If you’re a bookworm by heart and you passed by this post, don’t worry. I’m no stranger. As a bookwork myself, I’d be happy to know more about you and the books that spark joy for you!
Come on, grab a seat as I get the coffee ready. I’ve got some story to tell you. It’s about how I found myself wedged between books and how I’m never going back.
For bookworms and bibliophiles alike, I hope you enjoy my first entry in this series I’d like to call “Bookmarked Pages.”
I don’t know exactly how I started showing interest when it came to books but I’m sure it was during my early childhood. My memory always takes me back to that time in Kindergarten when I had a minor problem with my teacher who wanted me to read a passage in this book (while everyone in the class were already doing so except me) and I didn’t want to because I’ve already read the whole book over at my house.
I belong to a middle-class family, which means we had limited resources because money was tight. We didn’t have too much so we had to be frugal all the time. We didn’t have enough to buy books so I had to be resourceful. Where did that lead me to? To my school’s library! I would spend recess or every break I could get to head there, surf through all the shelves, and find books that I wanted to read.
I bought a library card using my recess food allowance so I could borrow the books and bring them all home. I also always had to make sure not to delay in returning the books to avoid fines. Before I knew it, I was reading around 100 to 300 books in a year! I didn’t know the school would actually give an award to students who’ve read the most books in a year, so imagine me, being so surprised when they called my name to the stage during the flag ceremony so they could award me a certificate for having read the most books in a year. I owned that spot until my 3rd year in high school, and then I gave it up to a bookworm friend of mine because I’ve almost read all the books in the library so choices were getting bleak and redundant.
I started with fiction. It was the kind of books you’d find mostly in our school’s library, aside from the educational ones. And then I ventured into romance pocketbooks during high school (HAHA) because it was cheap and it was something I could afford to buy with my P20 (less than a dollar) allowance; per day.
Pocketbooks were such a huge hit around the early 2000s to 2014 in the Philippines, and then everyone started getting into Wattpad.
Sometimes, there would be a book sale at our local mall where each book would be about 2USD and I bought almost anything I could with my allowance. Up to this point, I still have over 2 huge boxes filled with books in my hometown, not including the ones I already have when I started working after college.
And now, I’ve grown my collection since then!
My genre is mostly psychological thriller, murder, mystery, splatterpunk, horror. I don’t do romance now. My phase of reading romance has ended when I stopped buying all those romance pocketbooks in high school.
I also have a huge collection when it comes to Francine Pascal’s “Sweet Valley” book series as well as “Fearless”. I love Richard Laymon and his books the same way I do with VC Andrew’s! Adding in Dean Koontz as well. In the same fray are Agatha Christie’s “Hercule Poirot” book series, Enid Blyton’s “Famous Five”, and Carolyn Keene’s “Nancy Drew”.
I’m still currently growing my collection. I haven’t built shelves for the books yet because I’m just renting this space I’m living in, but I will surely do so once we transfer to our own house which is still 3 years from now because it’s still under development.
If you have the same genre as I do, I would love to hear from you and what books you’ve read! Or if you want to recommend a book to me of a different genre, I would love to hear it as well! I’d like to go out of my comfort zone too and read books aside from the ones I already have or the ones I usually read. Any book is a friend of mine.
Well then, thank you for reaching this far! I would love to hear your stories as well and get to engage with you about books! If you’d like to stay longer, I’ll put in another cup of coffee for you, or tea – if you’d like. Thank you for sitting with me and listening to me blabber about the things I love and enjoy.
