Pleasures of reading

Many years ago, Yoly Crisanto bonded with her only son by reading books together. This was until the boy discovered online games, and Ragnarok triumphed over the printed word.

This was frustrating for Yoly, who told us yesterday that “reading books can help in our transformation.”

Yoly, Globe Telecom’s head of corporate communications, was therefore elated when she managed to revive her son’s interest in books in his teenage years. This was after a heart-to-heart talk, she told me, and, OK, perhaps it was forced by circumstances – certain books were required reading for her son in high school. Still, she was pleased to introduce her son to the works of authors such as Edgar Allan Poe.

Anyone reading books should also be good news for the founder of the country’s most successful bookstore chain. Socorro Ramos – “Nanay” to many – told me that last year, National Book Store started feeling the competition posed by e-books.

National still enjoys robust sales, with Suzanne Collins’ “The Hunger Games” (Scholastic, 2008), a young adult novel about a post-apocalyptic world, selling 75,000 copies within just three weeks of its release in the Philippines. Ramos received a plaque of appreciation from the publisher after the Philippines recorded the highest sales of the novel in Southeast Asia.

Ramos herself has read the novel and is looking forward to reading the next two in the trilogy, “Catching Fire” (2009) and “Mockingjay” (2010). The two novels are among a stack of about 10 books, by both Filipino and foreign authors, that Ramos has lined up for her reading.

She told me that 70 years ago when she founded National Book Store, Filipinos were already avid readers, with works of fiction the most popular among book lovers. Local readers’ preferences tended to track the top 20 bestsellers in the United States, she observed, and the same is true today.

Generations of Filipinos grew up reading books (and using school and office supplies) bought from National Book Store.

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Yesterday young readers and several “young once” talked about their favorite books, as National Book Store, The Philippine STAR and Globe Telecom gave out the 11th “My Favorite Books Awards.” (More on the awards in this Sunday’s Lifestyle section.)

Honorable mention Amalia Airiz Casta, a journalism graduate of Lyceum who wrote about Paolo Giordano’s “The Solitude of Prime Numbers,” was happy to receive an award for her love of books – something that she said made others call her “weird” and a “nerd.”

Several of the other youthful awardees aired similar sentiments. Someone should remind them that the nerds have taken over the planet.

For her part, honorable mention Melannie Joy Lando, a Neil Gaiman fan, said she is proud to be recognized as a book reader among Igorots. English high school teacher Rosario Patino-Yap, another honorable mention who wrote about Milan Kundera’s “The Unbearable Lightness of Being,” said she encourages her students to read, especially those who want to write.

“I love to read. I read and I read and I read,” Patino-Yap told us at the Conservatory of the Peninsula Manila, where Ramos’ grandson Martin, 27, played the piano for the audience.

Patino-Yap’s words should be music to the ears of Socorro Ramos, who at 89 is still energetic and involved in the family business. She is aware that e-books have killed several major foreign bookstore chains.

Ramos told me she had wondered what the family would do if e-books killed their business. She’d probably sell tuyo and tinapa, she told me with a laugh. Ramos knows the value of hard work and frugality. Over lunch she took note of her uneaten pan de sal and my half-eaten one and urged me to bring the buns home because they would still be good for the next day’s breakfast.

The next generations in the family, led by Virgie Ramos of Gift Gate and Swatch and Presy Ramos of Crossings, have expanded their retail operations. The young ones are also into writing, with Zayden Ramos having his first book “The Hunters” published (not by the family enterprise, but by Powerhans, local distributor of Brainy Baby) when he reached the ripe old age of four. The kid, son of Nanay’s grandson Miguel, is now five.

Still, it would be a shame to see the family’s core business suffer from digital publishing.

So it is a pleasure for Socorro Ramos to learn that Philippine diplomat Catherine Rose Torres, the grand prize winner who wrote about Arundhati Roy’s “The God of Small Things,” bought 50 books from Page One in Singapore, where she is currently based, in just one shopping period.

Torres, in a message of acceptance read by her sister because she couldn’t be in Manila, lamented that she failed to take advantage of the pre-closing sale at Borders in Singapore.

But she noted that between her and her husband, their collection of books was far more extensive and valuable than their jewelry. The books, Torres declared in her message, “are my gems.”

The closing of Borders, one of the largest book retailers in the world, is bad news for Socorro Ramos. She hopes the younger members of her family will be able to reconcile their book business with digital publishing.

She herself does not know how to use Kindle or a computer.

“There’s nothing like a book,” she told me.