Interview with NBDB

Fictionist Daryll Delgado once wanted to be a dog
Interview by Kris Lanot Lacaba

(Full interview piece is here: https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=10152064030061715&id=371941300497&stream_ref=10)

Today, Daryll Delgado—a brilliant fictionist and the author of the short story
collection After the Body Displaces water—has become a more voracious reader
than ever. As a young girl, the books she read made her want to be a detective,
or a castaway sailor, a Russian priest, a Japanese boy, or a dog.

What are you reading these days?

I just reread Mookie Katigbak’s Burning Houses, Alwynn Javier’s Ang Pasipiko so
Loob ng Aking Maleta, and the two short story anthologies, Manila Noir, and
Maximum Volume.

I always have to read lots of media reports and NGO reports, laws and regulations,
and such. I don’t not enjoy this kind of reading, but I don’t seek it either. When
I’m swamped, my in-between-work-reading tends to be a Nabokov or a Cortazar,
a John Banville or a Borges, Gluck’s poetry or a random romance novel. I read the
way I listen to music, sometimes. I let my mood dictate my choices. I don’t always
process too much.

What will you read next?

I really don’t know. I don’t have any kind of reading program. I don’t update my
reading list. These days, I read whatever I can get my hands on. I am in the middle
of several books right now, apart from my staple ones. I’m in the middle of DFW’s
Everything and More, Yi Yun Li’s Gold Boy, Emerald Girl, Carol Maso’s The Art Lover,
Agnes Keith’s Land Below the Wind, and Proust’s Swann’s Way. I might go back to
Proust. I keep going back to Proust, and I don’t mind not getting to the end of it
just yet. There are also so many books by Filipino writers that I have been meaning
to read.