The next book on the reading list was supposed to be Jane Austen’s Emma. I had already downloaded it from Gutenberg and converted it to Palm DOC PDB format and HotSynced it to read in eReader, but then my eyes alit on the first line…

Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her.

…and I could really go no further. She sounds far too much like a Mary Sue character at the start, and I’m not feeling too patient with that. Instead, I’m going for something a bit meatier: Stanley Karnow’s In Our Image: America’s Empire in the Philippines, which I plucked off my uncle’s Filipiniana shelf about two years ago and had been meaning to read since then. Publishing date is 1989, which means it’s almost two decades out of date, but it should still be good for Philippine history up till EDSA and Cory Aquino.