Coffeespoons

I’ve always thought it was an injustice that writers’ retreats are a thing, but not reading retreats. At least, not as widely as writers’ retreats are. And so last year, I went on a personal reading retreat in Baguio, inspired by stuff I’d seen online about other reading retreats.  It was glorious. But I wondered what it would be like to actually have a reading retreat with a group. So I floated the idea to my book club, Flips Flipping Pages--described what it was, showed them a few sites that organized reading retreats, etc. And they ran with it.  So from Jan. 31-Feb. 2, around 18 FPP book club members and guests participated in Bookish Baguio, FFP’s first reading retreat. The whole thing was organized by the book club founder, Gege, with help from a couple of other members. And the venue was this lovely Airbnb called Baguio Mountain Retreat , suggested by another book club member who knew the owner. The agenda for the weekend was reading, eating, and sleeping. And maybe visi...

Libreria last day party. (photo courtesy of Rhett ) Libreria. Where we ate, danced, slept, wrote, scavenged, hobnobbed with writers, spilled drinks, raised hell, got drunk, and oh yes, read, for a year and a half, closed its doors last Saturday. The closing of indie bookstores isn't as alarming in this country, but the closing of this particular indie bookstore is. Because it was our haven, refuge, our treehouse, our clubhouse. And I don't just mean for my book club . It was home, too, to the Filipino Book Bloggers . It was a place we could go to geek out about books and feel like we belonged. So though it was around only for a little while, it has inspired a loyalty in us. Owner and proprietor, Triccie, finally decided to close shop because her work necessitated that she be in a different province for several days in the week and because the bookstore stopped earning money. And I keep thinking that I wish I had enough money to keep the place as it is--a venue for book...