“Great booksellers are a bit mad.” — Robert McCrum

From a Guardian article shared by Babeth Lolarga (whose book, Catholic and Emancipated, is available in Mt Cloud Bookshop).

Given the milieu in which we learned to love books, we take this statement to be a compliment of the highest order. Great madness — er, bookselling, that is to say! — is something we aspire to, even as we have moments in which we look up from our book-keeping and groan out loud: This is driving us insane.

And so it is with gratefulness, full hearts, and a bit of playful irreverence that we offer up this compliment to our independent bookshop predecessors in Baguio City.

In the mid-sixties up until the early seventies there was the Ato Bookshop and Gallery on the ground floor of Insular Building, Session Road. It belonged to Cecile Afable, known to all as a beloved firebrand and THE doyenne of local media. The Ato carried a wide selection of Filipiniana. It also functioned as a lending library. The gallery carried prison art too. There was a weaving loom in the shop and two weavers would come and do their work there. The bookshop was a victim of then President Marcos’ campaign against so-called subversives. All the books were confiscated by the military, and Mrs. Afable decided to close The Ato.

In the early eighties, Jorge Arago, along with Briccio Santos and Peachy Prieto opened Angel’s Trumpet in the same building as Cafe Amapola, at the very top of Session Road. There was a big glass display window facing the street and a balcony overlooking Burnham Park in the back. The books were all personally selected by Jorge Arago, whom many of his friends describe as an intellectual of the highest degree. The collection of books had quite a reputation. It is said that Marcos had books sent to him from Angel’s Trumpet. Padma had just learned how to read when Angel’s Trumpet opened. She read her first chapter book sitting on the art deco tiled floor of the bookshop. It was Charlotte’s Web, by E. B. White. The bookshop was short-lived and was replaced by a bar. Read Martin Masadao’s colorful description of Angel’s Trumpet and Cafe Amapolo in his blog. (His book, Ukay-Ukay is available in Mt Cloud Bookshop.)

Bookmark in the Puso ng Baguio Building on Session Road was not an independent bookshop but we’d like to mention it too because there is a whole generation of Baguio kids that remember being left in the store to read while parents went to market and meetings, or ran errands downtown. This memory is shared by Feliz and a handful of her friends. Although they only met each other in high school and college they discovered in their childhood reminiscences that they all had solo Bookmark browsing time in common. Bookmark existed from the mid-eighties to the nineties. When Bookmark closed after the earthquake, those of us that spent part of our childhood there felt it to be the end of an era.

Legato of Pancho and Nini Lapuz followed in the wake of Bookmark and filled a gaping hole for local book-lovers. It was a small shop on the second (or third?) floor of the Country Mart Building, also on Session Road. Baguio poets would gather here regularly for intimate readings of their work. Sadly, it too was short-lived.

Mt Cloud Bookshop exists to continue these predecessors’ legacy of providing quality reading material for Baguio people of all ages. The bookshops in whose footsteps we brashly follow were not just purveyors of books. To us, they embodied the exciting life of ideas. May Mt Cloud Bookshop keep these ideas alive. And may Baguio help keep Mt Cloud Bookshop alive!

This tribute is dedicated to Tito Jorge Arago. He was never able to visit Mt Cloud Bookshop, but we hope that we have done him proud. Rest in peace, tito.