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Menagerie

Rant and Rave – Chopsticks by Jessica Anthony and Rodrigo Corral

Book  ★ ★ ★ ☆ Often, the only excuse novel haters need to convince them to throw a book back in the shelf is, “they’ve got no pictures in them.” To the verbally challenged or the outright lazy, looking at pictures is easiest way to grasp a story. A picture is worth a thousand words, after all. If…

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Menagerie

Rant and Rave: Magnum Ice Cream

Food  ★ ★ ☆ ☆ The Magnum fever has hit the Philippines. And no, it is not from the heat, but from a sweet frozen treat. Selecta’s “must-buy for the in-crowd” epic marketing attempt, tided over by a short-lived social networking craze, has whipped up a mid-summer storm for its Magnum bar. At fifty pesos a stick,…

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Menagerie

Rant and Rave – Pandemonium by Lauren Oliver

Book  ★ ★ ★ ★ Bookshelves are chockful of love stories with the same plotline of ‘boy meets girl and they fall for each other. Love is everywhere – or so the cliché goes in every song, story, poem, and work of art since man first found words to express a malady so painful “and yet so fair”. But…

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Menagerie

Rant and Rave: ‘Leading Ladies’

Money is the root of all evil, but it also serves as a driving force for many. Money is sometimes the sole motivation of some to resolve to live, despite being confined in a certain situation. Leading Ladies, Repertory Philippines’ latest theatrical offering, features two starving Shakespearean actors, Jack (James Stacey) and Leo (Topper Fabregas)…

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Menagerie

Rant and Rave: ‘Bewitching’ by Alex Finn

Many of us have grown up with fairytales, and at some point in our lives, each of us wished to live in one Alex Flinn makes that dream a reality by adding her own twist to a classic fairy tale in her first novel of the Kendra Chronicles, entitled Bewitching. Bewitching is Flinn’s modern take…

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Menagerie

Rant and Rave: ‘Pure’ by Julianna Baggot

Moving from the popularity of the supernatural in novels, dystopian (or more depressing-themed literature) seems to be dominating the shelves in bookstores and publishing houses. Hundreds of new stories about post-apocalyptic worlds come every year. Sometimes events in these stories are rooted on events in human history. Pure by Julianna Baggot is one of these…

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Menagerie

Rant and Rave: ‘The Fault in Our Stars’ by John Green

Many Young Adult novels are full of clichés and are redundant with their boy-meet-girl plotlines. Although it almost always happens, it is not always a bad thing, case and point, The Fault in Our Stars by John Green. In this novel, Green, the award-winning author of Looking for Alaska, tells a heart-wrenching tale of a…

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Menagerie

Rant and Rave: ‘Mamma Mia!’

Last year, when the World’s No. 1 show announced that it would be calling Manila home for a month, thousands were thrilled. Now that 2012 has come, Benny Anderson and Björn Ulvaeus’ Mamma Mia has, in a similar fashion, drawn a large audience. The story of “A mother, a daughter. Three possible dads and a…

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Headlines Menagerie

Rant and Rave: Ateneo-La Salle The Musical

Everyone knows about the rivalry between Ateneo De Manila University and De La Salle University.  Both universities have and still have duels on multiple stages. During the UAAP season for example, die-hard fans flock to the Araneta Coliseum and take sides rooting for their school of choice—which includes a slight bashing on the other team.…

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Menagerie

Rant and Rave: ‘The Future of Us’

From the authors of the bestselling novels: Thirteen Reasons Why and The Earth, My Butt, and Other Round Things; many readers highly anticipated the release of The Future of Us. The Future of Us, by Jay Asher and Carolyn Mackler, tells the story of two teenagers: Emma and Josh, whom both suddenly discover their own…