’: ‘image’: ‘jcr:feecc6c0-d90b-4f00-9984-39c5ef6079f1’ ‘imageCaption’: ‘ “Strange Intimacies” is a beautifully written text about the push-and-pull of girlhood, in all its delight and insatiability. Photo courtesy

“Strange Intimacies” by Zea Asis (Everything’s Fine)

A year before the advent of “girl dinner” and putting pink bows on everything, Kaitlyn Tiffany wrote about girl culture in her book “Everything I Need I Get From You.” She cited Mary Celeste Kearney who declared girls’ bedrooms “sites of cultural production,” writing, “The latest innovation of bedroom culture is to be fourteen, sitting in your room, making an Instagram account dedicated to cataloging the clothes that another girl wore while she was dancing on TikTok, also in her room. The whole web is created in a girl’s image now.”

I imagine such has always been the case for Zea Asis, whose book “Strange Intimacies” first found its home online, as a three-essay chapbook. The book has now been republished three years later with six new essays — initially about dressing up and consumption, it has expanded to cover a young woman’s constant discovery of selves, extending beyond fitting rooms to city streets and hometowns.

It’s so satisfying to discover a writer who seems to have gone through the same experiences – raised in the same internet created from the likeness of the girl – but emerged gifted with the language to articulate what the hell you both just went through. “Strange Intimacies” is a beautifully written text about the push-and-pull of girlhood, in all its delight and insatiability. Its best moments are its most honest and gritty; after all, to live as a young woman today, it seems a little rage is inevitable.

‘ ’22’: ‘image’: ‘jcr:1aa2434a-f3f2-47ad-8658-0fef545ba735’ ‘imageCaption’: ‘“Stray Cats” is an unflinching take on YA fiction, following an eighth-grader braving Manila streets to look for a missing friend. Photo

“Stray Cats” by Irene Sarmiento (Ateneo de Manila University Press)

Magical realism is just so much richer at the hands of Filipino authors. They are, to some extent, predisposed to it. We learn storytelling by way of folktales, and we never really outgrow the mananaggal and duwende.

Young adult fiction novel “Stray Cats” is an unflinching take on the genre, following an eighth-grader braving Manila streets to look for a missing friend. It’s a thoughtfully written story about kids who can only interpret their anomalous realities through fantasies and fables. It’s a way to pass on Philippine folklore and, more importantly, why it was created and preserved in the first place: stories, even (or especially) the most outrageous and speculative, are very often bearers of the truths so honest we have to write them as fiction.

‘ ’26’: ‘image’: ‘jcr:8d29e1d0-bdb4-41e2-800e-898280f083da’ ‘imageCaption’: ‘Holding this collection of Raphael Atienza Coronel’s poems and paintings is like holding a self resisting its disappearance. Photo courtesy

“will you tell me what i look like?” by Raphael Atienza Coronel (UST Publishing House)

Holding this collection of Raphael Atienza Coronel’s poems and paintings is like holding a self resisting its disappearance. As much as contemporary existence – urban life, grief, exhaustion, mental illness – wishes to erode the body and mind, here is the poet and painter, eager to print and bookbind a life. “I’m alive enough to write about dying,” writes Coronel in one of his most memorable pieces. “Art begets art and somewhere in between, a livable life emerges,” writes Conchitina Cruz in the book’s blurb.

‘ ’30’: ‘image’: ‘jcr:0e1c159b-8df8-4454-9c01-b403289fc409’ ‘imageCaption’: ‘The work of economist and professor JC Punongbayan in “False Nostalgia” is a crucial contribution to our collective re-remembering. Photo

“False Nostalgia: The Marcos ‘Golden Age’ Myths and How to Debunk Them” by JC Punongbayan (Ateneo de Manila University Press)

The argument that Filipinos are forgetful people has always painted an incomplete picture. Constantly having to make ends meet is already such a mentally taxing task for a nation, especially when the only leisure easily available are Facebook and TikTok. So much of Philippine politics relies on – weaponizes – this misremembrance. It seems a country disillusioned by its present and nihilistic about its future is left (falsely) nostalgic about its past.