Acquisitions

The recently concluded Philippine International Book Fair, an annual holiday for the family during which we transform ourselves—Eireen, Lara, Lilac, and I—into pilgrims yielded, again, for me an extraordinary harvest.


Lara, the eldest, has been addicted to books since I brought her to her first book fair 14 years ago, at the Megamall, when the land on which the SMX exhibition hall stands by the shores of Manila Bay was still rugged and swampy. She was a baby then, sleeping mostly all the time in her ‘stroller crib’ while I rummaged through stacks of books, jostling for space with other fair visitors.

I recall that at the end of that first visit, the books I had bought competed for space in Lara’s small crib. Times were easier then, so I could afford to splurge on books. She practically inhaled the smell of book paper and ink as we trudged along towards the taxi stand.

I think she liked that first visit. I brought her again the next year, and the next after that so that by the time she would go to school, she already knew how to read.

In later years, when she had already learned how to read and write, Lara would often fish out from her memory those annual pilgrimages to the book fair, saying she remembers this and that author other kids her age only read about in magazines and see on television.

She has a vivid recollection of the late Rene Villanueva, who autographed several copies of children’s books she had bought. She was delighted when I introduced her to my idol Rio Alma, a.k.a. Virgilio Almario, the national artist and a friend, the poet and writer Vim Nadera. She had met many other writers at the fair that I think she would ask me one of these days if I had read all the books they have written.

The same was true with Lilac. She learned how to read by joining her sister at the book fair.

In her own right, Lilac the youngest can also boast of her own book fair experiences. She, too, began with picture books; graduated to children’s literary tales; and now, I see her reading multiple volumes at a time and can sit still for hours not noticing anything, including me, when she is absorbed by what she is reading.

Every year, the family looks forward to September not because it’s the gateway to Christmas but because it is the month when the book fair happens. It is also the month when we allow ourselves a little luxury by staying in modest hotels near where the book fair is held so that we will not waste precious time traveling back and forth to our home in Batangas—and allow us more time to read what we bought.

Two days of eating fast food and enjoying the quiet of a hotel room by reading are to us both a relief and a release. A relief because we turn off our phones so no one can reach us and a relief because we get the chance to get lost in the world of books.

This September of 2010 is no exception. For two days, from September 18-19, we were at the book fair at the SMX, going there before the fair opens and leaving only when our feet could no longer endure the walking from one book booth to another. This year, we stayed at the Bayview Hotel in front of the US Embassy because some bar examinee had beaten us to the draw in reserving our favorite room at the Orchid Garden on Vito Cruz Street.

This year’s book fair was again spectacular, but I noticed fewer visitors than last year’s. I also noticed that one book seller, Eireen’s favorite, did not participate.

This, of course, did not diminish our enthusiasm for the written word, for at the end of the first day, Lara and Lilac had almost over-spent for their acquisitions.

You see, the two had already imbibed the habit of saving part of their school allowance for this annual date with the book sellers. Months before every book fair, they already prepare their respective lists of probable books to buy by consulting Mr. Google. The items on their list depend on how much money they have saved. If they splurge and go beyond their lists, then the mother goes to the rescue and that’s the time I say the budget be damned!

This year, my acquisitions were modest compared to my daughters’. I gifted myself with the large 11th edition of Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary to complement my old Webster’s Universal Dictionary and Thesaurus, Chamber’s Pocket Dictionary, and a slimmer version of Scribner’s.

I also picked up F. Sionil Jose’s compilation of essays he had written for various newspapers, the red-covered paper back, Why We are Hungry and another compilation of newspaper pieces by the irreverent poet Alfred A. Yuson, The Word on Paradise.

When 2008 Nobel Prize winner J.M.G. Le Clezio, the French novelist, published his debut novel in 1963, the year I was born, the Paris Express headlined that the 23-year old sensation had rocked Paris’ literary circles. That debut novel was The Interrogation and I bought a copy, intrigued as I was what it could be all about. I will soon find out.

Another ‘harvest’ was the 50th anniversary edition of Chinhua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. Achebe is Nigerian, one of the finest writers the African continent has produced. Nadine Gordimer, herself an African (she is from South Africa) and whose books will now stand side by side with Achebe’s in my modest home library, had heaped accolades upon Achebe by saying he “is gloriously gifted with the magic of an ebullient, generous, great talent”. I intend to devour Things Fall Apart after I have been introduced years ago to Achebe’s Anthills of the Savannah.

Ninotchka Rosca’s State of War made it to my list this year after I had bypassed it in book fairs past. I don’t know why, but many say Rosca is controversial. Is she the Philippines’s Erica Jung? I am tempted to ask.

Iranun and Balangingi: Globalization, Maritime Reading and the Birth of Ethnicity by James Francis Warren and Philippine Kinship and Society, a collection of anthropological works edited by Yasushi Kikuchi are old titles but they made it to my book cart this year.

As is my habit, I did not go for new titles. I wait for new books to “fade” a little before I decide to buy them. The reason is obvious: they are very expensive and a salary man like me, with two children going to school, could not afford them. Next year, maybe, when the economy—ballyhooed by the stock exchange to be growing—is kinder to the pocket I will consider adding more to my bargain acquisitions.

See you at the next book fair. Meanwhile, get red with envy at my reading fare.