Dear Ms. Ramos,
I admire you; I really do. You remind me of my lola, who also survived the war and built a successful business from modest beginnings. Of course, she’s out of your league — you own National Bookstore and Powerbooks, as if you need reminding — and she’s already dead, my grandma. But that is beside the point, which is that when you speak of perseverance and hard work, as you often do in your advice column, you know whereof you speak. You’ve been there. You’ve grabbed the proverbial bull by its horns; given it a sound thrashing, even. I bet that bull is mighty scared of you. It should well be, at any rate.
So this one should be easy. You only have to say the word and my misery will be no more.
The price stickers at your bookstores, see — they won’t come off.
That’s it. It doesn’t sound like much, but it means the world to me. I’m not one to nitpick or complain over the smallest things. In fact, this bit about the stickers never really bothered me much before, but that was when you could still actually remove them. Back then I took it as a challenge, a special skill, even. Now it’s simply… well, it’s plain ridiculous. I mean, look at that book up there: I’m pretty sure I’m at the maximum skill level when it comes to sticker removal, and that seriously messed-up back cover is the look of me giving up. Someone has suggested steaming; maybe I will, if it has to come to that, but I’m sure you would have asked, What, you didn’t consider appealing to the owner first? My grandma would have, then thrown in “gago” for good measure. The thought makes me miss her all the more.
Let me explain: When I purchase a book, the first thing I do after opening the plastic wrap is remove the price sticker. It’s sort of a symbolic act, really. After removing all vestiges of alien paper and glue, I imagine the book rid of all the banal concerns of commerce, as all good literature should be. It also serves to remind me that you can not put a price on a good book (of course, when it turns out crappy, it helps not to be reminded how much I paid for that piece of pulp). This isn’t something I normally give much thought to; who needs to rationalize the desire to peel a sticker, anyway? But now we’re on the subject, yeah… I am obsessive-compulsive that way. Then again, isn’t there something just a bit OC about management’s insistence on stickers infused with the essence of Gloria Arroyo? (Pardon the aside, but the woman does want to stick around forever, no?) Oh, I’m sure management has its own reasons; I just want you to hear mine.
People call you “Nanay.” It takes great fondness to bestow such honorific on someone who is not your mother. I’m mighty fond of National. Your flagship store is like a second home to me. I love it to pieces because that’s where I discovered all these books I proudly display on my shelves. Each of them I took out of its wrapping and carefully divested of its unsightly sticker; each one I smelled, for there is nothing like the smell of a new book; each I personally covered with plastic that’s just the right thickness, and on the title page of each I affixed my name, the date of purchase, and location. And having accomplished that, only then did I declare, each time: This book is mine! It’s a wonderful feeling.
Will you permit me a digression? Thank you. Here I take something out of its protective sheath, divest it of an extraneous (if previously essential) part, cover it to protect it from the elements, smell it, and record its vital stats: Doesn’t that remind you of a baby? Me, too. The sticker is the umbilical cord; once it has served its purpose, it becomes an ugly, useless relic best rid of and never seen again. So yeah, books are like babies that way. Some are better than others, and a precious few take pride-of-place on my shelves, but I treasure each of them in its own way, and all were accorded the same loving attention when I welcomed them into my reading family. What can I say? I love my books.
But how, pray, can I do that now? I was at Powerbooks a few weeks ago. Then I got home and proceeded to peel the sticker off one book and ended up with that unfortunate specimen pictured above. It was very distressing. Not wishing to disfigure the rest, I stacked them in a corner of my room, lonely and unopened… What’s the use? If I can’t properly remove those stickers, I can’t — won’t — cover them, smell them, cement our bond. Those books will never truly be mine. So please, Ms. Ramos, hear my entreaty. I implore you: Do something about those stickers. Don’t stick it to us who are stuck on our books.
Set my babies free.
Yours most respectfully, I remain.
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