Bibliarch - Gensan Branch's Soft Opening

Almost eleven years apart, I visited two branches of Bibliarch. One is at the Rockwell Center in November 1999 and the other today at the KCC Mall in General Santos City (Gensan).

The first one at Rockwell Center was located just beside Starbucks. It was a then small specialty bookshop with lots of art, photography and architecture books. Since I was not a coffee drinker, I would spend time browsing through the books at Bibliarch before proceeding to my 3-week training sessions at the Ateneo Graduate of Business.

Bibliarch - Gensan branch located at KCC Mall, just across McDonald's

Today, I eagerly went to the soft opening of the Gensan branch of Bibliarch. It is the third branch, but the first branch outside of Metro Manila (the first two being in Glorietta 3 and Walter Mart). I was told by a reliable source that KCC Mall made Bibliarch an offer it could not refuse. This Bibliarch is a far cry from the first one I visited almost eleven years ago. For one, it now has a w-i-d-e selection of books.

Excited bookworms on October 16

Aside from the usual art and photography books, it now offers cookbooks, fashion books, biographies, inspirational books, Filipiniana, bestselling novels and non-fiction books.

The shelf filled with biographies.

Bibliarch and Fully Booked are known for its graphic novel selections.

Bibliarch also has shelves of magazines, journals, cards, bookmarks, gift bags and vanity pens.

Magazines galore!

Abubots, journals, gift bags

A section for kids who love to read is also an exciting addition. In this section, kids can browse through lots and lots of kiddie books or identify their favorite fairy tale characters on the wall papers.

The kiddies' section filled with wonderful books and wallpaper of their favorite fairy tale characters.

All over Bibliarch are wall papers with reading themes.

Reading-themed wallpapers are featured all around the Bibliarch.

Book shelves and wallpaper as seen from the Catolico Avenue.

And my book choices: A Warrior's Life - Biography of Paulo Coelho, American Vampire, a graphic novel by Stephen King, Batman Reborn, another graphic novel, Shadow of Doubt by Marites Vitug, How to Live - A search for wisdom from old people by Henry Alford.

I will definitely be back for more graphic novels and other books of interest to me and make full use of my Fully Booked discount card.

Kapitan Sino - Book Review

Bob Ong's latest book, Kapitan Sino, explores the fleeting nature of heroism and what it takes to be a hero. Is it the name, the costume, the superpowers, good intentions that make a hero?

Set in the second half of the 80s, the book features a protagonist, Rogelio Manglicmot, who has an electronics repair shop where during a black-out, his friend Bok-bok discovers an electric bulb lit overhead and a soldering gun still working in his hand.

Rogelio and Bok-bok goes into a friendly discussion on what the hero's name should be. Another friend, blind Teng (who wanted to be called Tessa because she is now a young woman) provides Rogelio with the hero's costume cobbled from used clothes and things sent over from the US by her aunt.

With the help of Bok-bok, Rogelio explores his new persona with trepidation as he fails to foil a bank hold-up in his first official act as a hero. His exploits soon involve fighting monsters, criminal elements, rescuing people from around the globe, among others. The costume soon becomes wrapped up in the synergy of a hero that even Rogelio's old rubber shoes become his lethal weapon.

Bob Ong nips the romance of Rogelio and Tessa in the bud and this becomes a turning point in the life of Rogelio as he devotes most of his time in heroic feats, neglecting his repair shop and family in the meantime. Rogelio's grumpy invalid father gives him a man-to-man talk which brought him back to earth.

What follows is a series of events that unfold to Rogelio and the reader the fleeting nature of heroism (very funny is the awarding of P30,000 prize by a local politician for Kapitan Sino and a number of Kapitan Sino poseurs show up to claim it). For Rogelio, there is no other way to be hero when a pandemic a la AH1N1 strikes his locality and discovers for himself what it takes to be hero.

Very deftly, Bob Ong gives us a novel that makes us laugh and in between laughs, makes us ponder the intricacies and implications of being a hero. His funny descriptions of the people in Rogelio's neighborhood (two neighbors, with OFW hubbies, on a competition as to who's got the best appliances, community projects that get talked to death but never acted on) are spot-on and embarrassingly personal. Kapitan Sino's exploits that fail (like that scene after he saves a train, among the passengers, a wife discovers her husband with another woman and Kapitan Sino gets blamed for the ensuing domestic dispute or that homage to the first Superman movie where Kapitan Sino rescues a cat from a guava tree, but inadvertently burns it to a crisp) make us realize that sometimes good intentions are not enough to be a hero.

Bob Ong's avid readers will surely have a field day discovering new quotable quotes which may soon become platitudes, but it is my sincere hope that they (including me) would take these words to heart and put them into action in our own lives.