XANDRA RAMOS-PADILLA AND YOUR FAVORITE FILIPINO CREATIVES ANSWER: WHAT’S YOUR NATIONAL BOOK STORY?
Because to be Laking National is to have your own love story with books and reading.
Everyone can agree on one thing: we’ve all got a National Book Store story to tell. After all, the beloved book store has been around for 75 years, and it has been a part of each of our lives, one way or another. Whether it be as simple as visiting your neighborhood branch for your annual school supply run (with a notebook set to rival last year’s, of course) or a post-lunch weekly trip with your family, National Book Store has managed to figure into our personal histories.
For me, my National Book Store story involved giving a copy of my favorite book to my high school crush with the hopes of finding some common ground with him. He unwrapped his birthday gift, a copy of Freakonomics that I bought at NBS Shangri-La (after saving up for it for weeks!), and said, “Oh, thanks. I don’t really like reading though…” I was heartbroken, but my love for reading could never outweigh puppy love. Goodbye, crush.
We wanted to know what it is that makes National Book Store so beloved to each of us, so we asked National Book Store’s Xandra Ramos-Padilla, along with some of our favorite creative personalities, to share just how the country’s favorite book store has touched their lives. From being the place to discover what would become their favorite authors to being the source of joy for the less fortunate, we learn just how NBS has become not only a book store, but a family, too.