Signed, sealed, delivered I'm yours

We started ordering books online and purchasing them after the lockdown last year. Rolly's and my initial orders were from Shopee, but when the five or so books arrived, we felt dismayed when we saw they suffered from water and soil damage. I immediately wrote to the publisher to air our complaint. Promptly, they sent replacements in good condition.

Two weeks ago, I decided to up the ante by trying out the online store of Fully Booked where I found a single hardbound copy left of Anthony Bourdain's World Travel (on top of the bestseller list in Singapore, but that's Sg for you), Aimee Nezhukumatathil (give me a few weeks to learn how to pronounce and say her last name correctly) and her World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments and Patrick deWitt's French Exit. I opened an account with the store, provided my basic details, particularly shipping address. I took a long, hot shower, addressing God and asking Him to affirm my decision to put my hard-earned pension money in new books. I told friend Gou de Jesus of my bathroom conversation with the Almighty, and she laughed and said it's not as if I was buying lipstick and makeup. And even if it was, it was still my money. Anyway, after five days of anticipation, an LBC delivery man handed the package. So excited was I to rip open the plastic bag that I suffered a paper cut as I was turning the pages of a new book. Shallow lang naman. Hmm, I think I have a conflicted relationship with money. But yesterday, after a hearty comida china, I whispered to Rolly, "Aren't we going to drop by Mt Cloud Bookshop?" He had offhandedly mentioned the previous day that he wanted to look at what's up on their Filipiniana shelves. So off we went, getting our temperatures checked at the shop entrance and filling up the forms for contact tracing. The price to pay in order to browse inside a physical space.

I always like looking at the secondhand hardcovers near the entrance. I suspect most of those books come from the library of filmmaker-art buff Perez Butch like the Bruce Chatwin title I happened upon. Chatwin is one of the best, if not the best, travel writers in the world. Gou will attest to that. I was drawn to the cover of Loot and Other Stories by Nobel laureate for literature Nadine Gordimer. It was a painting by Georgia O'Keeffe. It's not that I can afford to spend all day in the book alcove of our home like a lady of leisure. I have official writing, editing and transcribing duties to do, not to mention researching historical images for a picture book. Then there's the laundry and the cooking chores that are the bane in the life of every full-time homemaker. But these books balance those other things off. They give me something pleasant to turn to when the quotidian is close to suffocating me.