Farewell, my favorite indie bookstore

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 lovers to get together.

The 2011 Best & Worst Book discussion. Copy is the Phil. tourism tagline. (img src)

To be honest, I didn't get to buy many books at Libreria. I brought many friends there, though, to make up for that. But the value in the place is the home that we found in it. Admittedly, making book lovers feel at home may not necessarily be a very profitable business model, but I think this kind of cultural good karma will eventually result in good profit margins.

I think if we did have the time and money, a few of us would pool our resources together and set up a reading room/bookshop. Preferably something as homey as Libreria, where there was always freshly brewed coffee from freshly ground beans, where we could hold book events, and where someone could just come to sit on a couch or rocking chair and read.

For what it's worth at this point, I'd like to thank Triccie for putting up this second incarnation of Libreria. We're hoping that Libreria will open again, sometime, somewhere. She's not closed to the possibility.

In the meantime, I think our book club, many of the local book bloggers, and readers who hung out inside Libreria's bright and cool confines are going to look for a similar place that we can also call home.

Suggestions?