The privilege of owning a book

I used to be eager when buying a book. They were adventures that broke the monotony of a lonely childhood, or snippets of wisdom that illuminated strange and foreign realities. These stocked shelves once filled me with joy, a novice humbled before the halls of knowledge. But now, looking at the P300 in my wallet, I ask myself, is it ever worth it?

If it is, how painful it became to grow up slowly hurt by the cost of owning a book. Three hundred pesos could be many things: three meals, two cheap shirts, a small drop in an investment pool.

Though a book can be an investment in one’s self, in one’s upbringing, it is also a gamble. Would I love this good book? Would I finish it in time? Would the memory be momentary, or would it last me a lifetime?

Perhaps I bought this book. Where would I store it? How lucky it is for anyone to have a place to pile one unread tome over another. What if you live nowhere, in a bed you do not own, in a room that can never be yours? Can you own a book? Should you own a book?

I made book towers once when I was renting a room in college; I hoarded book after book to chase a literary dream that, in reality, I had no energy to pursue. To bring them all home, I had to fashion cardboard boxes as makeshift backpacks. The money I used for them would have been better left unspent in my wallet.

I do not wish this struggle on myself any longer. I can only wait for a career before I can have a house to fill with books and declare it my home. At this age, owning even a single-story house feels grim. Waiting or working for uncertainty is torment.

In school, books are tools for advancement. Without them, you can’t get ahead of your lectures. The papers you submit are bare. The instructors recommend this textbook, that textbook. You stare at that textbook in the bookstore and you can’t help staring back and forth between it and your weary wallet. Yet no textbook is perfect. A good grasp of a subject’s scope can only be found in comparing sources. How much should you spend now? Look in your wallet and weep.

If the internet didn’t exist, the chasm between a probinsyano’s and a Manileño’s books would not be so visible. The booklover from the province would only possess the books his hometown provides from that small book branch or that textbook seller. The booklover from Manila would be a connoisseur, sampling book after book from mall after mall, from sale after sale.

It is also difficult for a probinsyano to be required to get a textbook that can only be reserved in Manila. Surely no location can thwart the determined, you say. Yet we must think by chance, not by endeavor; thus, if we leave the schools out, those who study on their own in Manila have the better edge than those in the provinces.

The internet does serve as an equalizer; many students now depend on online resources to supplement their studies, to read books once limited to the page. But it’s also true that internet services have not spread across the country in equal measure and equal speed. As market principles dictate, places with the biggest number of consumers get to enjoy it first as a means for providers to increase returns and reduce risks. The internet only reduces the costs; it does not eliminate inequality or the structures that sustain it.

I admit I am lucky to even be given a chance to contemplate this question. Others in direr places would find my point not worthy of consideration — that, at this time, a book has become a needless expense. Better learn from diligence and experience, not from printed knowledge and strategy. Better be entertained by advertisement-riddled shows one can enjoy with the family than with the written page that can be enjoyed only by oneself. Yes, I have become cynical. This should not be, but there it is.

Ace Z. Alba, 24, is unemployed and uncertain about the future.