ASIDE from my wallet, abanico, and handphone, there should always be a book in my bag. Its absence means I wouldn’t be able to read while having genmaicha green tea over ice in a café.
The café is often where I read these days, there being a general lack of community libraries out here. But its quiet is easily shattered by, for example, a gaggle of teenagers descending on it and ignoring the unwritten law of café silence. I steel myself against the noise, the way one would against the neighborhood din of a karaoke party, a vendor shouting “Taho!,” or a delivery rider calling out to Ate Marilyn to come collect and pay for her package from Shopee.
This is when I find myself reminiscing on the days spent in the company of books. It’s a solitude that doesn’t mean I’m hiding from the world. It’s purposeful solitude, allowing me to catch up on a pastime too often derailed by modern distractions and chores.
When I was in second grade at Jose Abad Santos Memorial School (JASMS), my class had weekly trips to the elementary library at the opposite end of my classroom on the first floor. I so enjoyed Library Day—it was, for one, a respite from bullies—but it disappeared as we moved up and was revived only in seventh grade through the JASMS Book Club (JBC), to enhance our reading skills and, on hindsight, moral character.
Every Grade 7 student had to be a JBC member, as it was a prerequisite for promotion to high school. We needed to complete the five borrower’s cards of varying colors. For a student to reach the next color tier, each card had to show 10 borrowed and returned books initialed by the selected student-librarian. This required honesty, as there was no way to gauge if you read the book at all.
High school at JASMS didn’t have a reading program, and I found the library with its insufficient inventory a library only in name. It was the default meeting place for teacher and student committees, and a detention room for students on in-school suspension.
The University of the Philippines (UP) Diliman’s main library was a sanctuary. It was the mother lode of books for a comparative literature student accustomed to a little room made to look like a library. I was in complete awe of it. The ceiling was high, the long tables and chairs were heavy (you needed to put in some muscle to pull and push a chair), the books were in profusion, and a massive card catalogue occupied most of the first floor.
My generation’s “Google search” consisted of going through the physical card catalogue for days on end, combing through the heavy-duty index cards arranged under Author, Title, and Subject. One had to meticulously write down details—book title, author, publisher, place and date of publication, and call number. The work became prolonged when I’d jot down an incomplete call number or the wrong letter and number in haste.
My generation’s ‘Google search’ consisted of going through the physical card catalogue for days on end, combing through heavy-duty index cards
When I lived in Singapore, I frequented the community libraries around my residence and the main library near Bugis Junction after work. By then, the stiff paper library card had been superseded by a laminated card almost the size of a credit card with a bar code that you scanned in the newfangled self-checkout stations to borrow books. Returning books was hassle-free; you dropped them off at any library through the book return slot.
The libraries’ online public access (Opac) catalogue was impressive. Opac told you if the book was on loan, missing, or available in which library branch. A welcomed perk: A library member could reserve the available copy and have it delivered (for a fee of S$2 per book) to the library closest to your residence.
The library served as refuge from the hassles of work, and even a failed relationship. After finishing F. Scott’s Fitzgerald’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button in short order, I read Skulduggery Pleasant by Derek Landy, then Milan Kundera’s thought-provoking yet morose novels. I revisited Dashiell Hammett’s detective novels and short stories, re-read Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s novels, and read Mario Vargas Llosa’s The Feast of the Goat, Julia Alvarez’s In the Time of Butterflies, Isabel Allende’s The House of Spirits, Ernesto “Che” Guevara’s The Motorcycle Diaries, and Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street.
The Philippines can’t match Singapore’s community libraries. It’s lamentable how well-funded public libraries are missing from Manila’s social infrastructure and facilities when these should be part of the cityscape—not a luxury, but one of the necessaries of a full life, as the American abolitionist Henry Beecher Ward said.
Mitchell Park Library
In 2024, a vacation in the United States reconnected me with a library: the Mitchell Park Library on Middlefield Road in Palo Alto, California. It took me only five minutes to walk there from my aunt’s house on Ross Road; I’d arrive at Mitchell Park shortly after it opened at 10 am and would leave at 6 pm, unless it was a public holiday or I planned to hike at, say, the Stanford Dish Area.
Mitchell Park Library is a huge two-story building with an expansive floor area configured into reading spaces fitted with study carrels and upholstered chairs. Self-checkout stations are near the entrance, the digital card catalogues are scattered throughout the two floors, and the library card is a mini card. Magazines and newspapers (including Chinese-language newspapers) are on a display rack near a cluster of chairs on the second floor. It’s a favorite go-to reading section of Palo Alto’s elderly.
I always got a desk next to a window on the second floor so I could look at trees, sky, and people now and then. It was also where the floor register was, so I stayed warm during October’s wintry days. The operable roof remained retracted in the mornings to let the sunlight in, but covered the library from the afternoon sun’s glare.
I always got a desk next to a window on the second floor so I could look at trees, sky, and people now and then
My literary horizon widened. From the New Arrivals section, I picked up American Justinian Huang’s debut novel The Emperor and The Endless Palace, a historical fantasy queer romance. From the shelves, I took the debut novels of Filipino American Simon Jimenez’s space opera The Vanished Birds; American Desideria Mesa’s historical fantasy Bindle Punk Bruja; and Filipino-Chinese Mae Coyiuto’s young adult romance Chloe and the Kaishao Boys.
I read four of the Tita Rosie Mystery series, which combines Filipino food and mystery, by Filipino American Mia P. Manansala: Arsenic & Adobo, Homicide & Halo-Halo, Blackmail & Bibingka, and Murder & Mamon.
I read Korean authors Han Kang’s Greek Lessons and Hwang Sok-yung’s Mater 2-10.
I ventured into graphic novels and was hooked on Scott Synder, Rafael Albuquerque, and Stephen King’s explicitly gory American Vampire vol. 1 and 2. Comparatively, Philip Pullman’s The Adventures of John Blake– Mystery of the Ghost Ship was tame.
I had a history lesson on Butch Cassidy, the infamous American train and bank robber, cattle rustler, and leader of the “Wild Bunch” gang in the Old West in the 1890s, in Charles Leerhsen’s Butch Cassidy: The True Story of an American Outlaw.
Reading was made enjoyable because beverages were allowed inside the library, and so on my desk usually sat a water-filled tumbler and a hot matcha tea latte from Ada’s Café. No eating in the library is allowed, yet the rule is flouted occasionally—like this guy I saw a couple of times spreading peanut butter on slices of white bread before watching a film on his laptop. I thought he could have eaten his sandwich at the terrace.
Croissant egg sandwich
Ada’s Café, which employs a service crew of people with developmental disabilities, sits across from the library. One day I was privy to the owner talking to a young girl behind the counter, instructing her new employee on what to do. Turning to me, the owner told me I should wait at my table for my croissant egg sandwich. The girl brought it to me without mishap, much to the owner’s joy.
I would sit at the al fresco area during the warmer days of September, but not when fall arrived, and even when the patio heaters were set up.
The library has been and always will be my safe place. It sheltered me from the world’s unpleasantness. It allowed me to pull myself together when everything proved too much to handle. It reconnected me with and introduced me to my favorite and new authors.
It’s where I’ll always be and where you’ll certainly find me.
