Wishing for Libraries

There aren’t many public libraries in this country! This thought occurred to me just yesterday. See, I asked a friend from the States to buy me this particular book (The Shadow of the Wind) in amazon.com (Trivia: Ordinary shipping from Amazon takes a month. I’m expecting my book to arrive on the last week of May. Waiting is such an agony, but I’m so excited! Thanks so much to my friend and her husband who shouldered the cost and won’t make me pay back. Owe you one, big time).

The Shadow of the Wind is written in Spanish by Carlos Ruiz Zafon and has been translated only recently in English. It’s not yet available in Fully Booked or Powerbooks, and I’m crossing my fingers that it won’t be available any time soon. Otherwise, my copy from Amazon wouldn’t be such a treasure anymore (Hello!). And if anyone happens to find this book anywhere here in Manila, don't bother to comment. I'm not interested to know, ok? Ok!

My book order stirred the curiosity of this friend of mine in the States, which inevitably sent her to the nearest library to borrow a copy of Shadow of the Wind. And there it just hit me, why can’t our government invest in putting up public libraries also? I only know of the National Library, and I’ve heard so much about their limited and sometimes outdated resource materials. I imagine that if there were a decent and accessible library that our barangay or local government could put up, I will probably hang out there a lot instead of in the malls. Or how about actually having libraries inside the malls? Haha! I sound so nerdy. I know of lots of people who love reading but would resort to electronic books due to budget constraints. The idea of borrowing books will surely be a better option than grabbing e-books. I mean, yes, I’ve raved about e-books for a while there, and I still do, but real books are still better.

The only good libraries I know of are inside the universities, and your privileges expire once you graduate. It’s a shame. Reading doesn't stop in school. In fact it's so much better now sans the pressure of time and grades, and that's as nerdy as I can get. If we can rent cars and videos, I wish we can rent books or magazines also.