MEDIUM RARE

Whenever a book is published, it’s good news that calls for a celebration. How many people today read for pleasure? “Reading . . . lasts when all other pleasures fade,” to quote Anthony Trollope.

In the age of digitalization, books seem so low-tech, yet grandparents worry that their grandchildren will grow up illiterate, unable to read even the time on a clock unless it’s digital. (These are the same kids who won’t surrender their laptops and smartphones at bedtime.)

In olden times not so long ago, children fell asleep listening to their mother or nanny reading from a storybook. Times have changed. Fewer bookstores now, carrying fewer titles, while more Netflix and other streaming entertainments are available 24 hours.

So when its coffee table book was formally launched at The Manila Hotel’s presidential suite last Wednesday, what an event it turned out to be! Quite possibly the only hotel with a book all its own in words and pictures, yet only a hotel with a history and personal stories as rich as this one could’ve made the grade.

Meanwhile, this story to precede the event of the week: Days before the launch, S bought 24 copies in one throw to give away as Christmas presents but more likely to immortalize the romantic Manila Hotel-flavored memories that she has kept in her heart all these years.

At the launch, I met some very interesting guests: Chief Justice Alexander Gesmundo, retired CJ’s Hilario Davide and Diosdado Peralta; Oceana Foundation’s Golly Ramos; the lovely ambassadors of Norway and Sri Lanka; Gen. (ret.) Hermogenes Esperon, newly installed chairman, PhilTrust Bank; Blanca Mercado, COO, The Manila Times; and Senator Mark Villar, who explained his father’s ideal of a million trees for his “center of gravity of Metro Manila plus Cavite”: a nursery grows in Manny Villar’s property.

True, a coffee table book is a feast of photographs -- a picture is worth a thousand words -- and this book about the 111-year-old hotel is lavish with photographs that display what L calls “a beautiful showcasing of a true national treasure, portraying MH’s glorious past and presentday magnificence.”
The hotel’s officers were present in full force to empower and send the book on its way to a million copies sold.