Carlos Santamaria, former Efe reporter who now is with Rappler.com (and husband to pop singer/recording/theater artist and healthy food entrepreneur Rachel Alejandro), loves books. He always has a book in tow when not at work on his laptop or iPhone for new social media news organization Rappler.
I asked him to share his top 10 favorite books with us.
1. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
“I first read it when I was 16 year-old and it impressed me so much I reread it once a year for the next decade. The prose is so rich and detailed that you can feel the pages turning into moss when Garcia Marquez describes the endless rain in the jungle.”
2. The Human Factor by Graham Greene
“The ultimate spy novel. Double agents, Cold War realpolitik. Was disappointed by the movie though.”
3. 1984 by George Orwell
“Possibly the scariest book I have ever read. Orwell was a visionary and imagined the ultimate totalitarian state decades before it was actually established in several Soviet Bloc countries like Albania or North Korea.”
4. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
“Investigative reporting like no one had ever tried before. Devoured it in 24 hours when I was in college, just couldn’t put it down.”
5. The Family of Pascual Duarte by Camilo Jose Cela
“Tough to read and so crude in its descriptions that it was temporarily banned under the Franco regime in Spain.”
6. American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
“An insight into the mind of a killer, without judging him, just lifting up the top of his head and peering inside. The ugly side of success that Tom Wolfe skimmed over in The Bonfire of the Vanities.”
7. The Feast of the Goat by Mario Vargas Llosa
“Rafael Trujillo was not only a ruthless dictator, but a truly evil man who ruled the Dominican Republic for decades until his assassination in 1961. Vargas Llosa describes him and the downward spiral of his regime so vividly I have been interested since then in eccentric dictators like him.”
8. Anatomy of an Instant by Javier Cercas
“I have practically every single book published about the 1981 failed coup in Spain, but this is the only one that not only tried to explain all the gray areas but also speculated on what could have happened if the plot had succeeded.”
9. Crime and Pubishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
“My wife will roll her eyes when I tell her I like a book where the full plot takes up the first 10 pages and the all the rest is an internal monologue about guilt. Yes, it may sound boring, but I loved it from start to finish.”
10. Seeds of Terror by Maria Ressa
“I’m a terrorism geek and thought I knew most of the facts about the 9/11 plot in the Philippines and about Islamic extremism in Southeast Asia until I read this book. It blew my mind, and now I have the pleasure of working for Maria.”
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The Reading Club recommends the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy by E.L. James not for serious readers just for entertainment. Available in all National Bookstores and Powerbooks. My favorite magazine is still Oprah from Emerald Headway.
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The reading club appreciates your comments at gr.rodis@yahoo.com.