|
I live in Marikina where small malls occasionally dot the cityscape.
In the mall near my home, I’ve been waiting for this small
bookstore to open because I was curious to know what they would
sell. It wasn’t a franchise or branch of the usual bookstores, so
that made it a bit of an exciting wait.
When it finally opened, I saw that, even if it
had an unusual name, the store carried books supplied by our
favorite bargain-book source: Book Sale. The familiar white price
tags that carried the company’s name and green logo were there,
and the astonishing low prices were there. On that first visit, I
really went through their shelves to carefully look for my own
version of hidden treasures. In Filipino, we call this process
sinusuyod ang bilihin. The process yielded great bargains: a copy of
Audre Lorde’s Zami, an anthology of lesbian fiction, an Modern
Language Association style guide, and some other titles that made me
sport a wide grin going home.
This is a writer’s version of retail
therapy—bargain book hunting. I remember in every writer’s
workshop I’ve been to, one of the common bonding experiences of
writing fellows—next to drinking alcoholic beverages—was
visiting every bookstore, bookshop and book stall wherever we were,
and going home with at least one or two good books in tow, or more.
In my Dumaguete writers’ 1999 batch, poet Allan Popa was touted as
the greatest bargain-hunter because when we went back to Manila, he
went home with half of his luggage filled with bargain books from
just about every bookshop we could find in Dumaguete. Somehow, he
could sense when there were new deliveries, and he would disappear
into these shops to merrily indulge in our version of retail
therapy. We even made a joke in the tradition of the chicken-road
crossing joke:
Q: Why did Allan Popa cross the road?
A: To buy books at the bargain bookshop before
everyone else does.
In the early 2000s, I was hanging out with good
friends at UP Diliman, and it surprised me that one of them belonged
to the family that owned Book Sale. Imagine owning Book Sale.
Sometimes, she would bring some of us to the huge warehouses where
the books were stored, and we would literally go home with loads
upon loads of good books at bargain prices. But irony of ironies,
she confessed one time that she really didn’t like reading a lot,
even though she was poised to take over the business at that time.
Well, I suppose we all have our own heart’s desires to listen to
and follow (she never took the job).
Some say Filipinos don’t like reading. But
with the healthy business of bargain bookshops, I think this is a
myth. Filipinos do like reading, but we prefer getting our books in
places that offer them at low prices. With the non-stop
fuel/inflation hikes, I think it’s but natural to opt for cheaper
things these days.
Comments? Suggestions? E-mail libay.scribevibe@gmail.com.
|
