Books, believes Hernando Guanlao, need to live. And they are only alive if they are being read.
Thought and effort, time and money went into making them; they will never repay it lying idle in a cabinet or on a shelf. Books need to be set free. So walk by his home on Balagtas Street in Makati, Metro Manila, and it seems books are pretty much all you will see. Thousands of them, on shelves and in crates outside on the pavement, piled high in the garage and on the stairs, each one free to anyone who wants it.
“People can borrow, take home, bring back or keep,” says Guanlao, 60, a former tax accountant, ice-cream salesman and government employee known by all as Nanie. “Or they can share and pass on to another. But basically they should just take, take!”
Guanlao reckons books “have lives, and have to lead them. They have work to do. And the act of giving a book … it makes you complete.”
Thankfully for Guanlao’s faith in human nature, people also give — often people he has never previously met, or does not even see: they leave boxes of books outside his door.
The Reading Club 2000, as it is called, began 12 years ago as a tribute to Guanlao’s late parents, both civil servants.
“They gave me my love of reading,” he says. “I wanted to honor them and to do some kind of community service. So I put my old books — and my brothers’ and sisters’, maybe 100 in all — outside, to see if anyone was interested.”
It took a while for people to work out that this was, as Guanlao puts it, a library “open 24/7, and with no rules,” but the scheme, offering everything from battered crime paperbacks to fashion magazines, manuals, arcane histories and school textbooks, is booming.
It is helped by the fact that despite a 1994 act pledging “reading centers throughout the country,” the Philippines, with a population of 92 million, has fewer than 700 public libraries, and buying books is a luxury many cannot afford.
Fortunately the Reading Club is spreading. Guanlao takes boxes of books into Manila’s neighborhoods himself, on a specially adapted book bike. He has also helped friends set up similar schemes at 10 other sites around the country, and inspired student book drives.
Aurora Verayo, from a town several hours drive from Manila, says she came to see Guanlao to donate books, but he persuaded her to open her own center.
“This is the start of a movement,” she says.
A new online voting system aimed at boosting turnout among the Philippines’ millions of overseas workers ahead of Monday’s mid-term elections has been marked by confusion and fears of disenfranchisement. Thousands of overseas Filipino workers have already cast their ballots in the race dominated by a bitter feud between President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and his impeached vice president, Sara Duterte. While official turnout figures are not yet publicly available, data from the Philippine Commission on Elections (COMELEC) showed that at least 134,000 of the 1.22 million registered overseas voters have signed up for the new online system, which opened on April 13. However,
EUROPEAN FUTURE? Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama says only he could secure EU membership, but challenges remain in dealing with corruption and a brain drain Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama seeks to win an unprecedented fourth term, pledging to finally take the country into the EU and turn it into a hot tourist destination with some help from the Trump family. The artist-turned-politician has been pitching Albania as a trendy coastal destination, which has helped to drive up tourism arrivals to a record 11 million last year. US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, also joined in the rush, pledging to invest US$1.4 billion to turn a largely deserted island into a luxurious getaway. Rama is expected to win another term after yesterday’s vote. The vote would
ALLIES: Calling Putin his ‘old friend,’ Xi said Beijing stood alongside Russia ‘in the face of the international counter-current of unilateralism and hegemonic bullying’ Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) yesterday was in Moscow for a state visit ahead of the Kremlin’s grand Victory Day celebrations, as Ukraine accused Russia’s army of launching air strikes just hours into a supposed truce. More than 20 foreign leaders were in Russia to attend a vast military parade today marking 80 years since the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II, taking place three years into Russia’s offensive in Ukraine. Putin ordered troops into Ukraine in February 2022 and has marshaled the memory of Soviet victory against Nazi Germany to justify his campaign and rally society behind the offensive,
Myanmar’s junta chief met Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) for the first time since seizing power, state media reported yesterday, the highest-level meeting with a key ally for the internationally sanctioned military leader. Senior General Min Aung Hlaing led a military coup in 2021, overthrowing Myanmar’s brief experiment with democracy and plunging the nation into civil war. In the four years since, his armed forces have battled dozens of ethnic armed groups and rebel militias — some with close links to China — opposed to its rule. The conflict has seen Min Aung Hlaing draw condemnation from rights groups and pursued by the
RSS