Holiday books
As in past years, I’m going to be pushing for books as holidays gifts. For the most part I’ll be generic about the books (with a bit of shameless self-promotion including, finally, an anthology of Pinoy Kasi essays) and talk about something new: ordering gift e-books. That’s electronic books, which you read on a computer or an electronic reader like the Kindle, the Nook or an iPad.
Let me start out first with my usual appeal to patronize small bookshops such as those of various universities (UP, Ateneo, UST, La Salle), plus Popular, Solidaridad, Trade Winds and others. I gave a long list, with addresses and phone numbers, in an article a few months back. Google “Sunday Inquirer Magazine” and “Getting Your Kids Booked This Summer” to retrieve the article.
I want to make special mention of Mt. Cloud in Baguio, which I just visited last month and which I thoroughly enjoyed. Besides carrying current titles, they actively look for older books so you’ll be surprised at the range of titles in the tiny but cozy shop. It’s particularly child-friendly and, from personal experience, I can attest their kids’ corner will calm the most hyperactive kid.
Which means you can leisurely check out the rest of the old and venerable building, which was formerly the Vallejo Hotel. (Most taxi drivers, sad to say, won’t know about Mt. Cloud so instruct them to go to “the old Vallejo on Session, below SM.”) The hotel, incidentally, has been renovated and the new rooms are exquisite. Besides Mt. Cloud there’s also a coffee shop, a small theater and Hill Station, listed in Miele’s as one of Asia’s best restaurants.
I’m hoping Mt. Cloud will inspire more Filipinos (and expatriates) to set up something similar for more cities outside Manila.
Rizaldy and other books
Local publishers, from big ones like Anvil and Vibal, to the small university presses, continue to turn out many new books. I was among the judges for National Book Awards and was dazzled by all the new books. The awards are organized by the Manila Critics’ Circle and the National Book Development Board and the latter’s website (nbdb.gov.ph) is a good place to start to get ideas for holiday books. Click on “Philippine Award Winning Books” for a full list but note that it includes awards from several years back, which means some are now out of print or difficult to find.
I’m glad to see many new children’s books, including one titled “Rizaldy,” inspired by author Eugene Evasco’s memories of a classmate with that name. It’s a novel way of introducing Rizal to children, without the usual hero worship.
The children’s books are usually bilingual (English and Filipino), which is especially useful now that many schools introduce Filipino in kindergarten. Many upper-class parents complain they have difficulties teaching their kids to read in Filipino, but that’s because Filipino isn’t used enough at home, and almost never used when reading to children. Time to change that. As I gently remind my co-parents when they complain, hey, we live in the Philippines and if I remember right, we are Filipinos.
I do hope to see children’s books, and adult books, in other Philippine languages, or featuring the literature of other ethnolinguistic groups. The Center for Kapampangan Studies continues to do a great job propagating Kapampangan heritage through various publications, from literary works to cookbooks. Their books are available from their office at Holy Angels University in Angeles and, in Manila, in National Bookstore, Solidaridad bookshop, Trade Winds, the National Museum, Book Trends and Filipinas Heritage Library. Visit their website for more information: www.hau.edu.ph/kapampangan_center.
Since you’re going into the Internet, you may as well check out UST Publishing House (publishinghouse.ust.edu.ph), which has been coming out with many new titles as part of the university’s 400th anniversary. Their books are available at UST and in various bookstores.
UST has published National Artist Virgilio Almario’s “Jacintina” on Emilio Jacinto and an English translation by Marne Kilates of his “Pitong Bundok ng Haraya,” now “Seven Mountains of the Imagination.” UST has published another National Artist, F. Sionil Jose’s “Gleanings from a Life in Literature.”
Fellow Inquirer writer Emmie Velarde has a new book, “Show Biz, Seriously.” Not as exciting a title but I hope a good read is “Thinking and Doing Culture,” a compilation of Inquirer articles by an anthropologist you know, talking about cultural riddles, popular culture and cultural heritage from new perspectives.
Since we got to my book I might as well mention Anvil Publishing, which continues to publish with a frenzy books on all kinds of topics, all related to the Philippines. Particularly welcome was “The Davao We Know,” compiled and edited by Lolita R. Lacuesta, not just because I have an essay inside on the Chinese in Davao (taking off from my paternal grandmother) but because the essays are written by all kinds of people with links to Davao—from theologian and fellow anthropologist Karl Gaspar to surgeon Ting Tiongco, all coming together for an unprecedented history of everyday lives in Davao, going back to the last century. My Davaoeño friends tell me even if they lived in Davao all their life, they were discovering new things about their city in the book.
Gift e-books
We now get to e-books, which are still new but offer many possibilities. I’ve been using an Amazon Kindle for three years now, where I can “pack in” several books for long trips, and that includes being caught in Manila’s traffic.
The University of the Philippines Press has gone into e-books, recently launching nine titles. Their partner was Flipside, whose CEO, Anthony de Luna, very kindly helped me out when I asked, “How do you give e-books as gifts?”
You could go to amazon.com, find the e-book you want, enter the e-mail address of the person you want to give the book to and pay, with your credit card, for the book. Amazon will e-mail a link so your friend can download the e-book into the computer or an e-book reader. Anthony tells me Amazon also allows you to get electronic gift cards, which the recipient can then use when ordering e-books.
Flipside has also set up flipreads.com, which features books related to the Philippines and at very low cost. My “Revisiting Usog, Pasma, Kulam” is P190, same as the hard copy. To give an e-book, click on “buy this book,” which brings you into a site for payment. You have options of using a credit card, through Paypal, or paying cash through “Cashsense,” which allows you to pay through 7-11 or Lhuillier. Enter the e-mail address of the gift recipient and Flipreads takes care of electronic delivery. If your friend is new to e-books, refer him or her to the Flipreads page for more information on how to read the e-book.
There you have it—how you can avoid the holiday rush by leisurely shopping for books, in a real bricks-and-mortar bookstore or in a virtual environment, from the comfort of your home.
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