Though this is the third year that The Philippine STAR has held the awards for My Favorite Book contest with its partner National Book Store, this year’s awards were extra special and exciting because it brought the top people of the two companies together: from National Book Store were general manager Socorro Ramos, the super nanay of generations of book lovers and, according to the late National Artist Nick Joaquin, a "super tindera" who has been selling books starting with a small store on Escolta, which eventually grew to become the biggest bookstore chain in the country; and NBS vice president for purchasing Cecilia Licauco, who has supported the project from day one. From the STAR were president and CEO Miguel Belmonte, who during his speech made us realize that being a wide reader comes in handy at the most unexpected moments; editor in chief Isaac Belmonte, who related that even his 10-year-old daughter surprised him with insights on a movie because he had insisted that she read the book version first; and Lifestyle editor Millet Mananquil, who hatched the contest in 2001 as a way for the paper and NBS to encourage people to read more.
STAR columnists and Palanca Hall of Famers Butch Dalisay and Krip Yuson also gave speeches that made us want to grab a book at that moment and actually make time to sit down and read it. We never tire of hearing Butch talk and giving this great advice: "When people ask me what’s the best way to write well, I say, read well." Or Krip talking about how the entries are beoming better each year and what a joy it is to read them, and he joked that he actually feared losing his job as a columnist to the contest winners.
The group was joined by new partner Globe Telecom represented by head of public relations Jones Campos and PR officer Menchie Osial. This year, Globe will be running a parallel contest, "Globe’s Text Your Favorite Line," where readers can text their favorite line from a book and the STAR’s selection will win P1,000 worth of load. Globe will also be giving away cell phones to the eight grand-prize winners of My Favorite Book Year 4.
What’s great about the contest is that apart from the diverse weekly entries we publish, from which we pick eight grand prize winners for the year, the writers themselves come from very different backgrounds – yes, like books sitting on a shelf of a disorganized library. In our first year, our grand prize winner was a regional trial court judge from the province who wrote about a book that expanded her vocabulary and transformed her world when she was a teenager. In our second year, it was a mother who was coming to terms with her relationship with her daughters with the help of a novel.
This year, our grand-prize winner Mariano Carpio is a former English and theology professor at UST. He wrote about Will Durant’s The Story of Philosophy, and pokes fun at himself for doing so. "A philosophy book is only for the nerds who think they are not nerds," he says, and eschews the perception that the subject is "all about ideas and ideas about ideas." This was one book that was miraculously spared by the termites that attacked his bookshelves. Yet he wonders with certain apprehension which of his dusty books should he tell his son and daughter to read. Would they care about philosophy, would they care "about the fine distinction of what seems and what is?" He surrenders to their choices – The Golden Treasury and Chicken Soup for the Soul – and returns to his own. "I pat each of them," he writes of his beloved books, "to disturb the dust."
Second-prize winner Patrick Cabalu’s favorite book is the book that lets us begin all our journeys in reading – the alphabet book, the book that taught us our ABCs. His was the first entry we published for the third year and when we read it in January 2004, we were impressed with his style – each letter in the alphabet representing something in one’s life, whether significant or not. "A is for Apple…Before you ever spilled your drink on the dinner table, B is for Ball…No matter what you do, R will always stand for Rejection. Regret. Rage…Before anything else, U is for Unhappiness. And you remember the drawings in the pages of your life. You remember holding her hand, only to let it go. V is for the Vacated room you once shared."
Third-prize winner Rebecca Añonuevo is the chair of the English department of Miriam College. She has published three books and is a Palanca winner for poetry, short story and children’s story. This year, she is coming out with her fourth book published by the UP Press, a poetry book in Filipino. For My Favorite Book contest, she wrote about Luna Sicat Cleto’s Makinilyang Altar. "I love the book because it takes away the specialness of writers – that we are no less and no more than our neighbor, that we are as mortal, and perhaps as unmerciful as cancer, but our gift is that our work can outlast our own enemy, which is ourselves."
The panel of judges – composed of Cecilia Licauco, Isaac Belmonte, Millet Mananquil, Lifestyle assistant editors Ching Alano and Tanya T. Lara, desk editor Juaniyo Arcellana, Krip Yuson, Butch Dalisay, and Buensalido & Associates president Joy Buensalido – also chose five honorable mention winners:
Joel Toledo, who wrote about The House on Marshland by Louise Glück, is a Palanca winner for poetry. He also has the best shot at becoming the Pinoy equivalent of Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos. You see, Joel has for some years now been selling and buying books on the Internet, some of them hard-to-find titles. He teaches writing and literature at Miriam College and also plays the drums for his band "Easy and The Forces of Evil."
Our youngest awardee this year is 20-year-old Edrie Alcanzare, whose essay took readers on the journey he made with Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Edrie is so into science fiction and fantasy that he can talk to you for hours about his favorite genre. He’s a huge Star Trek fan and in fact read Adams’ book in ninth grade to cure his obsession with Star Trek. (Yes, he agrees with me – the latest incarnation, Enterprise, rules!)
Benjamin R. Baclagon was the third-prize winner of My Favorite Book Year 1 in 2002. He’s with the Grace Bible Church and currently teaches at different schools. He wrote about "The Book of Psalms" in the Bible, which gave him "a liberating feeling that it was finally me talking…not someone talking to me, telling me what to believe in."
Marie Christine G. Semira is studying at UP Manila under the Integrated Liberal Arts-Medicine Program. She dreams of becoming both a doctor and a writer. She’s not new to STAR’s writing contests. In 2002, she was named Writer of the Year for Poetry in Young Star’s Fresh Ink contest. Her favorite book, Number the Stars by Lois Lowry, is a children’s book "that waited for her to grow up."
Helen Espeño, who unfortunately did not make it to the awarding, wrote about Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet. Helen is an English teacher and a creative writing adviser at Gubat National High School in Sorsogon.
So there. A whole year’s worth of books – some of them old greats, some of them gems waiting to be discovered by more people. We not only learn from these writers’ favorite books, we learn from their own lives as well.