Paper cranes hang in the crisp morning air, held aloft by almost-invisible strings in the window. The light hits the rest of the room, where books stand next to more books. A comfortable wooden chair stands in the center. There’s a selection of books on Baguio against the wall, and a cove of children’s books in a corner.
Welcome to what to me is the most delightful bookstore in the country, Mt Cloud Bookshop in Baguio City. Tucked away in a corner of historic Casa Vallejo on Upper Session Road, Mt Cloud is two storeys’ worth of carefully selected material for the discerning booklover and a wonderful place for a child to start an addiction to reading.
Overseeing all this is proprietor Padmapandi “Padma” Perez. The pint-sized and eternally youthful Perez, 39, is a proud product of Baguio just as Mt Cloud is a product of her imagination. Perez is the eldest of two daughters of filmmaker Antonio Jose “Butch” Perez and writer Adelaida Lim, who also helps run that Baguio dining institution Café By The Ruins.
As a child, Perez had dreamed of owning her own bookshop. “Almost every booklover has that romantic dream of having his or her own bookshop,” she says.
Perez, who studied at the University of the Philippines Diliman and earned her PhD in Environmental Anthropology from Leiden University in the Netherlands, had just defended her dissertation when she found herself in Baguio, pondering what to do next. “I wasn’t so sure I wanted to stay in academe the rest of my life. I was looking around for what was out there.”
Serendipitously, she heard that Casa Vallejo was going to be restored. Then her mother told her, “You know that dream you have of putting up a bookshop? Casa Vallejo is the ideal place.”
Together with younger sister, Feliz “Fifi” Perez—also an anthropologist—Perez put up Mt Cloud in 2010. “We didn’t know anything about the business side of it. All we knew was that we loved books and we’ve been lucky to have traveled and seen different kinds of bookstores around the world. We had the feeling, ‘if only we could have bookshops like that here,’” she recalls. “It’s a bookshop that’s also an altar to books. Most of the bookshops here in Baguio have more office and school supplies than books. Our being Baguio girls made us want to do that here in our hometown.”
Mt Cloud reminded people of the house Perez grew up in. “Unconsciously we were making it look like our house,” she says. “Growing up, we were exposed to a lot of Filipiniana and classic literature so we tried to bring that in here. I think that our being anthropologists and wanting to push Filipino titles also influenced the way we choose titles.”
Mt Cloud’s inventory is weighted heavily towards literary and scholarly fare, with 80 percent of it being Philippine publications and the remaining 20 percent foreign titles. The shop’s best-selling title, aptly enough, is Anvil Publishing’s “Café By The Ruins: Memories and Recipes,” followed by children’s books.
In the beginning, people kept looking for school supplies, but now Mt Cloud is a must-see place in the City of Pines. After three years of the Perez sisters bailing the shop out when it was in the red, Mt Cloud is finally liquid. “We’re proud of that and we hope to be able to maintain it,” Perez says.
That is quite a challenge because Mt Cloud also happens to be one of a truly dying breed—the independent Filipino bookstore. While the larger bookstore chains such as National Book Store and Fully Booked have an important role to play in terms of commerce and creativity, there is also a place for the smaller, quirkier booksellers.
Through the years, places such as A Different Bookstore, Scribe & Brewer and Cebu’s La Belle Aurore Bookshop have come and gone. Fortunately, Popular Bookstore continues to operate in Quezon City.
Longevity and pedigree are the hallmarks of Solidaridad Bookshop which is run by National Artist for Literature F. Sionil José. Located just a stone’s throw from the Supreme Court on busy Padre Faura St. in Ermita, Manila, Solidaridad has been serving up a highly selective array of titles since 1965. Its well-lit storefront has been a beacon to Filipino titles for decades. Jose chooses every single book on the Solidaridad shelves, half of them Philippine publications and the other half foreign.
“Because it is so tiny, space is very valuable and I select the titles myself. For instance, if there is a title that I like and which I know others (the intelligentsia) will also appreciate, I order it. I avoid best sellers because they do not really sell. The emphasis is on the humanities.”
Of course, every good book store begins with a good story.
“In 1964, I returned from Colombo, Ceylon, where I was posted for two years as Information Officer of the Colombo Plan,” José recalls. “With my savings and a grant from the Congress for Cultural Freedom, I set up a publishing house and a quarterly journal, Solidarity. I was looking for an office and my father-in-law, the late Dr. Antonio Jovellanos, told me to look at the Jovellanos house in Padre Faura. It was much too big. All I needed was a couple of rooms. My wife, Teresita, suggested we use it as a bookshop, too. It was inaugurated in 1965 by Gen. Carlos Romulo and blessed by the late Fr. Fritz Araneta.”
José has kept the fires burning all this time but admits business can be challenging. “The biggest challenge is how to keep the shop viable,” he says. “The bookshop does not sell stationery or office equipment. Only books, and Filipinos are not book readers. Frankly, if we did not own the building, the bookshop would have closed long ago.”
That has been the fate of many a lovely bookstore. Rica Bolipata-Santos, director of the Ateneo de Manila University Press knows this firsthand. She ran a charming bookstore/coffee shop called Pages in a building on Katipunan facing her alma mater from 1997 to 1999.
Inspired by the literary bookshops she saw abroad, Bolipata-Santos stood by her humanities degree: “Because of my background, and since I was the book buyer, we only sold books on the humanities: literature, literary criticism and philosophy. We were a small coffee shop, too. We sold both brand new and second hand titles.” Pages allowed you to browse and read (no plastic wrapping here either) while drinking a warm cup of coffee.
“What really closed the shop down was a combination of things, the biggest factor being the collapse of the peso,” she explains. “We had already priced the books so right away, we had a loss. The second factor was my pregnancy with our second child and our first-born having developmental issues. There were challenges ahead and we felt we had no business toying with our lives—the uncertainty of it would have been OK if it had been just the two of us. But there were children now.”
She recalls Pages with fondness, noting that she loved being able to pattern the store after the bookstore abroad that they loved. “I’d like to think the books we sold had made solid thinkers out there, too.”
Over at Solidaridad, the highly opinionated and much-awarded José remains busy with his literary career: He has just released a new novel, “The Feet of Juan Bacnang.” He had eschewed expansion through the years to concentrate on his writing, something he sometimes thinks back on. “I had wanted to be a rich novelist, not a rich bookseller,” he admits. “When I think of our debts, I regret having made that decision.”
While it remains a bastion of Philippine creative writing and thinking, Solidaridad is perched firmly on José’s shoulders. “My wife and I are both in the departure lounge,” he says candidly. “She is 84 and I am 89. I do not know what my children will do with the shop.”
But for the sake of future Filipino free thinkers and creative writers, Solidaridad must continue to stand the test of time. Its very existence makes an entire race smarter.
Keeping Mt Cloud running has also become a primary concern for Perez, who has a 3-year-old daughter Aila with her partner Zulli Nolasco, and 19-year-old daughter Solana, from a previous relationship. “It’s a tough business,” she says, “You have to be really committed to the idea of keeping the shop going. Otherwise, it’s not worth it.”
Advertising on radio has brought in more young customers, while being written about on Lonely Planet guidebooks and the Rough Guide have helped as well. Mt Cloud also hosts regular literary events like authors’ talks, poetry readings and a twice-a-year poetry slam.
Recent news about Casa Vallejo because of an ownership dispute has given Mt Cloud’s owners added worries. “There’s a plan to get Casa Vallejo recognized as a historical landmark which would hopefully provide it with some measure of protection,” says Perez, adding that should they lose the building, Mt Cloud would not necessarily be limited to Casa Vallejo, because the bookshop certainly belongs in Baguio.
Indeed, it’s impossible to imagine Mt Cloud thriving in any other city. Aside from the city’s regulars, the shop also draws in a lot of tourists—with big buyers coinciding with the peak tourist season.
Then there is Perez’s ambitious plan for the Mt Cloud website. “The question I ask the team is ‘Can we be the Amazon.com for Filipiniana?’ Because there are people out there without a Filipiniana bookstore in their city or country and maybe they want a José Rizal or a F. Sionil José or Nick Joaquin book,” she says.
But those are dreams for the future and right now, Perez is immersed in the day-to-day routine of keeping Mt Cloud running. Amid all the challenges, Mt Cloud offers up delight the way only the independent Filipino bookshop can.
“It’s been really gratifying when a kid walks in and simply says, ‘Wow,’ or when people are thrilled to find out we have the books that they love,” says Perez. •
Mt Cloud Bookshop is located at Casa Vallejo, Upper Session Road, Baguio City with telephone no. (74) 424-4437 and (63) 920-9141554. Visit https://mtcloudbookshop.com. Solidaridad Bookshop is located at 531 Padre Faura St., Ermita, Manila with telephone number (02) 254-1086 and 254-1068.